Semi-Permanent Perth, the review:

The venue, the Bakery was a little crowded, with seat­ing for some 300 people it was tight to say the least. 250 would of been more com­fort­able, 200 would of been my pref­er­ence, but it all had to do with being a com­mer­cial suc­cess. If the only way to bring Semi-Permanent to Perth was to be crammed like sardines in the dark to listen to speak­ers brought from the other side of the world, I would suf­fer to be inspired, because that was what I look­ing for from Semi-Permanent Perth, inspired in what I was not sure, I just needed to be inspired.

Any­how* An inter­est­ing if slightly ram­bling present­a­tion the story of two guys who star­ted small in the rag trade, went big quick, then back to earth even quicker and their con­tinu­ing adven­tures. Mes­sage “Stay small, do what you do well, do what you are pas­sion­ate about, even if they are very dif­fer­ent”. Miles would of would of bought these guys a beer for more insight.

King Brown, the story of King Brown issue one and as I do not share the same pas­sion for skate­board­ing and the urban art scene as the King Brown team, their story did not have a great impact on me. I found some of their story inter­est­ing, oth­ers parts less so. Still I went out and picked up a copy of the King Brown magazine and I am enjoy­ing it.

Stormie, was the least enga­ging speaker, con­stantly read­ing from his notes. How­ever, he has the poten­tial to be a great speaker, he just needs to get some con­fid­ence, mem­or­ised his notes and get out from behind the podium and con­nect with the audi­ence. One thing you need to be a good speaker is to be a good story teller and Stormie is that, his per­sonal story was inter­est­ing, par­tic­u­larly the career move from urban street artist to police crime scene video­grapher. But, what got me was the visu­als of his showreel, for the first time I got inspired, I need to get myself a small digital cam­era and take it everywhere.

The first three present­a­tion where given by inex­per­i­enced presenters telling their per­sonal stor­ies and all where too long. They could all be bet­ter pack­aged, to provide a bet­ter punch in a shorter time frame. I found three all inter­est­ing to some degree and found a little inspir­a­tion, but not enough inspir­a­tion and I was won­der­ing if the next present­a­tions would fol­low suit.

Toko, where added to the Semi-Permanent bill at the last minute and I don‘t even think the Design is Kinky crew knew what they were in for. With four days pre­par­a­tion a pair of dutch back­pack­ers came up and delivered a bril­liant present­a­tion, funny, with good stor­ies and best of all some stun­ning work. When took was added to Semi-Permanent Perth, I vis­ited their web­site and was impressed me was their work with logos. What got me about their present­a­tion, other than the dutch really do have a sense of humour, was their work cre­at­ing visual iden­tit­ies without logos or images. It was one of those light­bulb moments for me.

Design is Kinky, slipped back into the per­sonal story mode and for me the least enter­tain­ing and inter­est­ing present­a­tion. I was expect­ing more from Andrew John­stone and Mur­ray Bell. They are decent presenters, but they did not have any real con­tent, we got a brief pot­ted his­tory of DiK, a couple of inter­est­ing stor­ies and that was it, noth­ing to inspire, noth­ing to ponder.

Josh Davis, the first ten minutes was a case of deja vu, I saw Josh at the iDN fresh con­fer­ence in Singa­pore in 2002, and other than a couple of extra “fuck yeahs” for the Perth audi­ence, it was suprisngly sim­ilar. But why should it not be, it was his per­sonal story. The tale has evolved over the last four years, in 2002 Josh was try­ing to explain some of his pro­gram­ming and math­em­at­ical equa­tions to design­ers. By 2006 Josh had decided that try­ing to explain­ing pro­gram­ming and math­em­at­ical equa­tions con­cepts to design­ers was a bad invest­ment of his time. Which was now bet­ter spent explain­ing some of his design choices, includ­ing how he selec­ted his col­our pal­ates. Includ­ing the tale of how red, gold and death palette required for the Tool intro page star­ted from the cover of the Dis­ney DVD “Sleep­ing Beauty”.

In truth I was a little dis­ap­poin­ted with Josh Davis, the first time I saw him speak he blew me away. This time I was hop­ing for more of the same, I did not get what I hoped for. How­ever, that was me, every­body I spoke to had just seen him for the first time were amazed. Looks like the first time you see Josh Davis present, you will change how you work, I did. The second time round is less dra­matic, you will learn and be inspired, but it is noth­ing com­pared to the first time.

So was spend­ing seven and a half hours, packed in a dark room with 300 other people worth it. For me yes, I went to Semi-Permanent Perth need­ing to be inspired and I was. The sources of inspir­a­tion sur­prised me, the showreel of an urban street artist and the iden­tity work of a dutch design duo, along with Josh Davis.

Will I be back next year in the words of Josh Davis, “fuck yeah”. I will be prob­ably be look­ing for inspir­a­tion then and hope­fully there will be a Semi-Permanent 2007 to inspire me. My only hope is that any inex­per­i­enced presenters be given less time for their present­a­tions and if pos­sible cop­ies Toko‘s and Josh Davis‘ present­a­tions on video. And bring the dutch­ies back!

tagged semi-permanent, semi-permanent perth, semi per­man­ent

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Just geek . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.