The constant barrage of creativity and beauty at the Design Indaba conference, held for three days every February in Cape Town, is exhausting. Halfway through, it’s easy to reach saturation point. “Oh God, not another perfect, glorious idea translated into another perfect, glorious chair/light/table … ” But then flashes of genius burst out, breaking all…
Small white dots, each with a single letter from the words “Issey Miyake”, reconfigure themselves on a black background, transforming unmistakably into a model marching down the catwalk. They multiply, alter and seemingly simple changes in position turns them into other figures and forms. The drumbeat of the soundtrack stopped our hearts and the cleverness…
Reality and humanity strode on to the stage at this year’s Design Indaba, responding perhaps to the wake-up call offered by the global economic crisis. As Canadian designer and change activist Bruce Mau pointed out on day one of this most chichi of conferences, the current crisis shows us that what we are currently doing…
Will the world ever be ready for a female American president? Especially, God forbid, one with bad fashion sense? Look, I love Obama as much as the next South African. It was a thrilling election night: we were collectively moved and touched when Barak Obama took to the stage to acknowledge victory. It was exciting,…
I am discovering that I am increasingly grateful for political correctness. Despite my childhood addiction to anything written by Enid Blyton, I find I am unable to read any of my old Noddy collection to my children. It’s not just the absurd and depressingly weak storylines or the whole lot of spanking that goes on…
Last night I hemmed a pair of my son’s pants. The only thing that qualifies me for that is my gender. Why should I know how to hem a pair of trousers? Why is it that I sat, bent over a pair of bright red corduroys, while my husband watched rugby on Supersport? The answer…
The Internet is a global stethoscope that allows us to listen in to the world’s most intimate secrets. It is an extension of our nervous system, the thing that connects one of us to the other, allowing us to experience the world and transform our emotional responses. And the ways in which Professor Shinichi Takemura,…
Anne Taylor blogs for Thought Leader from the Design Indaba in Cape Town. Dutch designer Marije Vogelzang laid out a feast of delicious ideas that the audience gobbled up at this year’s Design Indaba, now on in Cape Town: tablecloths of dough draped over shapes so it dries into edible bowls, revolvers made out of…
Anne Taylor blogs for Thought Leader from the Design Indaba in Cape Town When you’re knee-deep in all that’s trendy and chic at the Design Indaba, there’s something deeply reassuring about a man who is totally unpretentious. Especially if he’s a world-class, world-famous designer. Ivan Chermayeff is clear and simple — and witty in an…
Grumpy old media critic Jack Shafer has accused online news media of turning their sites into “virtual tabloids by peppering their home pages with the most sordid and bizarre stories that can be culled from the world’s news wires”. Shafer says website tabloids, such as CNN.com, MSNBC.com and Foxnews.com, celebrate and rely on stories that…
