Well, after almost deciding not to I went down to the Roundhouse to the
Salazar Awards to listen to the keynote talk by
Stefan Sagmeister. I'd assumed that I could just as easily get from YouTube or TED what I'd paid to see in public. Fortunately I was wrong.
After arriving a little early and having to wait in line listening to a lot of other designers – especially students – chat I finally got in and was presented a decent spread of finger food. A fortunate things as I hadn't had dinner. Then I had to wait again for about an hour before any of the presentations started.
The awards part of the evening passed rather quickly and uneventfully. None of the students receiving awards were given an opportunity to talk. For better or worse. It just seemed strange as there was an emphasis that this was the Salazar Awards and not Stefan Sagmeister night. Of course people were mostly there to see Sagmeister.
Finally Stefan Sagmeister took the 'stage' in his typical low key way and talked about things anyone familiar with Stefan Sagmeister would already know; how his company restricts itself to 4 types of jobs: music industry, socially responsible, coporate and self authored projects. (or something like that) He then gave an example for each of the first three the highlight being the
Rem Koolhaas designed
Casa da Musica (music house in Portugal)
identity.
Then he moved on to what he considered the main subject: self authored work and his list title "Things I have learned in my life so far" (also the title of his new
book and a
website where you can upload your own phrase and design) which was created during his year without clients (apparently he plans to take a year off every 7 years) and which ended up being used in a number of commercial and personal projects.
Overall even the things I'd heard before seemed fresh and inspiring. He was very funny, especially with his opening story about jelly fish and sea elephant erections. Then there was the moment a group of people were making a bunch of noise on the other side of some dividers and loudly said shut the fuck up into the microphone. I laughed quite a bit and left feeling more inspired by his work than ever.
Yuri.
