This weekend’s Kyoorius DesignYatra in Goa was the 7th edition, in 6 years, of what has become South Asia’s premier design conference.
Billed primarily as a design conference, DesignYatra has carefully broadened its scope over the years to bring in speakers from all aspects of the communications, branding and the 3d fields, so this year’s twenty or so speakers and panellists across the two days veered from more traditional pursuits such as book design, to cutting edge advertising and installation design.
Nominally grouped under a theme of ‘Next’, the presentations of course varied hugely in content and style – there’s never a guarantee that even the finest creative minds in the world will be captivating speakers - so there was often a vast difference in speaking styles. But, overall, there weren’t that many moments where your head slumped and thoughts turned to the poolside and beach only minutes away.
Overall, there wasn’t that much ‘traditional’ design. Unable to travel due to his wife’s ill-health, Massimo Vignelli was represented by two separate films and would have taken the slot previous occupied by grandees such as Wally Olins (who spoke four years ago). One film came late on day one when most had retreated to the bar – a shame really because the preview of Design is one: The Vignellis was a delight and gave a genuine insight into their lives as designers over 50 years.
The second film had been specially filmed by Hillman Curtis for the conference and contained Massimo’s ‘advice’ for the Indian designers present (which seemed to be that they should have vision and courage and re-embrace modernism, I think). Paradoxically, the closest we got to ‘tradition’ after that was the husband and wife team of Sandeep and Tania Singh Khosla who showed how they were fusing traditional Indian design approaches with more modernist tinges.
Early on day one, Adrian Shaughnessy urged the crowd to be more selfish and egotistical, lie and cheat more, and to work on their verbal skills as much as their visual ones. These semi-tongue-in-cheek pointers came as part of an entertaining ten-step ‘what good designers do’ segment which the morning’s crowd happily lapped up and it was apt that Irma Boom swiftly followed. Her phenomenal book design portfolio is a perfect example of a designer sticking to their aesthetic guns and being prepared to ‘tough it out’ with clients when things get sticky, even if it means being fired or suspended from projects.
The perfect example of Shaughnessy’s thesis, David Carson, had gone one further by not even turning up, presumably a disappointment to the local designer who had decorated a surf board in his honour but of no surprise to the rest of us who have heard the ‘Carson-no-show’ story a little too often.
A great example of the ‘follow what you enjoy doing and worry about the money later’ school was Donald Beekman and Liza Enebeis’s speech on their 7 year-old radio project dedicated to type and design, Typeradio. Even though Beekman is a well-known designer and typographer, and Enebeis Creative Director of Studio Dumbar in Rotterdam, they had travelled halfway across the world to patiently explain, on a stage, how they talk about design, on the radio. Sounds bonkers but you can’t argue with a database of 400 episodes and 5,000 listeners daily.
Another part of the substantial Dutch contingent was Jeroen van Erp, who stood in at the last minute and showed some very interesting work and approaches from his studio, Fabrique.
Another running theme was the new broadmindedness of the invitees from the digital and advertising industries. Nathan Cooper from Anomaly and Mark Chalmers of Perfect Fools showed a series of events and projects that leveraged every pixelated ounce of available social media and were usually measured in terms of unique visits, YouTube hits and Facebook links. I loved Cooper’s simplest ideas, such as asking Vaccines fans to tag their Instagrams as #vaccinesvideo then mashing the pics into the cheapest band video ever made.
Chalmers arguably stole the show with their phenomenal ‘pixelated Converse’ shoe-wall-installation which gathered incredulous questioning about budgets and timings. He himself admitted that they had invested 3 days in a prototype at their own cost before racing through the work in 6 weeks - but there seemed to be a feeling the room that was a step too far for many current Indian clients, even though he pointed out a 50% increase in sales for every Converse store that hosts the piece.
Exhibitions and art installations were represented by the measured approach of Land’s Peter Higgins (who consistently showed interactive ideas that were actually years ahead of their widespread take-up) and the absolute cutting edge represented by Conny and Eva from Troika. Talking to 1400 delegates in a vast room at the end of an afternoon is never easy, but groundbreaking work such as ‘Cloud’ and the V&A’s Palindrome signage carried the day.
They say that there’s one great speech in every designer (called ‘my work’) but the last speaker on day two, Devilfish’s Richard Holman, chose to devote barely ten of his 35 minutes to his portfolio, preferring to draw on influences as far and wide as Daniel Eatock and Dennis Potter in between. After two days of more portfolio than polemic, it made a nice change, and in the ad-hoc ‘open mic’ session soon after (where delegates could point out their favourite bits and lobby for next year) Holman rightly drew a lot of praise.
Outside the hall, the conferences evenings and workshops seemed to tick over nicely and the Indian hospitality was great. Many of the European visitors predictably struggled with the humidity and at least one speaker and definitely one moderator fell foul of massive oversleeping (oops) but all-in-all, a good show.
With Michael Bierut and Thomas Heatherwick already pencilled for next year, DesignYatra looks set to cement its place as one of the top ‘must-go’ conferences in the world. My main hope for next year? To see more great and adventurous work from homegrown talent to balance the quality of the famous imports. I’m sure it’s possible…
Michael Johnson was moderator at this weekend’s DesignYatra, following his visit four years ago as a speaker. Thanks to Rajesh, Sameeya, Kay and the team for the warm welcome back. There’s a speaker overview here, and a short video interview with a jet-lagged Johnson about identity and branding issues recorded over the weekend below. Follow the #kdy11 hashtag to track more conference feedback.