Our Zeitgeist tagged with “Vancouver”
Unconferences are becoming quite popular recently. Perhaps it's a reaction to these uncertain political, economical and environmental times, but I don't care—I like it. The idea of large, complicated and expensive conferences centred around an industry or topic has it's place, but I relish the idea of smaller gatherings of like-minded folks to discuss a variety of topics that affect them. And the notable lack of pressure to hand out business cards and endlessly network, seeking clients or employment is refreshing.
The evening was nearly flawless in its execution. Organized and calmly presented. The schedule was adhered to strictly and the presentations were divers, fresh and succinct. Having been disappointed with all but a few of the speakers at the recent Pecha Kucha event—some of the better ones actually in the audience last night—I found the key strength of
Interesting Vancouver was the quality of the presentations themselves. Clearly the organizer, Brett MacFarlane, put a great deal of time and thought into inviting just the right mix of topics and speakers, includeing J
ames Chutter ,
Darren Barefoot,
Dave Ng,
Tom Williams and
Irwin Oostindie among others.
Presentations alternated from quick three minute overviews to longer twenty minute diatribes on topics such as eating local food, the challenges of living abroad, the impact of art & design on culture, and how we can all find meaning in our lives by supporting various charities. Some speakers addressed precisely how interesting Vancouver is directly, with explorations of the efforts being made to build community and gathering spaces, how BC is a world leader in addressing climate change, and the variety of museums in the area. Every single speaker seemed hand selected and were clearly well prepared and well rehearsed for the evening. The final presentation of the night was by new Vancouverite and 2nd Globe artist
David Young, who ended with a sobering look at moments of genius and accomplishment throughout history that occured in cities much smaller and less developed than Vancouver, challenging the audience to consider "Why not us?", suggesting that Vancouver may indeed by the "next great place."
Another key factor for me last night was the combination of the high calibre of attendees combined with the casual, comfortable feeling in the room. Hosted at
The Vancouver Rowing Club, with its spectacular views of the Vancouver skyline, the event had a casual, town hall feel. People from all walks—though admittedly skewed toward the geek "wonk" crowd—sipped beers and munched apples compliments of the organizers. Apples and beer? Try it for yourself, it's a delicious combo.
The night ended as it had begun: enjoying good conversations over drinks with likeminded friends, only this time they were coffees with cake—to help shake off the multiple beers imbibed earlier. I'm looking forward to next year's edition of
Interesting Vancouver and recommend you attend, although I hope it doesn't grow much larger due its success this year, and suggest you think up a more clever drinking game than we did. Ouch.
[post_title] => Unconferences: Very Interesting Indeed
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I consider myself lucky to one of the lucky few able to get a ticket to last night’s sold out inaugural Interesting Vancouver conference with some friends. Oops, I meant to say “unconference.” It was the third local event [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Saturday, October 25th, 2008
Categories: Events, Inspiration, Vancouver | No Comments »
Sorry for the short notice, but I immediately thought of you guys when I realized our next Likemind event is tomorrow morning at JJ Bean on Commercial. My friend Piers Fawkes and Noah Brier hosted the original Likemind event in New York, bu [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Thursday, October 16th, 2008
Categories: Events, News, Vancouver | 1 Comment »
We love coffee in the studio—it’s a part of our foodie culture at Industrial Brand. In fact, we’re hard at work designing a new brand identity, collateral and packaging for a local gourmet coffee consultancy and retail franchi [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Friday, September 26th, 2008
Categories: Branding, Food, Industrial Brand, Vancouver | No Comments »
Our goal for the Practivism event is to host an enlightening, rhetoric-free evening of wisdom and discussion as our sustainability experts share their experiences and insights, attempt to demystify green speak and provide attendees with practical answers and strategies they can apply in their lives and design practices. But as we discussed the event logistics, such as printing invites, posters, flying the speakers from New York and California, etc, it was a harsh reminder of the impact we have on the environment even when putting on relatively small industry events such as these.
We're making every effort possible to make effective choices to promote and host our event within realistic parameters, such as reducing our print requirements and ensuring we use production techniques with the smallest environmental input. We even considered remote web video technologies and web streaming as an alternative to needed the speakers to be on-site. Hopefully as we move forward we can make innovations to how events and conferences are organized an produced.
GDC's Designer Speaker Series event
Practivism: Practical methods for radical sustainability in design will be held on November 13th at Science World in Vancouver. Speakers include,
Innovation and Sustainabilty Expert Marc Alt,
Green Graphic Design author Brian Dougherty and
Design Can Change Founder Eric Karjaluoto. Information and tickets are available at
www.practivism.ca.
[post_title] => Design Conferences: Sustainable?
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During the research and planning phase of an upcoming GDC event—Practivism: Practical methods for radical sustainability in design—I came across Alyssa Walker’s article Conventional Wisdom: Eight Ways to Save Design Conferences. I [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Friday, September 26th, 2008
Categories: Associations, Design, Events, Learning, Sustainability, Vancouver | No Comments »
After months of work in secrecy, the design team at VANOC has revealed the new graphic identity system and sport pictograms for the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver. VANOC’s Design Director, Leo Obstbaum, said “The sport illustra [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Categories: Design, Vancouver | No Comments »
We just received an intriguing promo from the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver) for their current exhibit titled, Clip/Stamp/Fold 6 The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X. The exhibition is based around the explosion of o [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Thursday, September 11th, 2008
Categories: Architecture, Design, Events | No Comments »
Industrial Brand was honoured to design and produce promotional materials for Surrey Art Gallery‘s newly launched Glocal Project. Glocal is a recent project co-developed by our friend and collaborator Jer Thorp (blprnt.com), who will [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Friday, June 27th, 2008
Categories: Art, Events, Industrial Brand, Vancouver, Websites | No Comments »
So what is it? CondoVue is a web service that connects condo buyers and developers. It gives condo buyers free access to search a database of new condo developments in Western Canada, making the task of finding the perfect place that much easier, and hopefully comparisons more meaningful.
For developers, CondoVue is a marketing tool that provides an unparalleled platform to leverage their brand and showcase their new development online.
There's no shortage of developers and buyers who were practically begging for something like this, and hopefully the market trends here spell success for CondoVue. Keep your eyes on it as more features get added regularly and critical mass develops.
[post_title] => CondoVue Launches
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This past Friday marked the launch and public debut (party!) of our client CondoVue’s website, and essentially, their business. For us, it’s terrific to finally be able to show off the identity we did for them earlier this year. [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Monday, June 23rd, 2008
Categories: Design, Websites | 1 Comment »
I met fellow Vancouverite Stewart Butterfield (of Flickr fame) briefly a few years ago and various friends of mine know him well. So for me it wasn’t such a surprise that Butterfield’s recent resignation letter to Yahoo was a li [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Saturday, June 21st, 2008
Categories: News, Vancouver | 2 Comments »
If you’re in any field related to art or design, you very likely know who Syd Mead is—the artist primarily responsible for the look and feel of influential movies such as Aliens, Blade Runner, Tron and others. Well, as a volunteer o [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Categories: Art, Associations, Events, Inspiration, Vancouver, We love | 3 Comments »
Yup. You read that correctly. Rogue graphic design star Stefan Sagmeister will be giving a presentation in Vancouver as part of GDC’s Salazar Student Design Awards at 6 pm on Friday, May 9th at the Roundhouse Arts & Community Cent [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Friday, April 25th, 2008
Categories: Associations, Design, Events, Vancouver | No Comments »
For over 10 years, local funk band extraordinaire Soul Stream has been playing every Monday and Tuesday night at Bar None in Vancouver. One of the best house bands in Vancouver, Soul Stream mixes covers of Tower of Power, Earth Wind and Fir [...]
Posted by: Steve Mynett on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
Categories: Music, Vancouver, We love | No Comments »
IBC was honoured to design and produce the website for GDC’s Graphex National Design Awards this year. The competition has been judged and the winners will be announced on March 28th at a formal awards gala on March 28rd at the pres [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Saturday, February 16th, 2008
Categories: Associations, Design, Events, Vancouver | No Comments »
Then, as if that weren’t enough, starting February 1st we get
Sword of Doom, Kurosawa’s take on
Macbeth,
Throne of Blood and his samurai comedy,
The Hidden Fortress,
Seven Samurai (the most expensive samurai film ever made, later remade into
The Magnificent Seven),
Harakiri, the hard-to-find
Three Outlaw Samurai,
Samurai Saga and
Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron.
If you have it in your head that these films are the Japanese cousin to the swashbuckler or just glorious displays of violence, it’s time for some schoolin’. These are some of the best films made anywhere, worthy enough to win at Venice and Cannes, funny, moving, occasionally deeply romantic and sad (
Samurai Rebellion might be the best samurai date movie ever made).
Go. Just go.
[post_title] => Samurai Cinema and you.
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My passion for samurai films is really unreasonable. Well, for that and Yakuza films. And the films of Takashi Miike, Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli, anything Takeshi Kitano was ever in (especially Brother), Japanese serials like Lone Wolf and [...]
Posted by: Andrew Ball on Monday, January 7th, 2008
Categories: Art, Film, Inspiration, Pop Culture, Vancouver | No Comments »
Vancouver, BC has been chosen as the official host city for the annual SIGGRAPH conference in 2011. This is a huge win for the city and is the first time the conference will venture outside the United States. The conference should prove a s [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Saturday, December 29th, 2007
Categories: Associations, Events, News, Technology, Vancouver | 1 Comment »
