now at lumiere.net.nz
Semi-Permanent05
In 2004, close to 700 people descended upon the Bruce Mason Centre, Auckland, in what can only be described as New Zealand's very first design orgy. Far be it from me to channel the voice of hundreds of graphic artists, designers and visually-gifted individuals, but for one curious, artistically-shitbrained introvert at least, no other description comes close. Call it a conference, a junket, a summit of things that make you go "ooo" – all perfectly adequate pigeonholes for the yearly event, but each not nearly enough a reflection on what really goes on behind closed doors. By TIM WONG.
Needless to say, designers don't always function well by themselves. Put us in a room together, and we tend to thrive; squeeze as many of us into a 1000-seat auditorium, and we procreate. If influential names, faces, gift bags and an after-party can't stimulate our creative recesses, then a squishy mass intercourse of likeminded artists and visual communicators surely will.
I am, of course, referring to Semi-Permanent: Australasia's biggest creative event brought to you by the right-sided hemispheres at Design is Kinky and The Church (with the support of Diesel). Foaming out of Sydney, Australia for the past 2 years, the speaker-driven conference leaked its way across the Tasman in 2004, quickly marking itself as New Zealand's freshest raison d'etre for anyone with a creative bone in their body. And in a country where creative communities are by nature geographically close, yet at times, strangely disparate, the all-day gathering represents something of a revolution – a drip feed of inspiring global design-heads matched equally by the homegrown convergence of this nation's most hungry creative talent.
Promising to up-the-ante on previous years, 2005's line-up boasts an eclectic wad of guests: TWiN, the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of motion-broadcast design in Australia; RESN, an impressive interactive design outfit hailing from Aotearoa; the big namedrop-slash-draw card for film buffs, Weta Digital; plus London-based design outfit Dixonbaxi and Jordan Crane and Bryan Collins of New York branding giants Wolf Olins, both late additions to the mix. A recently added sixth speaker – the team from VICE Magazine – round off the contingent, threatening to rattle the conference (just a wee bit) with their irreverent, occasionally offensive brand of gonzo-ism.
Lumière will be there, before, during and after, touching people (figuratively), sharing the love, and hoarding as much free stuff as possible. You too, can partake in Semi-Permanent – either in Auckland on March 12, or via more bloated surroundings in Sydney on March 18 & 19 – by visiting www.semipermanent.com, or reading onwards...
COMBINING an office-bound primate with recreational fetish, RESN's online antics nearly belie the fact that they craft only the very finest in websites. Indeed, if it wasn't for a hint of playfulness to offset their slick, hand-eye coordinated web designs – you know, the kind with inch-perfect hairlines intersecting brightly filled vectors, mobilized by the smoothest of oily point-and-click mechanisms – casual dial-up users might consider their 56k spent better elsewhere. And yet, the sluggish loading times prove well worth the layover (or just another reason to covert to Broadband), showcasing a deft ability to lubricate happy clientele with a mixture of fastidiously tuned web portals (Foster Architects, Kebbell Daish) and inspired dabbles in freeform interactive design (Simon Eliot). RESN's own website feeds off a droll sense of humour – lawn bowlers greet visitors with alarming uselessness, no less – paving the way for side projects outside the pocket-lining realms of Flash. Apart from the aforementioned monkey-in-a-suit (Business-Man Monkey, a retro online game), the site also propagates the studio's keen tact for illustration – no better personified, than by comic strip hero Captain Deluxe (whose superpower is tasting crime). Unsurprisingly, RESN's palette of "web sushi" speaks louder, uh, tastes better, than words. | resn.co.nz
UNFAIRLY described as the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of motion-broadcast design in Australia (by us, at least), neither Josh nor Jon Baker suffers from an eating disorder. Together, the brothers make up TWiN – one of those semi-fashionable underground cooperatives, the kind that doesn't have a website or a mailing address. Each traversing the same Sydney-lathered path to working success at leading motion houses like Ambience Entertainment and mesh22, the duo – like many graduates world wearier from industry experience – broke away to form their own team. Well, sort of. Flying under their self-titled banner, the pair occasionally join themselves at the hip (figuratively, not like a human Voltron) to combine on select projects; if only we all had that luxury. Last year's motion-broadcast speakers Oktobor revealed themselves as the brains behind many of New Zealand's more recognisable TV animations and commercials, and TWiN, no doubt, will bring much of the same to Semi-Permanent05 through their work on title sequences, motion graphics and music videos from an Australian point of view. | australianinfront.com.au (Interview)
IF THERE's one presentation designed to offend, it's coming from those Vice Magazine tearaways – not so much an irreverent bunch of frat boys, as they are enfant terribles of the publishing world. Any half-witted idiot can mince language with profanities with exploitation or pornography, but Vice, at the very least, do it with balls – a noxious, rabid, utterly fearless dunking of trash culture, drug OD's and well-abused taboos, all bow-tied in a bright satiric ribbon just for the hell of it. Bound to be of relevance is their latest Design Issue; the cover graced with one of those toilets that give as well as take. Inside, other virtues are shat upon: Powerbooks, kerning, DIY weapon design. Even since cha-chinging it as a media empire via film, TV, music and fashion divisions, Vice Magazine's biggest punch line – that it's free – hasn't been lost, on this writer anyway. Expect their Semi-Permanent appearance to resemble something like this | viceland.com
NEW ZEALANDERS needn't be reminded of Weta Digital – they are, after all, partly responsible for winning every single one of us an Oscar (as the rest of the world likes to joke). A high-tech offspring of Weta Workshop, the digital effects wing launched in 1993 under the principal guidance of Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor, taking just a single computer and some Kiwi ingenuity to produce the special effects for Heavenly Creatures. Larger-scale work followed on Jackson's own The Frighteners and Robert Zemeckis' Contact, before embarking on that trilogy of films. Fans, accolades and millions of dollars followed; meanwhile, Weta Digital continued to lend their increasingly expanding team of experts to such effects-heavy projects as Van Helsing, I, Robot and Jackson's next film, the big-budget remake of King Kong. Those impressed by the George Lucus-founded Industrial Light & Magic presentation at 2004's Semi-Permanent (Sydney only) will find much to like here – with three of the highest grossing films ever on their résumé, and a potential fourth to be added to that list, Weta Digital promise to deliver as much, if not more (and for ape-heads, maybe even a few King Kong secrets too). | wetadigital.com
AS LATE additions to the Semi-Permanent circus, both London-based design outfit Dixonbaxi and Wolff Olins teamsters Jordon Crane and Bryan Collins have proven elusive, if not scarcely documented specimens of the design world (as far as Google and our lazy research methods are concerned). But judging by each of their web portals, all the knowledge that's really required here is contained snuggly within the online portfolios of said guest speakers...
Dixonbaxi – one of those hyphenated-surname business marriages – flies under founding fathers Simon Dixon and Aporva Baxi; their side-scrolling back catalogue of work a serious namedrop in clientele, including MTV, VH1 and Viacom. Flanking the commercial grind in particular, are two Dixonbaxi self-creations: the design publication Great Graphics on a Budget: Creating Cutting-Edge Work for Less, and the ongoing "graphic novel" (in a redefining sense) Zero. | dixonbaxi.com
Jordon Crane and Bryan Collins, similarly, make ends meet (and then some) under multinational branding monolith Wolff Olins – a company with the gall (understandably) to call itself the most influential branding consultancy (in the world). Cavorting an even headier mix of all-star clients – including the Athens Olympics, Renault, UNICEF and Tate Galleries – Crane and Collins can boast invaluable industry experience. Their personal websites carve out the best sort of self-indulgence: quaint illustrations, throwaway photography, flash dialects and plenty of self-pride. | jordoncrane.com | bryan-collins.com
» Semi-Permanent05: Post Conference Review
Needless to say, designers don't always function well by themselves. Put us in a room together, and we tend to thrive; squeeze as many of us into a 1000-seat auditorium, and we procreate. If influential names, faces, gift bags and an after-party can't stimulate our creative recesses, then a squishy mass intercourse of likeminded artists and visual communicators surely will.
I am, of course, referring to Semi-Permanent: Australasia's biggest creative event brought to you by the right-sided hemispheres at Design is Kinky and The Church (with the support of Diesel). Foaming out of Sydney, Australia for the past 2 years, the speaker-driven conference leaked its way across the Tasman in 2004, quickly marking itself as New Zealand's freshest raison d'etre for anyone with a creative bone in their body. And in a country where creative communities are by nature geographically close, yet at times, strangely disparate, the all-day gathering represents something of a revolution – a drip feed of inspiring global design-heads matched equally by the homegrown convergence of this nation's most hungry creative talent.
Promising to up-the-ante on previous years, 2005's line-up boasts an eclectic wad of guests: TWiN, the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of motion-broadcast design in Australia; RESN, an impressive interactive design outfit hailing from Aotearoa; the big namedrop-slash-draw card for film buffs, Weta Digital; plus London-based design outfit Dixonbaxi and Jordan Crane and Bryan Collins of New York branding giants Wolf Olins, both late additions to the mix. A recently added sixth speaker – the team from VICE Magazine – round off the contingent, threatening to rattle the conference (just a wee bit) with their irreverent, occasionally offensive brand of gonzo-ism.
Lumière will be there, before, during and after, touching people (figuratively), sharing the love, and hoarding as much free stuff as possible. You too, can partake in Semi-Permanent – either in Auckland on March 12, or via more bloated surroundings in Sydney on March 18 & 19 – by visiting www.semipermanent.com, or reading onwards...
* * *
COMBINING an office-bound primate with recreational fetish, RESN's online antics nearly belie the fact that they craft only the very finest in websites. Indeed, if it wasn't for a hint of playfulness to offset their slick, hand-eye coordinated web designs – you know, the kind with inch-perfect hairlines intersecting brightly filled vectors, mobilized by the smoothest of oily point-and-click mechanisms – casual dial-up users might consider their 56k spent better elsewhere. And yet, the sluggish loading times prove well worth the layover (or just another reason to covert to Broadband), showcasing a deft ability to lubricate happy clientele with a mixture of fastidiously tuned web portals (Foster Architects, Kebbell Daish) and inspired dabbles in freeform interactive design (Simon Eliot). RESN's own website feeds off a droll sense of humour – lawn bowlers greet visitors with alarming uselessness, no less – paving the way for side projects outside the pocket-lining realms of Flash. Apart from the aforementioned monkey-in-a-suit (Business-Man Monkey, a retro online game), the site also propagates the studio's keen tact for illustration – no better personified, than by comic strip hero Captain Deluxe (whose superpower is tasting crime). Unsurprisingly, RESN's palette of "web sushi" speaks louder, uh, tastes better, than words. | resn.co.nz
UNFAIRLY described as the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of motion-broadcast design in Australia (by us, at least), neither Josh nor Jon Baker suffers from an eating disorder. Together, the brothers make up TWiN – one of those semi-fashionable underground cooperatives, the kind that doesn't have a website or a mailing address. Each traversing the same Sydney-lathered path to working success at leading motion houses like Ambience Entertainment and mesh22, the duo – like many graduates world wearier from industry experience – broke away to form their own team. Well, sort of. Flying under their self-titled banner, the pair occasionally join themselves at the hip (figuratively, not like a human Voltron) to combine on select projects; if only we all had that luxury. Last year's motion-broadcast speakers Oktobor revealed themselves as the brains behind many of New Zealand's more recognisable TV animations and commercials, and TWiN, no doubt, will bring much of the same to Semi-Permanent05 through their work on title sequences, motion graphics and music videos from an Australian point of view. | australianinfront.com.au (Interview)
IF THERE's one presentation designed to offend, it's coming from those Vice Magazine tearaways – not so much an irreverent bunch of frat boys, as they are enfant terribles of the publishing world. Any half-witted idiot can mince language with profanities with exploitation or pornography, but Vice, at the very least, do it with balls – a noxious, rabid, utterly fearless dunking of trash culture, drug OD's and well-abused taboos, all bow-tied in a bright satiric ribbon just for the hell of it. Bound to be of relevance is their latest Design Issue; the cover graced with one of those toilets that give as well as take. Inside, other virtues are shat upon: Powerbooks, kerning, DIY weapon design. Even since cha-chinging it as a media empire via film, TV, music and fashion divisions, Vice Magazine's biggest punch line – that it's free – hasn't been lost, on this writer anyway. Expect their Semi-Permanent appearance to resemble something like this | viceland.com
NEW ZEALANDERS needn't be reminded of Weta Digital – they are, after all, partly responsible for winning every single one of us an Oscar (as the rest of the world likes to joke). A high-tech offspring of Weta Workshop, the digital effects wing launched in 1993 under the principal guidance of Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor, taking just a single computer and some Kiwi ingenuity to produce the special effects for Heavenly Creatures. Larger-scale work followed on Jackson's own The Frighteners and Robert Zemeckis' Contact, before embarking on that trilogy of films. Fans, accolades and millions of dollars followed; meanwhile, Weta Digital continued to lend their increasingly expanding team of experts to such effects-heavy projects as Van Helsing, I, Robot and Jackson's next film, the big-budget remake of King Kong. Those impressed by the George Lucus-founded Industrial Light & Magic presentation at 2004's Semi-Permanent (Sydney only) will find much to like here – with three of the highest grossing films ever on their résumé, and a potential fourth to be added to that list, Weta Digital promise to deliver as much, if not more (and for ape-heads, maybe even a few King Kong secrets too). | wetadigital.com
* * *
AS LATE additions to the Semi-Permanent circus, both London-based design outfit Dixonbaxi and Wolff Olins teamsters Jordon Crane and Bryan Collins have proven elusive, if not scarcely documented specimens of the design world (as far as Google and our lazy research methods are concerned). But judging by each of their web portals, all the knowledge that's really required here is contained snuggly within the online portfolios of said guest speakers...
Dixonbaxi – one of those hyphenated-surname business marriages – flies under founding fathers Simon Dixon and Aporva Baxi; their side-scrolling back catalogue of work a serious namedrop in clientele, including MTV, VH1 and Viacom. Flanking the commercial grind in particular, are two Dixonbaxi self-creations: the design publication Great Graphics on a Budget: Creating Cutting-Edge Work for Less, and the ongoing "graphic novel" (in a redefining sense) Zero. | dixonbaxi.com
Jordon Crane and Bryan Collins, similarly, make ends meet (and then some) under multinational branding monolith Wolff Olins – a company with the gall (understandably) to call itself the most influential branding consultancy (in the world). Cavorting an even headier mix of all-star clients – including the Athens Olympics, Renault, UNICEF and Tate Galleries – Crane and Collins can boast invaluable industry experience. Their personal websites carve out the best sort of self-indulgence: quaint illustrations, throwaway photography, flash dialects and plenty of self-pride. | jordoncrane.com | bryan-collins.com
» Semi-Permanent05: Post Conference Review
The above profiles refer to Semi-Permanent's Auckland guest speakers only. For more information on Semi-Permanent's Auckland & Sydney guest speaker lineups, visit: semipermanent.com
