On Wednesday September 30 Design Assembly will celebrate it’s first birthday.

On Wednesday September 30 Design Assembly will celebrate it’s first birthday. From its inaugural event in August of 2008, Design Assembly has become a must attend event on the calendar of any graphic designer in Auckland and an online resource for the community that features video footage of past conversations and a content rich forum for lively and critical thinking around graphic design in New Zealand.

September the 30th will see another three great conversations take place; Meena Kadri from Wellington will speak about hand-lettered typography from the streets of India, David Gardener and Andrea Wilkinson will enlighten the audience about their project: When an outcome becomes outcomes; the means project and Toby Curnow from the ALT Group will talk on grids and tessellation’s in art and design.

Louise Kellerman, founder of Design Assembly, will also be filling the community in on plans for the next year of Design Assembly.

• Conversations on September 30th 2009

Indo-centric, typo-centric: Hand-lettered typography from the streets of India– Meena Kadri

When encountering the Indian streetscape, one is struck by the diversity of competing signs – combining the informative, persuasive and the decorative to varying degrees in a visual cacophony of styles. Though digital technology is present much typography is still commonly hand-lettered – on the street, for the street. Meena Kadri presents an exploration of such work as applied to vehicles, walls, signboards and all manner of surfaces with vernacular flair by painters who have often gained their skills on the job. Scratching below the surface the lecture gives insight through investigation of the painters, their work and its communication context.

When an outcome becomes outcomes; the means project
– David Gardener and Andrea Wilkinson

Given the chance to curate a graphic design exhibition in our school’s gallery, we took this as an opportunity to bring alternative takes to the local Hamilton and New Zealand urban landscape, investigate experience as a contributing factor to how we interpret and create design as designers and finally as a means to both disseminate and contribute to design research. What started out as a premise to host a show of graphic design turned into a much larger project; an internationally touring exhibition, a book, a project that has been featured in design journals the likes of TYPO and OpenManifesto as well as the foundation to several conference presentations and papers.

Through this process we have learned many things; the value of collaboration, clarity, the desire for people to contribute, the need to contribute to design discourse, the benefits of the wider graphic design education community, the advantage of building projects that scale and the importance of reflection.

This will be the first opportunity for designers and students in New Zealand outside of Hamilton, to hear about the what we endearingly call ‘The means project’ and we are looking forward to sharing its journey and process with the Design Assembly attendees.

For more information or to host the exhibition, please visit:http://www.designproject.co.nz/themeans
The book, The means by which we find our way; Observations on design is available for purchase from Endemicworld.com and Amazon.com

Grids and tessellation’s in art and design
– Toby Curnow

Toby will discuss some of the Alt Group’s ongoing interest in grids and tessellation’s in art and design and how this enquire has influenced the studio’s output.