The Marc Newson lecture, V&A, London.

It clashed badly with Neville Brody’s D&AD lecture (sorry Adrian), but Marc Newson’s Q&A at the V&A raised some nice big teasers for the design world, many worthy of remembering.

Interviewed fluently if a little lightly by the great Chris Frayling, Newson displayed the mark of the international designer who has thrown of the shackles of his Australian birthplace to make the world his home

Kapoor, the Design Story of LDF

Wallpaer Chair Arch by Martino Gamper for Ercol

The seventh London Design Festival fared mightily last week, hosting a string of impressive and engaging events around the capital which gave meaning and redefiniton to “Design’ as we know it. We weren’t daunted by the recession, either

Design Going Global – the FT Talk

Wrong Woods Bench at V&A, recycled from the Milan Fair by Established & Sons creative director Sebastian Wrong

So what insight can we get from the new and emerging design markets? It was the big question posed at the London Design Festival’s third breakfast talk this year, so we gathered at the V&A’s Sackler Centre on September 23rd to find out.

Not for the first time this week we heard how the mighty China looms larger and larger over the creative industries, with its huge numbers of design undergraduates and swelling consumer demand. Design journalist and 100% Design Shanghai organiser Aric Chen gave her perspective on things. Chen painted a picture of an industry being born, just beginning to capture the imagination of the nation, but still not firing on all cylinders. ‘Where are the designers? Where are the names?’ she said. ‘Compared to the standard of the Italians, they’re just not there.’

The imminent arrival of a design savvy China, will help create a surge of new creativity around the globe, in which each country will need to find its own niche in the global creative economy. Chief curator of the Thailand reative & Design Centre CDC Bangkok, Paravi Wongchirach, summed it up like this: ‘Design and Creativity are national security issues for us. We can’t compete on price any more, but we can compete on design,’ he said.

He described a growing sense of realisation in Thailand that design is becoming a vital economic component that needs to be preserved and nurtured. Then again he is probably a bit biased. Design is not the same thing as it is in the West, he explains, ‘with your post industrial economies.’

For him, the national design movement is altogether more modest, less bold and brash, less big brand on the high street. ‘We have the same global retail chains as you do but we do our own local take on them, which is more relaxed probably, with more of a sense of space.

‘Nowadays, customers can see the latest styles straight off the catwalk, within minutes of a show taking place, so the mystique has gone. The big global brands have been over-marketing themselves. People here want to do things themselves, with a little wit of their own.’

Catch the whole talk series here.

This post was taken from the FT Business Breakfast talk ‘New Frontiers’ held at the V&A, as part of the London Design Festival, Wednesday 23 September 2009.

Mike Exon

Design in Recession – the FT talk

 The London Design Festival got down to business at the V&A on Monday morning, with the appropriately titled discussion ‘Responses to the Recession’.  On the podium sat Camper vice-president Miguel Fluxa Orti, Liberty CEO Geoffroy de la Bourdonnaye, and designers Doreen Lorenzo (Frog Design) and Rolf Sachs. Design’s been as pummeled as the next industry this recession, so what are we doing about it?

Bourdonnay offered up a useful view from the shop floor of a premium retailer. ‘Customers are trading down’ he said. ‘The demographic that’s been moist affected is the family with children, property and assets.  People have seen their investments dwindle. On the other hand, younger people in their twenties are doing much better. They still want to shop on their limited incomes, but they’re able to find great value products (faster supply chains and favourable interest rates).

The net result is an educated market that wants quality but is trading down in terms of what it spends. ‘My daughter is getting married next year but why would you buy champagne when you can buy excellent prosecco that tastes just as goof in blind tests.

On top of this, said Sachs, is the way people have changed their buying habits. When we shop we’re not looking for perfection, but for integrity. We’ve stopped binge buying, there is less impulse purchasing and instead people are thinking about what they are buying, he said.

The consensus was, it’s not about ‘cheap’ but about ‘value’. Luxury brands like Hermes are still performing but in a market with consumption reduced overall. It’s sectors like telecoms, energy and healthcare that have spotted the opportunity for product design early, according to Lorenzo.

On the global stage, the Asian markets are about to have a big impact on what we design and how, says Lorenzo. The design students from China and Asia have a new found freedom that is powerful and distinctive, she reckons.

You can see the whole talk here.

This post was written up from the  FT Breakfast talk ‘Responses to the Recession’ held  as part of the London Design Festival 2009 on Monday 21 September.

Mike Exon