A not so glittering performance

How to make a Martha Flambe

You will need:

• 1 x house wife
• Loads of dollars
• Country of overfed, dollar-bloated ignorant patriots

• 1 x Bodyguard
• 5 minutes of late
• Copious amounts of arrogance
• Abundant ignorance
• 20 minutes of glitter – colour of own choice
• Just under 2000 delegates
• 30 minutes of self glorification

Preparations:

The speaker:

Mix bored housewife and Loads of dollars. Pour slowly over Country of overfed, dollar-bloated ignorant patriots and let it simmer. Dollars should start multiplying exponentionaly.

Making the Flambe

Take one auditorium.

Add delegates to taste

Let them sit for 5 minutes while you mix the speaker and bodyguard. Wait for speaker until it is ready. Slowly move speaker to front of auditorium making sure that bodyguard stays between speaker and delegates. Wait for murmur to subside.

Pour ignorance and arrogance over speaker while stirring in 30 minutes of self glorification.

(if done right about 10% of delegates should leave the auditorium. Do not worry as ignorance and arrogance will form a thick skin around speaker.

Mix in 20 minutes of glitter.

Switch of lights and use video presentation as self-glorification glazing. (another 30% percent of delegates may leave now).

Mixture should be highly flammable now and delegates should automatically start flaming the speaker.

Enjoy the roasting.

(caution – bitter taste left behind might cause other speakers to leak subtle snide remarks and comments– don’t worry as this is a natural outlet of feelings of contempt and annoyance).

So what went wrong?

I will admit this – I was secretly looking forward to seeing Martha Stewart. Not because I secretly love scrapbooking or jailhouse rocking but because I wanted to know how this ordinary woman made a fortune selling nonsense that anyone can find for free on the internet or at the local library.

She blew it and prompted probably the first mass walk-out ever at the Design Indaba. She can also add to her list of credits probably the first ever subject of a Twitcom.

I am not going to re-invent the wheel and will leave you with this excerpt from Louise Marsland’s page at Bizcommunity.

“
Delivering a presentation more suited to the Krugersdorp Vrouefederasie or the Belville Housewives Scrapbooking Circle, she managed to inspire a mass walkout in both auditoriums - practically unheard of in the history of Design Indaba, which is the industry's premier conference and expo showcase in the creative industries and an inspiration destination annually.

And so we get another twiord (twitter word): she was ‘twitter slapped' (twitapped?) by the twitterverse. Twerrible.

The complaints centred around that fact that she used her presentation as a sales pitch (given how she is about to launch her ‘Martha Stewart's Cupcakes' in South Africa) and spoke to these highly creative and key delegates with a lack of awareness that was astounding. With the likes of local agency heads and creative directors and world-renowned designers and architects in the audience, you don't talk about doing ‘glitter by numbers' pictures and show 29 pictures of yourself holding various farm life (unless that's part of your creative installation!). The laughter was cringe worthy indeed. The result was a walkout.”

Read the whole article here

people gathered around the twitterfeed reading the twitcom

Some of the tweets:

• Stewart doesn't get irony. Maybe if we used glitter highlights? Oooooh, what's next? EDIBLE GLITTER!! o bad, I can't leave...
• Apparently Stewart's hashtag went from being Design orientated to the world 1st twitter comedy!
• Seems bloggers are crazy about glitter - Martha. Lots of giggles.
• listening to martha talk about her new paint line is as exciting as watching it dry!
• smother me with a Stenciled Hawaiian Flower Cushion
• Strangle me with some Merry Vintage Linens

And my favourite! (the fingerprint scan entrance system didn’t work half the time so people were late trying to get in)

AmandaSevast:i can't believe Martha Stewart is late. Would think she's used to having her fingerprints taken by now.

What we learnt in Cape Town

• At 7am on registration day, no-one has a sense of humour
• Pikka Chew, no wait Pecha Kucha
• The sun only rises at 6am
• It OK to interrupt the highway with 3 robots and take it though suburbia – no one minds!
• Quintus was more attractive to the general population of Cape Town than I was
• Most designers wear glasses
• More than I cared to know about where bits of a pig land up
• Gail likes bearded Brazilian decorators
• Driving 80kmph on the highway is considered speeding
• Designers have too many iphones
• And macs
• Livia holds a grudge for a long time
• You can hand paint your own volla
• Capetonians bitch passively on twitter, Gautengers just bitch out loud all the time
• Students are not really there to see the speakers
• Smash and Grab film is not standard issue
• People will buy faeces if it has a Martha Stewart label on it
• Cape Town has wireless now :)

The very last of last days

On the very last day of Design Indaba Cape Town gave to me;

• · One trendy lady (click)
• · A fashion conscious ninja (click)
• · A wool crazed Dutchman (click)
• · The ex-con glitterati (click) Quintus's opinion
  
• · One epileptic
• · A social housing guru (click)
• · 6 future farmers

And some sushi that I ate for free.

What an eventful last day indeed! The day was kicked off with Li Edelkoort, one of the speakers I looked forward to the most, she is a super duper consumer trend forecaster. The question is, what came first, Li or the trend?! :)

Her trends in a nut-shell, were family based, family is coming together, not the idea of a nuclear family, all manner of family, nuclear, same sex, adopted, fostered, groups, extended families etc. This in turn influences the indiwidual (as she says it) and the indiwidual is no longer more important than the group. People are looking for connections, life has to mean more than work, and relationships are very important (great ... even Li is making fun of me for being single) in our social matrix at the moment, which of course means consumers are feeling this impact. And of course, yellow is the new pink!

Han Feng was up next, a super duper dynamic little Chinese lady, she is truly inspirational in that she is the epitome of “fake it till you make it”, launching her career in fashion by paying fellow Chinese immigrants to the states $1 per scarf that they made, then selling them off to departments stores, you got to love it, or at the very least admire it.

Christien Meindertsma was next in the line up, she is wool be-f**k – literally! She started off with the philosophy of one sheep = one cardigan, which is lovely, if not just a wee bit un-feasible. Ending her talk with her book PIG05049 which is a book that details what happens to EVERY (she is very thorough) SINGLE bit and piece of the pig. Let’s just say, as it turns out, I am an unbelievably dodgy vegetarian, and if the other vegetarians knew I would be asked to leave the vegetarian inner circles of trust.

Martha Martha Martha, where do I start?! I was so looking forward to Martha, you see fundamentally, I am a huge fan. In my itty bitty feminist world, any woman who can be worth billions, run a successful business and do it all in heels deserves respect – R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

This is why, I spent all week eyeing every blond of appropriate age in the venue. I was over exited and I suspect in hind sight, expecting too much, hence when the patron saint of house wives started off on a downward slope and well, just kept sliding, I was horrified, mortified even. She spent the best part of an hour, explaining the Martha Empire, which is considerable, and then moved onto her “most exiting” newest addition, glitter, I am not even joking, Martha came to the Design Indaba, not only to discuss glitter, but to show us how one can buy Martha glitter by number packs, or even download off Martha.com software that will allow you to glitter by number your favourite pics. She redeemed herself slightly by selling (literally) her paint range to us, it’s based off of a chicken, I kid you not, a chicken and the colourful eggs it lays.

Just as I am about to wash my hands of Martha completely, I remind myself ...

Martha has;

• · 2 000 000 twitter followers (which by the way, according to Martha is both cheap and free)
• · 300 000 people clicked her web site to view photos of her closet (the irony has not escaped me)
• · Martha brand enamel paint which costs $85 per gallon
• · A net worth of about $638 million in 2007
• · Probably got a prison tattoo and was jail bait :)

Gail has? ... Exactly!

You may not like the old duck, but you got to respect her achievements!

Alejandro Aravena is a social housing guru from Chilli. Social Housing is one of my passions, I took it as an elective during my honours year – and loved it! It is a very complex issue as it deals with more than just housing, it about pride, community, ownership, achievement and values, just to skim to top of the iceberg. His ideas, while innovative, were not unique, but he managed to present them so beautifully and passionately that he had the audience hanging off his every word. He got the only (that I saw) standing ovation of the conference. Well deserved!

We had to miss the ZA puppets unfortunately, as we were running late, and Mornay put the fear of God into us with traffic horror stories. Afeared of missing our plane we hit the highway, crawled to the airport, booked in and had sushi to say good bye to Cape Town.

BYE CAPE TOWN!!

xxxgail

We made this

we really made this - saw these guys (they did this to themselves by themselves, there was NO art directing involved) at the ORTambo and conned Quintus into taking a pic - our very own motivational poster

then half way

On the second day of the Design Indaba Cape Town gave to me;

• A hungover writer (click)
• 6 Brilliant Students (click click click click click click)
• One home-made toaster (click)
• 2 un-related projects (click click)
• 3 Movie makers (click click click)
• 3 Music makers (no click)
• One Indian god-father (click)
• One brilliant German (click)
• One nervous Frenchman (click)

And a wierdo wearing greeeeeen (click)


the not singing explanation ...


My best best for the day was Stefan Bucher, and word at the convention center is he was an all round winner, ladies wanted him, men wanted to be him - its a win win really. I think, really, yes his work is brilliant, but so was his presentation. He had us eating out of his hand. In comparison the scared Frenchman and Mr Boontje didn't stand a snow ball's hope in hell really, and their work - brilliant. And people say your work speaks for itself - kak - its all about the presentation.


I loved Piyush Pandey's Vodafone ads, I thought they were brilliant! 


My quotes for the day ;


"Over education leads to ugliness, premature aging and beard growth" Crushed and Sorted
"Your brain is an unruly pit-bull and it will eat your furniture - at best" Bucher
"You made it though another day and everybody lives" Bucher
"Its not like I am dipped in a vat of goodness every morning" Bucher
"Civilians don't get it" Bucher


Now for some pics ....


This is how we arrived as annotated by the Q

So many freaks so little space - WHO TOOK THESE???!!!!

Woolies has a GIANT post-it by number in the lobby area, basically the blocks have numbers, the numbers have colours and there are piles and piles of post-its to stick on the blocks, Quintus of course took the challenge like a man and figured out what it said before the post-its were up, now he sits and supervises me as i stick post-its onto the wall. As one does.

Attention seeking? really? AS IF You would all be very bored (boring) and lonely without me :)

They also have GIANT post-its for you to write on, this is mine

This is Quintus'

This is my tea time work (not really i did blue, but the marker does not look so good on the blue post-its, so I hi-jacked the pink ones :)

xxxgail

Link to official Design Indaba blog

http://www.designindaba.com/blog

Bouroullec Brothers

well..just the one showed up

This was an extremely excruciating presentation to sit through. I realy struggled to stay awake.
In his defence he was absolutely terrified to be on stage.

the Bouroullec Brothers brothers design furniture and ...uhm.. other stuff and if his opinion is to be believed each project is a comlete failure or disaster.

Their website: click

Mornay mentioned something to me afterwards and funny enough it is what I was also pondering at the time.
With the amount of time and energy the European designers are spending on "nonsense" projects for example projects that are purely hypothetical or for research and not expected to make any money they must be charging exorbitant amounts for the few projects that are actually meant to pay the bills.

Thursday line-up:

• Bruce Nussbaum
• Boback Firoozbakht
• Thomas Thwaites
• Sonja Baumel
• Thomas Kral
• Michael Edwards
• Oliver Hermanus
• Gary Hustwit
• Doug Pray
• Eames Demetrios
• Piyush Pandey
• Stefan Bucher
• Bouroullec Brothers
• Tord Boontje

Stefan Bucher

This was one entertaining presentation. I guess you could classify Bucher (pronounced "booker") as a graphic designer but this man should be an entertainer. His extremely dry and witty personality shines through in his work if you take for example his "nerd friendly" Super Bowl 43 logo. In his words: "I had the oppurtunity to do the logo for this event were all the jocks in America goes apeshit, the Superbow 43l. I could ofcourse forgive them for all the years of torment at school. NO!. I designed the nerdiest add ever". And it can be appreciated here:





What makes it nerdy?

• Image contains ships from each of the major SciFi series/movies. Star Wars, StarTrek and Battlestar Galactica.
• Professor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink, Jr - Patron saint of nerds everywhere reaching for the testosterone symbol.
• Football is equiped with USB ports - no self respecting nerd will play with anything else.
• BarCode for 43
• Dungeons and Dragons dice amounting to 43
• Binary code for 43 (didn't you notice it?)
• Middle of the shield is the most simple equation for 43.
• Bottom of shield has symbol for Free Masons - we all know they rule the world anyway.

I really enjoyed this presentation - here is a bit more of it:

funny excerpt: "..and he (the director) said since it is a book about the film I was thinking we could do a typewriter like typeface for the notes...you know...like a script..."
Bucher:"fffffuck no!"


quotes form Bucher's presentation:

"Be useful, don't be boring."

"As greed increases, the quality of work decreases. Keep low overheads & doing work you love."

"I have no explanation and no excuse" (on why his monsters love high heels and pin stripes)

"Flush left is like a warm bath"

"My brain pretends to be a team player but then sells me out with self doubt"



I would've loved to have more but couldnt write fast enough...

Follow the design indaba on twitter

You can follow the Design Indaba Twitter stream here

or the hash tag:

#designindaba

I was just thinking today looking at the number of people tweeting and facebooking constant updates around me in the auditorium on how much social networking has changed things. There is a tv in the lobby streaming constant twitter updates from people in the auditorium. I was watching a lady (sat behind her) on her Mac googling the speaker on stage, finding bio info and pics and then dispatching these to friends and colleagues via facebook updates, tweeting and gmail. I was impressed that she could even follow the presentation.

and in the beginning ...

I was so very exited for day one, i composed a song ... sing it to the 12 days of Christmas music.


On the first day of Design Indaba, Cape Town gave to me;

• An un-important logo (click click)
• A super star designer (click)
• A design samurai (click)
• Time keeping Euro-trash (click)
• The only designer in the village (click)
• Sappi's ideas that don't matter (click)
• Pompus street art experts (click)
• A par-cooked graffiti artist (click)
• One hot Brazilian (click)
• An extremely bright boy (click)
• And a type-face fundi (click)

Some tea and a lunch for free. 

In a nutshell ... I was very exited for Faith, turns out her work does, and should always, speak for itself, she should not be let out in public unless its with a can of spray paint. The Wooster Collective did a fair job at annoying me, they seem to feel the need to explain everything, TWICE. 

Mokena Makeka is brilliant, he is my new design super hero, he is a practicing concept king! High five awesome man!

Marcelo is the Brazilian answer to Ty Pennington, and just as hot. He can extreme make over me, i mean my house, any time! Harry Pearce was very last, and we were running an hour late, but in his defense, he was totally brilliant, I am thinking of marrying him and have him take my last name - Harry Barry :)

PS Q has pics

xxxgail

Line-up of first day - I will post comments on each one shortly:

• Michael Bierut
• Mokena Makeka
• Manabu Mizuno
• Troika
• William Drenttel
• Wooster Collective
• Marcelo Rosenbaum
• Harry Pearce

our flight....

head popping.... you are being subtle. It was like riding a trotting horse with no saddle! Half the time I didn't know whether I was lying on the floor or the ceiling!

But we landed safe and I am in my room.

The eagle has landed

I have arrived! 


Turns out its a good thing I didn't like One Time as we flew Mango :) Yet I remain the 'organised' one - hmmmm ...


The flight left my head popping, we managed to be seated in the very last of last of last rows on the plane, in fact with a good view of the loo, Q was convinced our pilot had a dinner date and needed to back in JHB ASAP. If he were a dentist he would forget to give you anesthetic! 


My rental car is black and I have GP number plates, step aside kids, here comes mamma!


xxxgail

high-ho-high-ho its off to Cape Town we go

Your quintessential guide to the gale force whirl-wind of the deign indaba world is about to board the plane to Cape Town.


One Time here we come, though I prefer to think I will be flying two time, once there and once back, but ok, One Time here we come!


Be sure and keep up with our super duper blog! 


xxxgail