Hear Manchester

Hear Manchester

 This project takes a collection of audios that have been recorded along the canal through Manchester. It looks at the people from Manchester, facts that have been forgotten and places that are not appreciated. 

For our festival we want to use unused and unappreciated spaces to regenerate the city through the work of designers. The canal especially is an area along Manchester that is forgotten, almost hidden under the city. We want to celebrate these areas and create spaces that people are drawn to. 

City Camp - Castricum

CITY CAMP

In this project, the town of Castricum became a campsite for all. The only rule was the bring your own tent, creating your own space. A few artists got involved and created hand made tents from recycled objects, challenging what we can do with the idea of 'tents'. 

From this we had the idea of having temporary structures around Manchester for our festival. The structures being made from recycled materials, with the possibility of having our logo projected onto them or promotional videos being shown on them. Here are examples of simple, recycled structures. 

See Your Own City

The tag line for our festival is "See Your Own City", so for the promotional side I wanted to create advertising that was unique to each person who sees it. These sample flyers work well within these ideas, the viewfinders allow each one to be different and gets the audience to get involved with the festival from the very beginning. 

Spaces around Manchester

These are some potential spaces that the design festival can be located around Manchester.

Aerial views of Manchester

Flyers

These are samples of what the flyers could look like for the design festival. Each with a slight variation, but with a view finder and the branding letters.  

Potential Flyers

To create a flyer that isn't generic and boring I came up with the idea of having view finders, this links to our manifest of 'See Your Own City'. This will create a flyer that is different for each person, every time they move or take a photo with the flyer, the image in the space will be different. 

Manifesto for M.D.F

Made in Manchester

Design will be in and of the City. 

Design, in its most general terms, will come from within Manchesters creative base.

Network and Connectivity 

We want to think about connectivity, and form new networks, through use of image, sound and space that are not just in tangible and tactile forms.

Urban Exploration and rediscovery,

Exploring the known and the unknown, we aim to rediscover the City.

Experiential

We want to think about the experiential value of a Design festival; experiencing the old in new ways. 

We want to think about interactive design, and interacting in the city as individuals to create a community.

SEE YOUR OWN CITY

Our Festival

M.D.F

Manchester Design Festival

As a group we have decided that we are going to brand our festival as "M.D.F". These three letters are going to be what we attach to everything we do/make towards the festival.

To create our brand we have come up with these ideas:

• Competitions/ submissions 
• Ways of involving/ including the community
• Invites - hand made, recycled materials
• Making worth while objects
• Documenting it all - photos, film, drawings
• What do people want?
• What age will the participants be? 

Branding

We have met up as a group to discuss what we initially want in the form of 'branding' for a design festival. These are the thoughts we have so far:

• Community branding
• Slowly growing to be everywhere
• Work with 'Made' and 'Spaces' to be able to brand together
• Mapping
• Colour association 
• Promotion video 

Design Festivals

To create a design festival I have looked at other design festivals to get a feeling of what they look like and what they have as exhibitions. I have taken aspects of each as ideas for my own, creating a new style of design festival. Milan has strong installations of work, London has a strong branding structure and Stockholm has a very creative feel to it.

Milan Design Festival

London Design Festival

Stockholm Design Week

Festivals in Manchester

N4 Loves U Festival

Manchester Literature Festival

Manchester International Festival

Spaces

In order to plan a design festival that utilises un-used spaces and buildings, I needed to collate an idea of spaces that could potentially be used. All the images are from areas around Manchester.

Albert Hall

Bailey Mill

Harpurhey Swimming Pool

The old Train Station

An old Textile Mill

Manchester Design Festival

There is no space, location or area.

Free to design a design festival. 

After getting the brief of designing a design festival in Manchester, it has got my mind going crazy with ideas. What spaces do I use? What things do I want to put on. How long will it last for?

These and many more are questions that will be answered when our groups are finalised, due to the brief being a joint piece of work. 

The Trend Boutique

by Sally Denton

Understanding trend forecasting

• Why are trends important?
• Methodology

“The future has already happened, its just that it isn't very well distributed yet” - William Gibson

• Macro – 3-5 years
• Transitional – 1-2 years
• Micro trends – 6 months

Trend Setter	Early Adopter	Trend Follower	Lagger
Introduction	Growth	Maturity	Decline

Designer

Brand

High Street

Discount

Forecasting

• Trend
• Life style
• Phase

Why are trends important?

• Right product, right place, right time
• Demanding customers
• Industry worth billions
• Overseas production
• Inspiration + direction

Publications

• Calin International
• Peclers Paris Top 4 are the most important
• Nelly Rodi
• Promostyle
• Trend Union
• Decipher
• Mudpie
• Trend bible

Online

• WGSN Online micro trends are the end of trends.
• Style sight Don't use as a source for new trends
• MPD Click

Trends

• Political
• Economical
• Social
• Technology
• And now environment

Global

• Socio-economics (PEST/E)
• Inspiration
• Customers – BRIC
• Events + Exhibitions
• Strengths

• Looking at innovators + artists

Colour

• Pivot colours
• Harmonies

2014 and beyond

• Science and technology in a perfect sotrm
• 3D Printer – will spark the next revolution
  - wants to print onto the mood
  - 3D printed photo booths

Age and Wellbeing

• 1 in 3 to have cancer, now at 1 in 2
• Death
• Morning
• 'Advanced style guide' celebration of older women
• Bill Gates, eradicating polio
• What makes some a genius or mentally unstable?

Poverty and Luxury

• Shift from east to west
• Looking to China and Brazil
• Olympics and world cup
• Products with meaning
• Simplifying things
• Simple materials
• Architecture

Radicalism and Humanitarianism

• Education, the elderly
• Companies – good vs bad (eg, TOMs vs Starbucks)
• Repairing products

Women, Men and Equality

• Over sexualisation of women
• Everything is sexualised
• More androgynous world, for both sexes
• Brotherhood

Consumption and Natural Resources

• 'Human planet'
• Allotments, harvest nature
• Create throw away fashion with dissolving fabrics
• Perfecting nature
• Consuming – ingesting perfume tablets

Ian Forrester - BBC

• Fire starter, his job is to think of crazy ideas that may or may not be possible to create.

• Magnus Lindkvist – Trend spotter
• The only way to predict the future is to make it happen
• Broadcast, missing context, body language, mood – story telling is about variables
• Perceptive media : “Using internet technologies and sensibility to create something closer to a personal theatre experience in your living room”
• Finding perceptive media – blue sky thinking, learn to think with no limits at all, no legal limits
• Matt Mason – T.E.D.com – 'The pirate's dilemma'
• Moving from the Explicit to the Implicit
• Explicit – doing something
• Implicit – things you do naturally/instinctively
• TV as wallpaper, a study has shown that is you are under 30 you will always have 2 screens on the go
• The Attention Economy – John Doe, from se7en 1995
• Deja vu moments
• Using effects against the user – say if you dislike a theme tune it could be replaced with a song from your itunes

www.Futurebroadcasts.com

• Story telling that you've never heard before

Manifestos

In the manifesto writing session we had to think of what our ideas are and what angles we will be starting our briefs from. There were a lot of similar ideas between people, such as making things to be sustainable, being more eco friendly, to stop making 'crap'.

Some of my personal ideas on a manifesto are :

Age and wellbeing 

What do people really value?

Do we value our time?

Grow your own

Educating in more useful areas

Global impacts

Recycling 

Blue Sky Thinking

Blue Sky thinking is not a concept I have used before within my work. I have always had a brief first and planned my work from that. Having a limitless starting point opened my mind to many more possibilities then trying to answer a brief. 

1. How can I relate blue sky thinking to individual practice?

2. What is the definition of Blue Sky Thinking?

3. How can you work as a collective whilst still maintaining own practice?

4. What tools and methods can be used for Blue Sky Thinking?

5. Are adverse and unfamiliar conditions conducive to Blue Sky Thinking?

6. How does Blue Sky Thinking affect the world?

7. How can we communicate Blue Sky Thinking to a general audience?

8. How important are practical outcomes in the real world?

9. What obstacles are there to Blue Sky Thinking?

10. Can we measure Blue Sky Thinking in terms of success and failure?

As a group we came up with questions then spent our day breaking off into sub-groups to try and answer these questions. A lot of the answers crossed over different questions, many of these resulting in our answers going around in many circles. This set of questions resulted in great combinations between people and also great arguments, which has spiralled into a mass of ideas for the project.