AGIDEAS 2007 Assignment

Nigel Swinn (Enterprise IG)
Nigel Swinn (DesignWorks)

Head of DesignWorks, Enterprise IGs strategic services, Nigel works as a brand consultant to a number of Australian and New Zealand businesses working closely with the senior executives of companies as diverse as Westpac and Tabcorp to Camp Quality and Wesley Mission.

Previously a marketing manager at Tourism New Zealand, Nigel has facilitated business and design strategies for large and small brands, ranging from corporates such as AGL and Rio Tinto to small and entrepreneurial brands like the award-winning BEE eco products range, the Cape York Indigenous Enterprise community and Taronga Zoo.




Mike Staniford (Landor)

As Executive Creative Director of Landor Sydney, Mike is responsible for establishing and maintaining the overall creative vision of the company.

Mikes career began in London, working with several small design companies before starting his own business. He successfully ran his consultancy for 12 years until 1994, when he was approached by a well-established design firm in Sydney to be their creative director. The firm grew and was acquired by Landor Associates, the worlds pre-eminent design and branding agency, with offices in 22 cities around the world.

Mikes strengths include a thorough understanding of consumer and corporate branding, with its implications and advantages to marketers, combined with a unique design flair. He has created branding programmes for Nescaf, Fuji Xerox, Diageo, The Australian Stock Exchange and Mirvac.

Working closely with clients, he seeks to bring a new perspective to the business of branding, and believes that design is pivotal in bringing brand and organisational strategy to life in a powerful and compelling manner. His experience is multi-disciplinary and includes environments as well as corporate and packaging.

Mike now travels extensively across Asia with his work. He is fascinated by the rise of the Chinese economy and the human endeavour that exists on every street corner from Jakarta to Seoul, Hong Kong to Tokyo.

He has won numerous design awards around the world, including the prestigious Clio Awards in New York.




Paula Scher (Pentagram)


For over three decades Paula Scher has been at the forefront of graphic design Iconic, smart and unabashedly populist, her images have entered into the American vernacular.

Scher has been a principal in the New York office of the distinguished international design consultancy Pentagram since 1991. She began her career as an art director in the 1970s and early 80s, when her eclectic approach to typography became highly influential. In the mid-1990s her landmark identity for The Public Theater fused high and low into a wholly new symbology for cultural institutions, and her recent architectural collaborations have re-imagined the urban landscape as a dynamic environment of dimensional graphic design. Her graphic identities for Citibank and Tiffany & Co have become case studies for the contemporary regeneration of classic American brands.

Scher has developed identity and branding systems, promotional materials, environmental graphics, packaging and publication designs for a broad range of clients that includes, among others, Bloomberg, Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Botanical Garden, and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

During the course of her career, Scher has been the recipient of hundreds of industry honors and awards, including the AIGA Medal in 2001 and the Type Directors Club Medal in 2006. She is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; the Museum fr Gestaltung, Zrich; the Denver Art Museum; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Scher has authored numerous articles on design-related subjects for the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, Print, Graphis, and other publications, and in 2002 Princeton Architectural Press published her career monograph, Make It Bigger.

References:
www.enterpriseig.com/
www.designworks.com.au/
www.landor.com/
www.agideas.net/2007

Day one:

Paul Davies:
Interesting apporach - professional speaker - well rehearsed and targetted - bit glib at times: too many things like 'in Brazil or New York' or I sold this for 500 quid why? - good work anyway

Glue Society:
Didn't really understand no clients only projects deal? Interesting approach, but a stunted presentation

Tim Kanda - not sure how his presentation fits in the scheme of things, maybe appeasement - and what about this remark: "to design you have to be creative"???

Material by Product: obviously very clever stuff - bit over my head and again wondering if the organisers are covering too many disciplines.

David Dare Parker - same again good stuff , but not sure how this fits in with pulling rabbits out of hats.

Nick Rennie - did not like - his why am i here attitude and hurried presentation and internal mumblings - not impressed.

Soundfirm - glossy presentation. entertaining - but to much reliance only lengthy film clips and little practical examples.

Steve Stamatiadis - difficult to understand at times - thought he missed golden opportunity to present himself in the way of a game - instead got a boring powerpoint display.

Daviv Tartakover - grear work, but way way too much stuff presented - also difficult to tune in to his politial passion when not familiar with his world. Liked his 'hands on' approach - photocopying of coloured paper (maybe work a bit repetetive).

John Thompson - brilliant, no glibness here - a true craftsman and good stuff about career ups and downs.

Wooden Toy - not my cup of tea - but like their graphic style

Imaginary Forces - polished presentation, ummmm I thought again too much emphasis on video clips and not enough on how the end result was achieved - would have liked to seen one/two projects , more behind rthe scenes stuff and and rejected stuff.

Massey Uni - a bit of cultural cringe here?