The Plus International Design Festival starts today in Digbeth. Lots of exciting things are happening from talks to tours, more than I could attempt to summarise here so have a look through the site.
Of particular interested to this blog, though, is the Exposition where many of the agencies from Birmingham and the region will be on show giving a good snapshot of where we’re at. And while the Conference is aimed at industry-types with ticket prices to match the exposition is only a fiver to get in. (Free if you registered already.)
Also worth checking out are the Public Lectures which are also a fiver each including Michael Wolff on Friday. Three of them are “lunchtime audiences” running from 1-2pm, perfect for those working in the Custard Factory area but unable to do the whole festival.
And then, on Friday, there’s the Big Plus Party featuring, amongst other things, the launch of Blink magazine. Here’s the invite though you need to RSVP to get on the list.
See you there!
John Bounds goes for a walk and a long chat with Ben Waddington who’s running the Type Tours this week around Birmingham.
“The type-tours aren’t just about signs that are ‘printed’, the Digbeth one in particular will be as interested in hand painted notes and other letter-forms. You can talk about theory, but often you can only guess at the intended purpose of so much of it – in a way the tours will be a conversation. If people want to disagree with me, that’s okay.â€
Type Tour of Digbeth – 17, 18, 19 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
Baskerville’s Birmingham – 20 October 12.30 – 14.30pm
City Centre Type Tour – 21 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
All priced at £10
I can’t find where they start from but will keep you posted.
Later: Ben writes on the BiNS blog:
The Digbeth tours start at different times during the day Wed 17 Oct – Fri 19 Oct, from the Wild Building, Floodgate St. The City Centre tours are Sunday only, 10 30 and (I think) one thirty. They start from the Baskerville monument outside Bask House. The Digbeth tour is “rougherâ€. hand painted signs, self made metal signs, all sorts really. City Centre is a bit more polished; terracotta, engravings, stone &c., then dips into JQ industrial zone. Also a Baskerville tour on Sat 12 30 from outside Museum, Chamberlain Sq. Each is £10, via www.youplusus.net, booking advised / essential. Already booked up? Leave your name and I’ll do some more tours to satisfy any demand.
Stef Grindley is rather pleased with how his design work on Blink issue 1 came out.
As always there’s a lot of stuff going on a the MAC. Here’s a couple of things of relevance to this blog.
First up is the Designer Maker Fair on the weekend of November 3rd-4th “showing the highest quality craft and design work to be seen in the region and beyond”.
And, according to Birmingham Words there’s also collecting memories of the MAC in poem form. “If you have a poem you’ve written about MAC, or you know someone who has, email it to Jacqui Rowe at jacquirowe [at] hotmail.co.uk. There’s no money in this, it isn’t a competition and Jacqui can’t guarantee publication but the poems will be seen in some way, through an exhibition, the programme or, possibly a small publication.”
Do you know this font?
If it rings a bell do let Jane Anderson know as it’s doing her nut in.
BiNS has news of a series of walks lead by Ben Waddington of Birmingham Library concentrating on the design and typography history of the city as part of the Plus festival. Here are the dates:
Type Tour of Digbeth – 17, 18, 19 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
Baskerville’s Birmingham – 20 October 12.30 – 14.30pm
City Centre Type Tour – 21 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
All priced at £10
Waddington has done many of these in the past – here’s more info on his Baskerville walk (from where I nicked the above image). Personally the Digbeth one looks the most fascinating. I’d imagine the letterforms will reflect the random evolution of the area over the last century rather well.
Details to follow on the Plus site.
The Designer Show And Tell event at the Plus festival looks pretty fun:
This event, taking place at the Plus Friday Night Party, is proving to be very popular amongst exhibiting agencies and freelancers at the festival. Designer Show and Tell is a simple concept. Participants are asked to show 10 images each on view for just 20 seconds during which time they have to tell the story behind the image. This gives each presenter exactly 3 minutes 20 seconds of fame before the next presenter takes to the stage. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.
If I was being cruel I’d say the title of the latest exhibition to take place at Curzon St Station is an indication of some shark jumping, but I’m not and it looks pretty cool.
The Cure Zone is:
An exhibition by a group of international visual communicators. Fusing ideas of European, Asian, North and South American students discovering their individuality through their studies at UCE’s BIAD. [...] A mix of diverse influences, oozing concepts articulated in photography, animation, moving image, illustration, graphic design, scenography, visual identity and branding.
The private view is on October 1st from 6-11pm and the exhibition runs from the 2nd to the 5th from 11am-8pm.
There are a few display space available at the Plus International Design Expo, “currently one large space and six small spaces” open to “graphic and digital design agencies that would like to exhibit their work at the festival” which takes place from the 17th to 21st October in Digbeth.
The Plus+ International Design Festival takes place at the Wild Building on Floodgate St from October 17th to 21st and they’ve really started throwing information onto the site.
Of particular note is the list of speakers which shows the range and international reach of the festival, and they recently confirmed Julius Wiedemann as they keynote speaker:
Julius Wiedemann, editor in charge of the design and pop culture book programme for TASCHEN publishing, Germany, will be the keynote speaker at the Moving Type Conference where he will pose the question: Why type? Why a typographer?
Julius will share his belief that the positive reinvention of modern design tools might at long last be paying off after a decade of dark times when (almost) everybody thought that the ‘computer’ could do anything. Creative disciplines such as illustration, graphics, design, and particularly typography have been undergoing an enthusiastic revival due to the realisation of the differences between tools and meanings.
I’ll no doubt be posting more about the festival in the next month but for now have a browse around the site.
Stef Grindley has designed a book:
I have recently procured a preview copy of Concrete 2 Canvas, which I designed and have a section in. This is a little bit late now news-wise, but since the book is not out until October I thought I’d still post a quick shot of the cover and say how stoked I am with the outcome. Hopefully it’ll sell millions of copies and make Laurence King happy people. Maybe they’ll hire me again…
by Dom of TAK!
You think TAK are getting a lot of mentions on this blog? That’s because they post a lot of bloggable stuff to their blog. If you had a blog and posted lots of bloggable stuff to it I’d mention you here too…
The Designer Makers Handbook is a neat publication put together by Designer Maker West Midlands and Craftspace. It contains a few interviews with practitioners and a whole gamut of contact details across the world and specific to the region. Download the 68 page PDF here.
via Creative Wolverhampton.
Stereographic is a new design house run by Sam Underwood and George Benson that’s moving to Birmingham soon having run a company called Elektonika in Nottingham for seven years. They’re currently looking to connect with Birmingham’s design community (so the Plus+ festival should come in handy) and are building up a portfolio of small low-cost jobs, should anyone fancy a bargin in return for giving them some creative freedom.
There’s a lot of examples of their work on their website including graphics showing their search for a logo, featured above.
