Today, Lisa, Tom and myself went to the D&AD Creative Brief In that was featured as one of the events in the Design Manchester festival. The brief-in included a short talk from D&AD introducing the New Blood awards, providing some information on how the awards are judged, and then there were two talks based on technology, given by Adam Todd of Magnetic North, and Tom Bradley from the BBC. In honesty I assumed that the brief-in would be based more on the briefs being set for the New Blood awards, and this was why I had chosen to go to it in the first place, but the main focus was on technology which I hadn't necessarily thought was relevant to my practice. I am glad that I went to it though, as the talks were interesting and gave me something different to think about, and a lot of what was talked about could apply to my practice as well.
These are just a few notes that I made during the talks.
New Blood
Now launching the Yellow, White and Black pencils for the New Blood Awards. The Black pencil is the most coveted, and highly regarded reward in the industry.
16 briefs, launching 31st October.
Got rid of singular categories, this time it is based more on themes and topics relevant to our time. The idea is to encourage multi faceted creatives / collaboration encouraged to ensure high standard of work if you feel that you lack a particular skill.
New Blood exhibitions - the place to go and be seen by the industry.
New Blood entry deadline: 19th March
Exhibition: 1st - 3rd July.
Adam Todd / Magnetic North
Magnetic North are a Manchester based design studio specialising in Digital Design and Strategy, UX+D.
Designing Radio
Interesting technology with a history of reinvention, but less people are listening now, so it's time it reinvented itself again.
A quote from a recent conference - "Radios don't just have to sound good, they have to look like cool toys too". But it's a bigger problem than that, they need to advance the technology.
What is radio? In the UK there are 600 licensed stations, ranging from national to local, community to pirate stations.
Questions need to be asked.
What platforms will our audience be using?
Surprisingly radio on TV is more popular than desktop radio.
How do we visualise radio?
Visualising the records, why can't visuals be applied to radios?
Radio user interface?
What should we keep? What can we do differently?
Interactions - a new language to use.
Gestures - Facial recognition, voice control.
Awareness of surroundings and joined up experiences.
How do you get everything working linked up, eg car radio, radio in your house?
5 ways of organising information - Location / Alphabet / Time / Categories / Continuum.
AGOGO, an app that slices and dices radio into chunks, so that you can choose to listen to a subject in a chronological order, also reads out what you're listening to.
Radio as art - Matt Brown
Depending on which locations you put them on it changes station.
Perceptive radio - Radio that's aware of what you are. Depending on where you listen to it, it can reference local places to help make it more engaging, it can also be aware of the amount of people listening to it which can affect the length of the radio programme.
Itunes radio launching in two weeks, Apple are the largest seller of music, and their radio links the audience to the record. Good example of integration. They can also use data to give them a better experience.
The future of radio needs to be non linear and aware, and based on new ways of interacting, with visual and interactive content.
Tom Bradley / BBC Salford
Ideas are easy? Creativity is a skill, not a gift. The challenge is the delivery of those ideas, and turning the could bes into will bes.
In the beginning with brainstorming, ideas get held on to and you need processes to help you choose the best idea.
If you build things piece by piece it makes the task more manageable.
People tend to think design is just for them, but you have to design for specific audiences. It's easy to choose an idea once you have your audience.
Eddie Obeng - The World After Midnight theory. Things are changing faster than we can learn them. Turns out ideas are hard.
Leadership - Teamwork - Creativity - Methods - Environment - all important parts in designing.
You need to be generous with your ideas - helps people and moves a community forward. Need to be proactive.
Empathy and understanding.
How do you measure quality of the idea?
Desirability? Feasibility? Viability?
You've got to do everything.
Creative Environment
Challenge - Freedom - Time - Support - Trust and Openness - Playfulness and Humour - Conflicts - Debates - Risk Taking
Makes best use of the time you have.
Connect experiences together.
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