Kyoorius Designyatra 2011

Adrian Shaughnessy

Adrian Shaughnessy currently does what every designer eventually can only dream of doing. In his presentation on day one of Kyoorius DesignYatra, Shaughnessy explained how he made the transition from a traditional successful graphic design studio environment to writing and now publishing his own books. By eliminating the publisher, Shaughnessy says he has managed to design each book as a masterpiece project that allows him to not only write about work that interests him but also present it in a way that is compelling. Publishing his own books allows him to play with the choice of paper, the design of the cover, the changing textures of the pages of a book, the treatment of type and the images. The Internet, he pointed out, is the reason that has allowed him to bypass the bookstores and the publishing houses to create his own books.

Shaughnessy’s first book How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul sold millions of copies in various languages. He soon realized that bookstores and publishers were very specific about the kind of books that they like to sell and print, controlling the design, the look and feel and the content of the book. Starting his own publishing company allowed Shaughnessy to write, design and print books that interested him. His books are about the space of practicing design, making mistakes, learning from them, setting up your own studio space, the tools to be successful, rejected best projects etc.

Shaughnessy attributes his ability to publish his own books to the emergence of the digital space that allows him to promote his books via Twitter, Facebook and blogging platforms. Books are set up for preorder on his website and various blogs that then allows him to finance the publishing process. Definitely not the most lucrative business he pointed but immensely satisfying.

Shaughnessy finished his talk with a list of 10 things good designers do/say/think. Summing up with some honest, brave and definitely rule breaking advise.

Typeradio

Taking an old-school media, adding cutting-edge methods and creating rock stars out of typographers, Dutch designers Liza Enebis and Donald Beekman of Typradio.org introduced to the audience their collection of 421 interviews with typographers from around the world. These interviews are conducted mostly online with designers from countries such as the Netherlands, UK, Belgium, Portugal, Brazil, US, Spain and even one from India that one can listen to, for free. One of their most memorable interviews for them was with the NYC based Ed Walter who was 103 years old when he spoke to them and told them about the ever changing landscape of New York City through his lifetime.

What kind of questions do they ask the designers they interview? They refrain from asking very technical type related questions. As a matter of fact they ran a question test of simple yes and no answers on the entire audience. Are you religious? Can you cook? Are you rich? Are you a liar? Do you love me? Almost all answers were yelled in a booming unison. Apart from the radio, they also answered the question ‘What else do we do?’ The one project that really struck me was Typographic Chinese Whispers.

This project beautifully explores the realm of sound, space and interpretation in typographic elements. The Typographic Chinese Whispers was a project they conducted with two groups of students where one group got a typeface, which they had to translate musically. The second group got the musical selection and had to study the sound structure to interpret into a typeface. The comparison between the original typeface and the newly designed typeface was an interesting translation of the game Chinese Whispers.

Typeradio has many interesting events happening around the globe. Log into Typeradio.org to experience, participate in this fantastic, inspiring, new media study of Type.