#creatiff

Tuesday was the day of the Design Summit. One of the best speeches was called “Neither here nor there” by Marina Willer - a graphic designer, filmmaker and a Pentagram London's first female partner.

In her speech, Marina described what is like to be from one country (in her case Brazil) and live in another (London) for so long, that you do not understand anymore where you are from. This is very beneficial for a designer, because you absorb all the influences from so many different backgrounds. In her own words:

“Being a designer in this world is very much being a designer in ever changing world: we have to absorb many cultures, many influences, and design is very much an ever changing activity.”

She showed how she creates so called “crazy maps” (image below) : life journey illustration to show how ideas and solutions are born.

There are so many accidents and incidents that are happening  on our life, that influence where we get to, all the skills we get, all the things we read, all the looking at the skies, especially having children and the things they say, husband getting drunk the night before, singing a song - all those things can give you amazing ideas, so that’s how the answers sometimes come from. If you are too strict, too logical - you do not see a beauty in a random, in things that happen. Design in our times is much more an act of insanity, it lives in a real world. We do not design for a perfect world, we design for the real world and a user wants to participate, wants to contribute and wants to make a change. So we need to design in the way that users can change it and make it their own.

She told the story about her dad, Brazilian architect. He was designing what he thought were beautiful houses for people, whole districts and how he was getting frustrated seeing how people were always changing these houses: put their own windows, paint them differently. Dad thought he was building beautiful things, but actually he was limiting, putting too much order to what once was very much a free space. Marina, as a child heard such stories and it made her think about freedom as a design.

We live in an Era of inventiveness and craziness, so people don’t expect rules. A great example and influence is Brazil - people there do not respect rules. Let’s take for example how they negotiate traffics - chaos and what is most frustrating - people don’t like to wear seat belts, so they paint t-shirts with seat belts on. It is unbelievable, but it’s a reality and these craziness and imagination inspire: the things you create to get out of situations (health and safety don’t really exist in Brazil). On the other hand - trying to put too much order kills imagination: you look at the designers that put themselves within the rules - their designs are so boring and kitschy, and then you look at children, how free and inventive they are (unfortunately it goes away as they grow). There’s a story how a teacher asks a child in kindergarten: 

- What you are painting?

- I am painting God

- But no one knows how God looks like!

- Now they will !!!

Do spiders have armpits? How do I know if I am awake or I am dreaming? - we stop asking these questions.

The other inspiration is the streets: how they play with the names - SellFridges (they sell fridges), The Cod Father, Frying Nemo, Abra-Kebabra. You look at the Sex Shop banner - it is very expressive and you know straight away what it is, even if the name doesn’t say Sex Shop. Then you get a designer employed, he puts order - Helvetica. Then you get Award-winning designers, they say: I only use Helvetica.