PART 2 of 3
Next great speaker for me was Michael Johnson [www.johnsonbanks.co.uk]. I have talked about his work and his approach in my design thinking classes and was great to hear him and his thoughts in person, again as always since what we humans do is often look for validation of our ideas, some of his hit home.
- ‘Take care of your early influences’. Something that we as educators can nurture too.
- ‘Bridge the gap between design and strategy’. An entire paper can be written on that.
- ‘Reduce, reduce and reduce some more’ and I am sure he did not just mean visually.
- ‘Be prepared for some interesting battles’
- ‘Constraints can be useful’ – ofcourse they can be, don’t I say this in all my DT classes?
- ‘Carry a descent camera around with you’ – yes, yes and yes
- ‘With great content comes great responsibility.’
- And my favourite: ‘The era of DESIGN WIZZARD is now ending, it’s all about collaboration and sharing.’
Each of the above points is worthy of a full length 3-hour panel discussion in my opinion.
Would love to hear what you think about it.
The closing keynote came from MimiValdes’, [www.iamother.com]
She had some fun stuff to say and since she is the producing partner of one of my favourite movies this year ‘Hidden Figures’; she had my full attention.
I loved her take on our profession as designers in general and how it is our responsibility to make this world a less unhappy place, she is after all also responsible for the ever cool ‘Happy’ video.
One of her mantras; ‘Dance like no one’s watching’ – so if you are not doing that, I highly recommend it too.
She said ‘embrace the risky – you cannot innovate without an element of risk’ and ‘trust your gut’ when you are out there. Some obvious but sane advice.
This brings us to the END of the conference.
Loved their branding for it too.
Check out their website too, www.designthinkers.com
Read about the fantastic stalls at the conference in my next post
