Yes you read it right, but it will only make sense if you were at the Pecha Kucha event in central London this evening. Organised by the D&AD (Designers & Art Directors) it’s another of the President’s Lectures. Hosted by the President himself, Sankey was a great host, keeping the evening moving (which is the essence of PK) and generally making sure that everyone had a good time.
The cast of speakers was fairly glittering in design terms. Speakers included members of design studio Bibliotheque, branding experts (the logo is well and truly dead) SomeOne, cultural curators It’s Nice That, illustrator and animator Mr Bingo, digital maestro and past President himself Simon Waterfall, Design icon Neville Brody, Interaction doyen Andy Cameron, advertising hero Graham Fink, (who carried a large samurai sword throughout his presentation), Â creative entrepreneur Kate Moross and members of the multidisciplinary Tomato Design Collective.
The range of topics covered personal likes and dislikes, life histories, politics (step forward Mr Brody), the search for inner calm and consciousness, the general happy weirdness of the internet and of course a fascination with male genitalia…
Pecha Kucha is Japanese for ‘chit chat’ and all though devised as a means of avoiding death by Powerpoint, it might well be a sign of the times. For a Logan Hall packed with designers skewed more towards the younger end of the spectrum a constantly moving, updating bite sized cornucopia of presentations is much more acceptable than a longer lecture, regardless of how worthy.
We were at another PK event recently, different but equally engaging and interesting. Held under the auspices of the excellent Cardiff Design Festival it had a much wider remit and subject area. All the presenters were very impressive and thought provoking, amazing even, finishing off with a 6 minute 40 second rap about the history of creation from single cells to the modern day that brought the house down.
Both events were video’d for future distribution, links will appear here as soon as they’re ready.