WDCD 2014 - The Designer is a Game Changer by What Design Can Do

AN INTER NATIONAL EVENT

ABOUT THE IMPACT OF DESIGN

THE DESIGNER IS A GAME CHANGER 2014 — EVENT REPORT

CONTENTS

4 TWO DAYS ON THE IMPACT OF DESIGN Introduction

6 WANTED: COMPETANT REBELS

Report on Day 1

18 A CONSTANT STATE OF DESIGN Report on Day 2

22 BREAKOUTS FROM DAY 2 30 SEE YOU IN 2015

10 BREAKOUTS FROM DAY 1 WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

TWO ON S Y A D E H T IMPACT F O N G I S E D 4

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION Two days of What Design Can Do have flown by and it has been surprising and incredibly inspiring. Again. From Paul Smith’s wit and wise words to the beautiful and clever language teaching method by ShaoLan Hsueh. From the pleasantly provoking chaos caused by Nelly Ben Hayoun to the creativity found in conflict by Teddy Cruz. And from Paola Antonelli’s reflections on current design affairs to Carlo Ratti’s forecasts into the future of the city. What an amazing two days. In this event report we look back on the fourth edition of What Design Can Do on 8 and 9 May in Amsterdam’s main theatre hall, the Stadsschouwburg. With some 800 visitors per day and over 1,000 unique visitors in all, What Design Can Do is the largest multidisciplinary design conference in Europe. Around 30 percent of the attendants came from abroad and it may be noted here that the very first person to buy tickets for this year’s event came from New Zealand. What Design Can Do shows the capabilities and power of design in changing the world for the better. Twent y speakers from different disciplines and different parts of the world presented their ideas and projects to turn the earth into a place more fair and honest, more safe and sustainable. They’ve shown us how design improves mutual understanding and helps making the right choices. This event report was made at the venue during the conference. A team of reporters swarmed over the conference to report on speakers and breakout sessions. Their instantly written accounts of events, together with pictures made by our almost flying photographer, were put on the pages in the provisional studio set up at the Stadsschouwburg. Finally the entire booklet was printed on a monster machine provided by Xerox. What you hold in your hands is as hot and fresh as warm bread, straight out of a baker’s oven. Enjoy. WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

2 1 Hadassah de Boer, Richard van der Laken & David Kester 2 Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg 3 Richard The 4 Amsterdam Student Choir

3 4

MAIN STAGE: DAY 1

WANTE D: COMPETENT S L E B RE BY BILLY NOLAN

‘We’re going to hear a lot about the designer as researcher, as entrepreneur and as initiator,’ predicted director Richard van der Laken at the start of What Design Can Do 2014. Naturally, as he’d handpicked the speakers himself, his guess was pretty accurate. Minister for Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker then added a fourth design persona: the ‘competent rebel’ who can change the way we look at things. She wants to ensure the education of ‘competent rebels and specialists side by side. Our technical capabilities combined with our hopes and dreams.’ These two sides of learning – technical capability and dreams – intertwine in the work of Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. She is bringing creativity into synthetic biology – ‘design at the DNA scale’ – and her investigative design research explores how new technologies might influence everything from food additives and patents to terrorism and even the weather. Too much of that hoping and dreaming championed by Bussemaker has a downside, warned Lucas Verweij. ‘Design often generates hope, but no solution,’ he said.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

‘It’s turned into a hope industry.’ Designers raise hopes that turn out to be phantom solutions. A fifth design persona has appeared: the designer as illusionist. INSPIRATION IS EVERYWHERE One designer with no illusions is Paul Smith. He told of his steady rise from modest beginnings, in a shop measuring 12 by 12 feet, to being the head of a fashion empire with over 350 shops around the world. How did the man become a global brand? ‘Do things which are right, not which are easy,’ he advised. ‘You can find inspiration in everything. If you can’t, you’re not looking properly.’ Lateral thinking is the motto. The yellow, green, grey and black stripes on a shirt by him find their inspiration in a church interior in Lithuania. His job is to produce work with enough commercial appeal to satisfy the buying agents on one side of the catwalk, and the critical appeal to convince the fashion editors on the other side. ‘Getting the balance right,’ as he put it, is why his dreams sell.

MAIN STAGE: DAY 1

‘YOU CAN FIND INSPIRATION IN EVERYTHING. IF YOU CAN’T, YOU’RE NOT LOOKING PROPERLY.’ SIR PAUL SMITH

FICTION AS LABORATORY Imagination grounded in the real world also informs the work of Richard The and Willy Wong. The’s interactive projects shape the output of Google Creative Lab, most notably the Google Glass. While product designers were considering the shape and functionality of the device, The jumped ahead and made a video to show how Google Glass might be used in daily life, presenting a fiction as though it already existed. In a similar manner, Willy Wong took a commission to redesign New York City’s tourism campaign, and reframed it to encompass a wider agenda that encouraged citizens to plant trees, reduce energy consumption and much more besides. From a straightforward brief to boost tourism figures by streamlining information, Wong articulated a bigger vision to unify and enhance the city. TOMORROW DEPENDS ON NOW Improving city life is also the aim of Carlo Ratti. ‘Design is about inventing tomorrow’s city,’ he said. He does it with the digital data we generate. ‘Big Data is about understanding our environment, analyzing it, and drawing conclusions

that are not about architecture or design but about lives. The society we inhabit tomorrow depends on the society we are creating today.’ The design focus on change, innovation and renewal is subjected to scrutiny by Professor Timo de Rijk. Design is a future-oriented profession and denies history. ‘This future-oriented approach with a perpetual motion of change has penetrated deep into design practice, into design education and the practice of design history,’ said de Rijk. He argued for ‘a critical examination of the role of design and the designer in the world’ so that we can ‘form a much more accurate picture of the practice, discussions and ambitions in today’s world of design’. Nelly Ben Hayoun finished the day with a French flourish by offering us a glimpse into her weird and wonderful world, that looks neither to the future nor the past. With an orchestra composed of space scientists and the design of emergency procedures in the space programme, she takes us to a playground on another planet where the only aim, to use the words of Paul Smith, ‘is to have a lovely day’.

MAIN STAGE: DAY 1

JET BUSSEMAKER

NELLY BEN HAYOUN

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

BREAKOUTS: DAY 1

THE MEMBRANES PROJECT WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR DESIGN EDUCATION

Hosted by HKU University of the Arts Utrecht Open. Interdisciplinary. Dialogue. Positioning. These were just a few of the key words from the breakout hosted by the HKU University of the Arts on the evolution of design education. Teachers Erwin Slegers and Sander van der Donk introduced us to the Membranes Project, a method that pushes students to move beyond their traditional roles and into a more innovative and ‘wandering’ way of thinking. In fact, the approach makes little use of labels at all. Teachers are transformed into coaches, students into leaders, and clients into co-creators. ‘We need to open up the education field and create an environment where students and clients formulate new ways of working together, not just to achieve better solutions, but also to be able to come up with better questions,’ explain the initiators. The students were equally eager to share their experiences. One of the collectives born out of the semester-long project is a pop-up store called TAK (ditistak.nl). The brainchild of 19 graduating students from a range of design disciplines, TAK provides a space for makers, artists, buyers and sellers to interact with each other. ‘We didn’t start with a client. Instead we were simply looking for a way to bring our own ideas forward. TAK is the result of our own fascinations.’ It’s hard to predict what the future of the design profession will hold, and even harder to prepare students for a world which does not exist yet. But if HKU’s Membranes Project is any indication, there is one trend that we can trust: that of the rise of the designer as entrepreneur, innovator and game changer.

NUGGETS, MJUMMIE! BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CHICKEN? WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SOCIAL DILEMMAS

Hosted by Delft University of Technology Social design has the power to shape or change behaviours with implications on a social scale. In this session, professor Paul Hekkert, assistant professor and social designer Nynke Tromp (Reframing Studio) and Dutch-Brazilian designer Anna-Louisa Peeters explained how social issues can be decomposed meaningfully for a designer. All too often individual behaviour has consequences for the collective. And too many people let their personal benefit prevail over that of the collective. The danger here is that the more we act according to individual, short-term concerns, the more negative effects we will have to encounter in the long term. In fact, we have created the kind of environment that supports and reinforces short-term concerns by relentless marketing strategies. The session hosts presented three design strategies to deal with this conflict between individual and collective concerns: resolve, bypass and transform. The resolve strategy is to make the conflicts disappear. The conflict of an emancipated woman who wants to work and breastfeed her child can be resolved by using a breast pump at work and feed the child at home. The bypass strategy – the most common one – is to induce people away from conflicts by addressing their different concerns. For example, traffic safety comes into conflict with cyclists who can’t wait for the lights to turn green. Here the solution is the countdown system integrated in traffic lights, to give cyclists the feeling they are in control. Finally, the transform strategy turns collective concerns into individual ones. In traffic, unsafe junctions could be made safer by growing high hedges along them, so that drivers become more careful.

BREAKOUTS: 8 MAY

THE FUTURE OF FOOD WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR FOOD What Design Can Do! Academy Series

Italian architect Carlo Ratti curates the ‘Future Food Pavilion’ for Milan’s 2015World Expo. In this breakout, design critic Tim Vermeulen asked Ratti about his ideas for the exhibition, where two 2,500-m2 pavilions – a real supermarket and a functional kitchen – will surround a 4,500-m2 public piazza. So what are the ideas behind the giant supermarket experience he will establish with Coop? ’One of the things we want to explore is the social component,’ Ratti explained. ‘How could all the information we have about products help us interact with them in a supermarket environment?’ All the information you’d want to convey simply doesn’t fit on the label of a bottle of wine, explained Ratti. It is impossible to provide all the information about a product in a seamless way ‘that does not involve scanning it with another device’. One solution might be automatic augmented reality, provided by technology like the Google Glass. Another idea is to display food products on tables, as if you are about to consume the food. If you pick up an item from the table, it is automatically restocked from underneath. These and many more ideas and possible solutions will be on show, even though some of them might not turn out to be valuable. But in any case, next year the Future Food Pavilion is going to be one big experimental area. The whole thing can best be seen as a FoodLab, Ratti said, ‘because you can never predict the future!’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

HOW DID ADVERTISING BECOME SUCH A DIRTY WORD?

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR BRANDING Hosted by D&AD

Laura Jordan Bambach is D&AD president and creative partner at Mr President and has been working in advertising for some years. She introduced the session by saying that in a time when a TV show such as Mad Men, the term advertising unfortunately has become a dirty word. Keeping that in mind, D&AD came up with The White Pencil award for campaigns and projects that actually do good. And with this, makes clear that advertising can also change things for the better. She presented a selection of projects – most of them White Pencil entries, that can all be characterised with ‘I wish I had done that‘. Campaigns that came by: 3D printing for visually impared kids ( Yahoo Japan); Ant Rally for saving the rainforest (BBDO Germany for WWF 50 Years); ‘Lifebuoy Roti’ for better hygiene in India (JWT Brazil for Unilever); Superformula on fighting cancer for kids (JWT Brazil for AC Camargo Cancer Center and Warner Bros); Delta Photon Shower that helps with a jetlag (W+K NYC for Delta Airlines); Sweetie campaign against Webcam Child Sex Tourism (Lemz/Mediamonks for Terre des Hommes); Rainbow Laces campaign addressing homophobia in the football leagues in UK (CP+B/Lucky Generals for Stonewall). Thoughout the session, Laura emphasized that what is so amazing about these projects is that they show the power of fantastic and beautiful ideas: advertising can do good, if it isabout making stuff that matters, projects that contain a high moral level.

BREAKOUTS: DAY 1

THE BATTLE OF THE SOULS WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS Hosted by BNO

‘I don’t think anyone who is aiming for economic success will start a design studio,’ Michael Bierut said at the BNO session on the quest for the ideal balance between creativity and business. ‘Actually, when I told my wife I wanted to become a designer, she immediately switched her major from psychology to business.’ Last September the Association of Dutch designers, BNO, teamed up with University of Amsterdam and Rotterdam School of Management to initiate a four-year study into ‘The Battle of the Souls’ within the designer’s practice. This session was one of many to examine the possibilities for balancing interesting work and commercial success. The goal of both sessions and research is to make designers more aware of how to run a successful business, explained researcher Dany Jacobs. Bierut remarked that there are many books and courses for businessmen to learn about creativity, but that this was the first time he encountered an initiative in the reverse direction. What Bierut learned from his own practice, and what Paul Smith had told earlier on WDCD’s main stage, is that being intentional is key to success. ‘Paul Smith can resist work because size isn’t everything to him. Basically he is still running his firm for the same reasons he started it: to do what he likes and just have a nice day everyday,’ Bierut said. To which he added that behind Smith’s relaxed posture lies a very clever businessman. For the structure of his own agency, Pentagram, the five founding fathers had taken a lot of time to design the business model first, which still functions. Pentagram has a structure with 19 equal partners, all working designers, each with their own team. There are many other models possible, Bierut said, and which model works for you depends on your intentions.

LEARNING FROM PROCESS –HOW TO DESIGN EDUCATION? WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR EDUCATION

Hosted by culture.pl

What do designers of the future need to learn? What will their social role be? What would happen if they could think with their hands? These questions were posed by Agata Nowotny and Monika Rosinska, teachers at the School of Form in Poland. The curriculum at this private university near Poznan combines humanities, social sciences and design subjects. Both Nowotny and Rosinska are sociologists, not designers. Their students are taught to design sociological tools that they can use in their own work and in the world around them. Object design is part of their course, but it’s not the ultimate goal. While many other design departments focus on individual development and growth, students at the School of Form work in teams permanently. This teaching methodology evolves from a concept developed by Li Edelkoort and Zuzanna Skalska, who promote the idea of not recycling concepts from other art academies, but design an education instead that learns from its own process. Nowotny explained how design students are often expected to deliver a certain package that meets a set of expectations. ‘Designers could benefit much more from a synergy between practice and research that constructs a creative attitude. The role of the designer is changing. Everyone is global and local at the same time. This shift in representation calls for new education initiatives.’ One of the assignments taught in Poznan involves dissembling industrial products, including even a car. From the dissembled parts new objects emerge. While designers are fluent in the use of many tools, they often lack the sociological backbone to thoroughly develop meaning. In an ideal world, Nowotny & Rosinska would eliminate the difference between industrial design and sociology. As we can’t oversee what tools are needed in future design education, it’s more valuable to co-create and learn from each other’s contexts. BREAKOUTS: 8 MAY

A TALK WITH RICHARD THE WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR THE INTERNET Hosted by PIBN

Previously Google didn’t employ that many creatives. They had just a few designers. Google’s innovation was engineering driven. But today design has more and more influence, Richard The told Iskander Smit (Info.nl) in this session. The explained that Google’s Creative Lab in NY, where he works, consists of a group of fifty people working independently on many products. Creatives, filmmakers, writers, producers: all kinds of disciplines are working together on lots of ideas. Many times it is a pretty chaotic environment, The told. At Google, innovation is now basically an interdisciplinary effort. Often it starts with the technique, after which design steps in, continuously going back and forth after that. The important question that lies underneath all new ideas is: ‘What will people do with it?’ Someone will be using it for something. Therefore highlighting the user is key. Richard The used the Glass project as an example. During the prototype mode the team was busy thinking about possibilities for the users. Some of these features are now built, some are on the way, some won’t be built. One of the main design issues has been the display in front of the eyes. The display wasn’t defined. How do you design that? Such a small interface challenges interaction design and the user experience. That is why Glass doesn’t use a grid of apps, but one strip of cards from which you can choose. If one task is running, no extras are shown. Another example The gave us was project Loon. This Google X Lab project seeks to provide Internet access to the world with balloons. The: ‘It’s about playing around with weather balloons. These can distribute Internet to the world. One chain around the globe.’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

A TALK WITH NELLY BEN HAYOUN

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SCIENCE What Design Can Do! Academy Series

Nelly Ben Hayoun is a firecracker of ideas and energy. It was up to the experienced interviewer Lucas Verweij to make some sense out of the leaps and bounds that this awe-inspiring mind makes. Educated as a textile designer and interaction designer, Ben Hayoun is a Visiting Professor in the Unknown Fields Division at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, and a lecturer at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, both in London. In her spare time, she is studying to be an astronaut.   Unfortunately, for various reasons, Nelly did not bring her laptop, and Lucas forgot his notes. So we had the pleasure of witnessing a freestyle conversation. Ben Hayoun speaks rapid-fire long-form monologue with a thick French accent, shooting from one topic to the next, disarmingly open and charming. Yours truly sat at the back, trying frantically to keep up with her tsunami of words, on everything from her explosive family background to her dreams of travelling to Mars. It was not until the end of the breakout that Ben Hayoun warned us about the confidentiality of her work. ‘It is very important that you do not write anything online, on Twitter, Facebook, or post a video, because that would limit my space to work. It does not limit me here in this conversation of course, as you can tell, but I need to be very careful when things get in the press. It is very important to point out that I as a foreigner work with individuals at NASA, and not with people from NASA during work hours, because that would not go down well with the American public.’ Which effectively puts an end to this report. To share in her confidential story, one needed to attend her lecture at WDCD 2014. Assuming she does end up going to Mars, we can safely assume that her fellow astronauts will not have to worry about getting bored on the ten-year journey.

BREAKOUTS: DAY 1

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR THE EDUCATION OF CREATIVE CHANGE MAKERS

CAPTURING THE CITY IN YOUR MIND

Hosted by Social Practice, Willem De Kooning Academy

A truly interactive City Branding experiment took place at the Apple Store just across the street from the Stadsschouwburg, where New York City branding expert Willy Wong asked participants of Breakout Session N° 11 to use the pen and paper on the tables in front of them to ‘capture the city in their minds’. Ron Bunzl – a storyteller – told them how! ‘We are all storytellers,’ Ron said, ‘so pick up your pen and start writing! Don’t think, don’t edit: there is no way to do it wrong! Creativity is always about “not knowing how”.’ The participants happily dived into a state of automatic writing, scribbling down their thoughts and feelings about New York City and Amsterdam. Then it was to transform those stories into a contemporary flag for both cities. This time, Stefan Pangratz, creative at Amsterdam branding and design agency VBAT, asked participants to pick up their pens again and to start drawing! ‘Experiment with rhythms, colours and symbols to get to the heart of your story. Capture the vibe of Amsterdam and NYC in one or more images and fill the flag with it.’ The results were as individual as the participants. The designers at VBAT will now take home the drafts and combine them into two unique flags for both cities and show them on their website. ‘Sometimes,’ Willy Wong said, ‘you don’t get to the point with logic and rational arguments. Then you have to let your thoughts run free and just tell the story that is in your mind!’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR EDUCATION

How would you educate the next generation of creative change makers? asked Mike Weikert, founding director of the Center for Social Design at Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore USA), and Iris Schutten, coordinator of Social Practice at Willem de Kooning Academy. Both institutions recently changed their education conditions, adopted a more social approach and intensified their relations with the ‘outside and real world’. The breakout was an occasion for educators, designers and students to discuss current developments in design education and social design in a playful way. Five individual workshops were held in order to zoom in on different questions and challenges in design education. Some of the questions were: What qualities do social designers need? How do you train designers to work together with professionals from outside the design world on social issues? And can the social designer be a change facilitator? The new curricula at both academies stress flexibility, the empathic qualities of designers, and interaction between disciplines. Weikert argued for a more collaborative approach towards design education and the role of design schools in expanding the scope of students. It is not just the authorship of the designer that is valuable, but also the focus on disciplines outside the design field, like politics, biology and medicine, which are interesting for collaboration. Because by getting into contact with other professions, designers will be able to implement valuable solutions. Both institutions displayed an urge to make design students aware of the social problems in which they can make a difference, for instance by having them work at studios in the city on problems at neighbourhood level. Design education is not merely about design skills and practices, but can be a way to empower students to engage and address the important issues of our time. 14

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR CITY BRANDING Hosted by VBAT

BREAKOUTS: DAY 1

NELLY BEN HAYOUN

‘CARLO RATTI WAS CONSTANTLY SEARCHING FOR THE QUESTION BEHIND THE QUESTION. HE WENT ONE LEVEL DEEPER, AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT FROM A CONFERENCE LIKE THIS.’ — MATTHIJS VAN HAAGEN Tutor, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

2 16

1 Jet Bussemaker and Hadassah de Boer 2 Lucas Verweij 3 Round table with Jet Bussemaker 4 Live broadcast by BNR 5 Willy Wong 5 Breakout in Apple Store

REACTIONS FROM THE EVENT

‘THIS YEAR I BLOCKED MY AGENDA TO BE HERE THE WHOLE TWO DAYS. I VERY MUCH LIKE THAT THE PROGRAMME IS SO VARIED, THAT IT COVERS THE WHOLE SPECTRUM OF THE DESIGN PROFESSION. I’VE HEARD INTERESTING STORIES, SOME OF WHICH I HADN’T HEARD OF BEFORE, LIKE THE FOODPAIRING PROJECT. THE TEGENLICHT STORY WAS INTERESTING TOO, BECAUSE IT MADE YOU REALIZE THAT THE WAY YOU VISUALIZE DATA CAN INFLUENCE WHAT YOU DISCOVER.’ — INGEBORG DE ROODE

Design Curator Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

‘PAUL SMITH WAS FANTASTIC, SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY AMAZING, GOOGLE GLASS INTERESTING, AND ‘DESIGN IN THE BUBBLE’ CHALLENGING. VERWEIJ MADE US LOOK IN THE MIRROR.’ — AD DE HOND

Vice president design, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Starbucks

REACTIONS FROM THE EVENT

‘I THINK THAT DESIGN MEETING ITSELF AND INTERROGATING ITS OWN CAPABILITIES AND DEFINING AN AGENDA FOR ITSELF TO CREATE A COMMON PURPOSE – EVEN IF IT’S FOR THE NEXT YEAR – IS INCREDIBLY EMPOWERING.’ — RACHEL ARMSTRONG AVATAR, in The New York Times

1 ShaoLan Hsueh 2 Energizing act by the audience 3 Production of this book 4 Teddy Cruz & David Kester 5 Laduma Ngxokolo 6 Pepijn Zurburg & Richard van der Laken 7 Book presentation 8 Volunteers

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

1 Rachel Armstrong 2 Tegenlicht 3 Bernard Lahousse 4 De Correspondent 5 Barbera Wolfensberger

MAIN STAGE: DAY 2

N G I S E D NEEDS G N I N O I T I S O P RE

BY GABRIEL LE KENNED Y

Barbera Wolfensberger, chairman of the Creative Industries Top Sector, targets the audience at the opening ofthe second day’s session of the What Design Can Do Conference with an accusation: ‘This sector is its own worse enemy,’ she charges. She claims that the lack of cooperation between different industries within the cultural sector is minimizing its impact and growth. The problem is over-compartmentalization, which starts in primary school and is reinforced all the way up to university. ‘By the time these kids graduate they are almost scared of what is going on elsewhere,’ Wolfensberger says. ‘They are being educated in boxes.’ When combined, gaming, design, fashion, architecture, advertising, music and photography can be a powerful force for good with huge problem solving potential. Only then will the cultural sector’s voice reach government and business and only then will these industries understand the impact of what design can do. Paola Antonelli, head of the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA, understands the world by looking at its things. Building on Wolfensberger’s earlier claims that the creative sector is more powerful than it realizes, she voiced outrage at a world that fails to embrace the power of design. Her main beef is that this failure is because the creative sector cannot generate the same statistical proof as say, for example, the financial sector. ‘It just can’t prove its benefit,’ she says. But if violence can be defined as ‘a manifestation of the power to alter circumstances, against the will of others and to their detriment,’ as it is on Antonelli’s online project ‘Design and Violence’, then the financial sector’s power can itself be deemed violent.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

Antonelli then extended the theme of the conference to What Museums Can Do, which she says challenges our obsession with objects exhibited in glass boxes. Rob Wijnberg and Harald Dunnink are the brains behind the new online, independent, ad-free newspaper that is funded entirely through subscriptions. 20,000 people paid 60 euros each when crowd funding for De Correspondent started. ‘News is always about the exceptions, the accidents, the mistakes, which grab your attention,’ says Wijnberg. ‘We wanted to write about things that were not the exceptions, but the rules, which is the only real way of understanding what is going on.’ This works well given how the newspaper is designed. Readers have a choice to stick to the basic story, or if they need more analysis can click deeper. De Correspondent also offers a more honest way of covering the news. Journalists do not hide behind a faux objective voice, but more candidly cover issues from their own perspective. ‘Stories depend on the story tellers so we make it more personalized, but never sensationalized,’ says Wijnberg. Designer, scientist and sustainability innovator Rachel Armstrong likes to focus on living architecture or new approaches to building materials. She mesmerized the audience with proof that the distinction between nature and technology is starting to blur, especially as we move away from the very obvious world of manufacturing and industry into the future fields of bio-technology. ‘All substances have the power to communicate whether they are technically living or not,’ Armstrong says. ‘Matter can communicate through tiny charges and can create compound structural systems.’

MAIN STAGE: DAY 2

Armstrong poses the question of what would happen if we better understood molecular language and what would we use it for. ‘Imagine if an artificial reef could develop around the wooden foundation of Venice,’ Armstrong posits. Without doubt today’s crowd favourite was South African knitwear designer Laduma Ngxokolo. His mother raised four children singlehandedly to understand what entrepreneurship means and how to knit and bead. With no TV in the house and consequently shut out from much of his friends’ conversations, he mastered his mother’s crafts and went on to launch his own brand. Ngxokolo always stays true to his heritage, which he says is his richest inheritance. He started out by designing knitwear for the young men who come out the other end of difficult initiation ceremonies. The trend was to turn to the mainstays of European fashion, but he wanted to incorporate the motifs, patterns and colours of his village. The hurdle though was to make it fashionable. As images of his extraordinary collections flashed on the big screen the audience flipped between tears and awe. For their presentation the duo from Tegenlicht (Rogier Klomp and Shuchen Tan) looked into the power of research by design. ‘Big Data’ is their film about the secretive relationship between Royal Dutch Shell and Iran during a period of sanctions. Their approach was to sift through vast quantities of data using visuals to tell a story. By creating a bogus identity with an email address and a LinkedIn profile, their Royal Dutch Shell ‘project manager’ got private messages of congratulations and 64 connections almost immediately. From there, they snooped their way through all the available names and material to connect Shell, the government and Iran. The results were overwhelming and when presented with their findings, Royal Dutch Shell refused to comment. ‘Shell is as closed as a shell,’ concluded Tan. Human dynamo ShaoLan Hsueh has turned from Internet entrepreneur and venture capital investor to design hero overnight. She wowed the crowd with her fool-proof Chinese lesson that really worked. Her system called Chineasy breaks down traditional Chinese

characters into a system that can be more easily recognized, understood and remembered. ‘Once you break it all down, you can see that the whole language is constructed from a series of building blocks,’ she says. A small blog piece on her project resulted in 8000 expressions of interest. Immediately she hired five illustrators, designed a website, an interactive Facebook page and has over 50 000 followers online. Now she has books translated into many languages and plans to expand with more language learning products. ‘I did it because I wanted my kids to think I was cool,’ says Hsueh. ‘But also to penetrate the great wall of the Chinese language. This project explores the correlation between design and entrepreneurship, which both create and make things. I am a firm believer in both.’ Moving towards the end of this year’s conference, two design icons, Michael Bierut from Pentagram and architect Teddy Cruz, spoke. Beirut defended his passion for designing in black and white, calling it humble and claiming it influenced people without them noticing. He reeled off years of impressive projects for New York Times, New York City, Yale, and Saks 5th Avenue. ‘I wouldn’t think that a brand could own a colour, but in New York, Saks does,’ he says. Teddy Cruz talked about how design can solve problems related to political conflicts. He looked at local teenagers in San Diego who went up against government and won the right to have skateboard parks erected in the no-man’s land under raised highways. He also looked at the boarders between Latin America and the USA and the horrific divide that these meaningless lines on the map have come to represent. ‘Social inequality is always at the centre of urban crises,’ Cruz says. ‘The solution has to be to look at other ways of constructing citizenship. And that is really all about designing conditions.’ ‘Design needs to reposition itself,’ says Cruz. ‘We must not just design beautiful things, but conditions themselves. I that way we can deploy design as a political tool, which can in turn construct politics itself.’

MAIN STAGE: DAY 2

PAOLA ANTONELLI

LADUMA NGXOKOLO

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

BREAKOUTS: DAY 2

A TASTE OF FOODPAIRING

THE FUTURE OF NATURE

Hosted by Bernard Lahousse

Hosted by What Design Can Do!

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SCIENCE

An intensive synergy of flavours took place in one of the rooms of Stadsschouwburg, where chef Remco Vellinga, standing behind a metal table, prepared a three-course meal for participants of Breakout Session 2. Meanwhile, bioengineer Bernard Lahousse explained his original method of food combinations, interacting with the chef behind him and the audience in front. Foodpairing is a scientific process based on the extraction of molecules that determines the essence of different kinds of food. ‘It’s a relation between aromas,’ Lahousse explained. From that, they can look for other foods that have these same molecules and combine them in order to emphasize the flavour or create a new one. ‘Foodpairing brings together my two passions: food and science.’ To experience just some of the thousands of possible combinations, Lahousse served up starters such as fish from the North Sea with coconut and mango, smoked shark with apricot and sheep milk yogurt, and dessert of rice-and-vanilla ice cream with bell pepper and strawberry. The compositions by Lahousse, and the carefully chosen sequence of dishes and drinks prepared by Vellinga, stimulated the palate of participants, arousing curiosity and surprise in equal measure. Hungry for new sensations, people were excited about the different appetizers that created a casual and relaxed atmosphere. Doubts about the ingredients or method of preparation were often asked, leaving the impression that each participant was sure to try new combinations as soon as they got home. What about chocolate and cauliflower tonight?

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR LIFE

‘What Design Can Do embodies a really interesting phase in design right now, where we’re transgressing boundaries between disciplines,’ said Rachel Armstrong. ‘We are discussing and inventing new roles for design, in curating new possibilities and new culture.’ What followed was a discussion about the differences between possible, probable and speculative projects in the work of both Daisy Ginsberg and Armstrong. According to Armstrong, probabalistic design is ‘tapping in on the many possibilities that are imminent in science’, whereas speculative design is much more an exploration of the imagination. The difference between the approaches of Ginsberg and Armstrong came to the front when moderator Tim Vermeulen of Het Nieuwe Instituut asked them whether they would like their imaginative projects to become real some day. Where Armstrong indeed would like to see her Future Venice project become real, Ginsberg was much more hesitant. ‘The socio-economic forces behind genetic modification are problematic. With my projects I want to address these problems,’ said Ginsberg. ‘The introduction of genetic modification in nature is a very likely probability, and I think we have to work against that. We can work with scientists to find alternatives.’ Armstrong countered that we have got used to the idea that there is no risk. ‘But by embracing risk we’ve got cars and rockets and many more things. Designing with probability means accepting that there is risk in everything, and that can bring us forward.’ At least Ginsberg and Armstrong agree that fiction, probable or speculative, can help move science forward. ‘Opening up imagination can help us predict the future and see new horizons,’ said Armstrong. Or as Ginsberg put it: ‘I don’t want my imaginary slugs to become real, but I like that they exist.’

BREAKOUTS: DAY 2

A TALK WITH TEDDY CRUZ AND PAOLA ANTONELLI WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR CITIES What Design Can Do! Academy Series

Ask the design curator at the MoMA in New York and a San Diego-based architect to talk about cities and violence, and the result is a match made in heaven. Paola Antonelli was dumbstruck when she heard about the first 3D-printed gun last year. It formed the basis for her Design and Violence project, an experimental online exhibition. Teddy Cruz’s hometown is the gateway to neighboring Mexican city Tijuana. Regarded as a hotbed of trouble, the San Diego-Tijuana border area is, says Cruz, a creative laboratory to rethink the politics of surveillance, immigration and labor, density and sprawl, and the expanding gap between wealth and poverty. The US-Mexico border is an act of violence, said Cruz. ‘Yet it’s not closed. People will always cross it, as long as there is a demand for cheap labor.’ Even San Diego trash is transported to Tijuana. Disregarded Levittown homes from the 1950s are now being bought by Mexican speculators to be relocated to Mexico. Several cities in South America have reversed their violent reputation. Tijuana is one of those examples, and so is Bogota. Why those cities? ‘After the rapid decline of the tourist sector, they had to look inwards,’ explained Cruz. Paola highlighted the myth of South American mayors who are single-handedly transforming cities — a beautiful myth but a myth nonetheless. Colombia has the most violence, and so it calls for the most creative thinking,’ added Cruz. Can local lessons be transferred elsewhere? Paola: ‘When we read Russian literature, we are far away from it, but we are still moved. You can metabolize these universal lessons and create new things from it. At the moment, everyone is so afraid, especially politicians, because they might lose votes. Cruz finishes her thoughts: ‘Let’s build where the need is instead of where the votes are.’

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

MONEY COUNTS! THE ADDED VALUE OF DESIGN FOR ORGANIZATIONS

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR ORGANIZATIONS Hosted by Design Management Network

How is design applied within businesses? How do you organise it, how do you make it accountable? And how do you create a culture in which design is adopted? In 5-minute pitches these questions were answered in this session. Mark van Iterson, Heineken, explained that the recipe of the beer never will be changed. Design is used to add value and emotion. In short, design is used to build the brand. Design is not approached as a silo, but it is all over the company. Therefore design nowadays is often an initiator within the company. Michel Krechting, GMG, told us how this producer of child bike seats fought against bankruptcy. By shifting from a production focus to marketing and sales, design and engineering also stepped in. The company was closed and all work outsourced. This gave room for innovation. The company was renamed Yepp, designing new seats and accessories for bicycles, using new materials, shapes and styles. Winning many awards, they knew they were on the right path. Which resulted in new ideas that wouldn’t have been possible without this approach. Marojlein Balder, Marktplaats, talked about the change from a waterfall to a lean approach. At Marktplaats multidisciplinary teams work together in projects. ‘As designers, we don’t hand over that many designs, but provide the project teams with the users’ point of view. We have nine million users per month, but didn’t know them.’ Interviewing users helped to make personas that in the end led to new design ideas. The group then split up in groups talking about the three brands and how design is applied in their organisations. Having the right culture was one of the topics that they all discussed. Design thinking is not only for designers, but for the whole organisation. Krechting concluded: ‘Always have an open mind, and try to see things differently.’ 25

BREAKOUTS: DAY 2

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO IN GERMANY Hosted by Creative Council

‘When we fart in Arnhem they can hear it in Germany! So close are our two countries,’ said Simon Angel, a design entrepreneur at Elsien Gringhuis. But being close on the map is only one reason for Dutch entrepreneurs to do business in Germany as we learned in Breakout Session 6 hosted by the Cre-ative Council. Liesbeth Bonekamp who works for the Dutch Consulate in Duesseldorf and in a German design studio, told the participants more about the chances and challenges faced by Dutch creatives coming to Germany. ‘Dutch people are good at “thinking out of the box” and developing new concepts. Therefore they are good at implementing change in German companies that sometimes suffer from their wait-and-see attitude.’ Dutch creatives, however, should invest in a German-language course to make communication easier, Liesbeth suggests. And they might also want to seek advice from the RVO, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. They have developed a series of instruments to help newcomers and more experienced entrepreneurs to conquer the German market, which were explained to the participants by Anneloes Schueler. Imagine, these instruments can even include an economic mission with the Queen and King of the Netherlands! Rene de Jonge, a designer at MMID, a design studio that has successfully opened two new studios in Germany, points out that all prejudices about Germans and Dutch people are true. Nonetheless, they can collaborate on the basis of mutual acceptance and respect. ‘In the end the Germans become a little bit more Dutch, and we become a little bit more German — in the end we make a strong team!’

A CRITICAL CONVERSATION IN PUBLIC SPACE

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR PUBLIC SPACE Hosted by Design Academy Eindhoven

Shopping, cinema, a casino, food, politics and reality shows... how are these words connected, and what do they mean in public space? Pablo Calderón Salazar might give some insight. He is involved in designing moments and situations related to situations he thinks need more consideration. His work involves programming spontaneous, temporary installments for changing public space. Once upon a time he started doing this serving homemade hamburgers in front of the chain food brand McDonald’s. He didn’t ask for money, just for discussion and thought. He wants people to generate more public discussion amongst themselves, and particularly in public space, together. Every topic will benefit the discussion: big life problems, personal doubts, or controversial news. We all need to talk and think. We need to show emotions and respect. We need to open our eyes and minds, and increase connectivity. The Breakout Session No 7 was targeted at what design can do for public space. The general topic was democracy, and what design can do through the medium of public space. Ironically, the international group gathered under a large poster promoting the election for the European Parliament on the Leidseplein. We began by sticking tape to the ground and writing provocative slogans like ‘Corruption free!’, thus forming a temporary installation. The discussions fired up. The workshop wanted to invite people and let them meet and talk with each other, to get them thinking, and generate interest for such a small event. Some people were laughing, some talking, and some left, too afraid to join the conversation, but it mattered little. No one passed the workshop with a neutral reaction, and in this sense it reached it’s goal. It demonstrated that public space can be not only beautiful, but also a special space that is created by the people that are present.

BREAKOUTS: DAY 2

WHAT SERIOUS GAMING A TALK WITH CAN DO FOR SERVICE DESIGN SHAOLAN HSUEH WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SERIOUS GAMING Hosted by Chamber of Commerce

During this breakout session, Monique van Reijen shared some insights about the serious gaming industry. Currently, about 350 companies in the Netherlands are consistently adding theoretical frameworks to game scenarios, with the aim to solve various kinds of social problems. People often think of games as pure entertainment. But applying game design and game principles can create tailored and meaningful services, products etcetera. This is called serious gaming: game elements are used for non-entertainment purposes. It can also be called names like ‘applied games’, ‘playful interaction’, or ‘gamification’. All of these focus on learning through experience in games, and gathering knowledge, skills and attitudes. One important aspect of gaming is the peculiar state of mind people enter into when they play: they are in the game. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has done research on this flow for over 20 years. Game is not just fun, it also triggers our imagination and our motivation to transcend boundaries. These characteristics are of great interest to other industries. Another thing games do really well is reward the gamer. Usually, people get punished and de-motivated when they under-perform, but in games you get positive incentives only. Game over just makes you want to try again. Games use this strategy to keep gamers interested; this is accomplished by making the gameplay neither too hard nor too easy. At the heart of serious game design lies content, theory, ánd game design. The teams that work on the development of games with different social components consist of a combination of game-developers, storytellers, and project managers.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR CHINESE LANGUAGE

What Design Can Do! Academy Series After she invented Chineasy, Internet entrepreneur and venture capital investor ShaoLan Hsueh turned into something of a design hero. The pictorial system helps learners remember the meaning of Chinese characters, and has taken the world by storm. When salon moderator Hadassah de Boer interviewed her in De Balie, she told about her life after the sudden success and popularity of Chineasy. It turned her world completely upside down, and nowadays she travels all over the world, saying: ‘Originally I developed Chineasy for my two kids, but now they are complaining because I’m not at home to study the book together with them.’ Some insights she gave were on her identification as a designer and the method she used for Chineasy’s concept. Hsueh was struggling whether or not to call herself a designer. She was invited into the design world for talks and has won several design awards by now. Stefan Sagmeister pointed it out to her. She started with a problem; next, she analysed this extensively, deconstructed the originals, applied reversed engineering and came up with a solution. Sagmeister concluded: ‘You designed the way to make it work, from this point of view you are a designer.’ On the project’s objectives she said that the book is to get by on a day to day basis. ‘Why do we learn? We learn things because it’s fun! With this, I can give you things to recognise. You know some ingredients from the market, you recognise directions on a map and what day it is in the newspaper. In the end, that’s all you need.’

BREAKOUTS: DAY 2

PAPER AND DESIGN: A PERFECT MATCH

I AM THE PRESIDENT

Hosted By Antalis

‘There is bad news that I cannot fully disclose. An asteroid the size of the Netherlands is heading our way. I advise you to forge as much water as you can, assemble your loved ones, and dive into the nearest bunker with food.’ As you just heard folks, the asteroid will finally hit. A catastrophe will strike several nations of the world in a mock emergency-speech performance guided by experience designer Nelly Ben Hayoun. The topic was What Design Can Do for Disaster. Teams imagined what accessories and mannerisms are needed for portraying certain emotional messages. As Nelly said, ‘At the end you should be able to fabricate an experience to engage an audience with your work’. The political theorist Hannah Arendt said that engineers are, in a way, dangerous — without critically thinking of the repercussions of their inventions. J. Oppenheimer, referred to as the father of the atomic bomb, was cited as an example, quoted saying ‘When you see something … you go ahead and do it, and you argue about what to do about it only after.’ Through her exchange with the US government and NASA, she has come to know engineers and argues that they are more than just machines. The workshop explored this ability to change roles and imagine the particularities needed for quality experiences. In a quick, improvisational manner the teams designed the proper wardrobe and props to needed to create an atmosphere for their presentation. Solutions ranged from inflatable body suits, Mars spaceships and free asteroid one-way holidays to free public looting. Although the workshop gave insight into the necessity of communication, atmosphere and props for rich experiences, the subject matter remained pessimistic.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR PAPER ‘When I started, graphic design was basically something you did on paper. It was pieces of cardboard that you turned into record sleeves, stacks of paper that you bound into books. Over my lifetime, I’ve seen that craft part of graphic design overwhelmed by the digital. But today I see a resurgence.’ These were words spoken by Michael Bierut in his fascinating interview with our moderator David Kester, during the opening of this breakout session on What Design Can Do for Paper. Next to often hilarious anecdotes about his prolific career as one of America’s leading graphic designers Bierut spoke freely about his changing profession. ‘I’m not against computers. Everything computers have done for design is positive. Except for one thing – computers made it too easy, too fast to do design.’ As we moved onto the second part of this breakout session – which was led by the world leading paper distributor Antalis – it became clear that we weren’t just discussing what design can do for paper, but also what paper can do for design. In fact, for some of us, paper truly is an emotional matter. For Annette Clayton, from Arjowiggins Creative papers, paper provides ‘an emotional connection. Holding it makes us feel something, and richly printed, physical objects possess immense power in a digital age.’ Through a short presentation on her work, we were introduced to the impressive and lengthy process that is involved in creating the ‘perfect sheet of paper’. The breakout was closed with a quick ‘rapid paper protoyping’ activity led by Dutch studio De Designpolitie. Through this 10 minute exercise, visitors were reminded of the simple but brilliant power that a sheet of paper and a pen can hold. Apparently, paper and design still is a match made in heaven.

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO FOR SCIENCE Hosted by Nelly Ben Hayoun

BREAKOUTS: DAY 2

‘THIS CONFERENCE HAS GOOD QUALITY. THEMATICALLY IT OFFERS A STRONG BLEND, AND THE LINKS BETWEEN CHOSEN SPEAKERS WORK IN SUCH WAY THAT THEY PROVOKE FURTHER DISCUSSION. I DON’T HAVE TIME TO GO EVERYWHERE OR READ ALL THE BLOGS, SO WDCD IS MY OPPORTUNITY TO CATCH UP FOR A YEAR.’ — MAX KISMAN Graphic Designer

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO! 2014

SEE YOU IN 2015 WDCD14 HAS ENDED, ON TO WDCD15 Many months of preparation culminated in two days of inspiring talks, discussions, workshops, and exchanges of ideas. And now WDCD14 is over. What is left is this book and all the impressions in the participantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heads. Enough to chew on for a year. Meanwhile, we start preparations for WDCD15 as of next Monday. The fifth edition of What Design Can Do will be held in Amsterdam on

21 AND 22 MAY 2015 Save the dates, we would say, as we plan yet another edition with internationally acclaimed designers alongside young and upcoming creatives and visionaries from other professions. Besides organizing the annual conference, we are constantly seeking for alternative ways to get our message across. We are continuously exploring the possibilities for master classes, workshops, exhibitions and publications we might want to organize together with out partners, using our network and the content we have brought together so far. Of course we are always open for your ideas. We will continue to build What Design Can Do and we appreciate all your remarks and suggestions that will help us to do so. In the meantime, keep track of developments on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and our daily blog.

CREDITS EDITORS Bas van Lier, Billy Nolan, Roelien Plaatsman REPORTERS Mark Bain, Natasha Berting, Oliver de Leeuw, Inge Keizer, Gabrielle Kennedy, Rozemarijn Koopmans, Anne Miltenburg, Ha-Giang Trinh, Marit Turk, Rob de Vormer, Larissa Oliveira, Antonio Rivera, Natalia Sulkowska, Carolina Chataignier, Lesia Topolnyk PHOTOGRAPHY Leo Veger Titus Brein DESIGN Mark Bain, Sara Landeira PRINTER Xerox PAPER Antalis Coloraction

WWW.WHATDESIGNCANDO.NL

WHAT DESIGN CAN DO IN THE COMING YEAR

‘I’m so tired of design being considered decoration and cute objects, and things you can buy and consume. A conference like this for me is fantastic because it shows that the whole realm of design can come together to improve society. So it’s not about people buying cute chairs but people thinking and living in a different way.’ — PAOLA ANTONELLI

MoMA New York, in The New York Times