Birmingham Design Festival 2023

The first day of the festival was mainly located at the Parkside campus of Birmingham City University when where the School of Art and Design along with the furniture showroom Minima near Hockley. The brand master class is a combination of workshop and presentation by the legendary international designers Brian Collins and Astrid Stavro from the award-winning consultancy Collins. Sharing insight and experiences of how they developed their business and projects even through changing times with the worldwide pandemic. As well as showing some examples of the projects they also enable the entire audience to be involved in a fun and interactive workshop.

The Type Trends report presents a collection of examples of the current trends in typography. This was presented by Brian Garham and Emilos Theofanous from Monotype.

Later on the same day a palelist discussion addressing the issues of career opportunities in design. It was presented by Design Council's Chief Design Officer Cat Drew. With guests including artist and broadcaster Vanessa Scott, Phil Garnham from Monotype and Graphic lecturer Jane Anderson at the School of Art and Design at the University of Birmingham.

Asked a question during the Q&A session
During this event, I asked a question to the panelists on how they need to improve opportunities for neurodivergent. The responses includles an apprentice scheme for Neurodivergents.

BDF Social
The first day ended with a social event which was located nearby at the Hockley social club. The opportunity to network with someone of people involved with the Birmingham Design Festival. Thanks to the kind comments of Jane Anderson, I was invited to the Art & Design Degree Show.

The Conference
The second day was conference day with a total of eight different presentation talks. The event was presented by Venessa Scott alongside Matt & Luke from the Birmingham Design team. This was locatred at Birmingham's Repertory thratre better known at "The Rep". A perfect location as the surrounding area of Central Birmingham has gone through major redevelopment with near by contemporary architcture and up to date transport links. (Inc trams running nearby along Broad Street)

The conference kicked off with a presentation from Marya Cerdà Alimbau demonstrating her work and emphasising the importance of inspiration from calligraphy as an inspiring source for developing typography design. Addressing the importance of having the same union between image and type while not mistaking flexibility for communication. Marya what's one of several guests of this festival which embraces artificial intelligence {A.I) to generate creativity.

Lex Fefegha demonstrates creativity tech and interactivity linking community, culture and solutions in today's issues and topics. Areas such as using tech for a broadcast network to develop wide perspectives on topics such as knife crime, and digital interactivity for public authorities. Also, many examples of how tech can be integrated with different aspects such as music and health care. A project was developed to celebrate 50 years of hip-hop music including using art to develop poetry with a rap glove. The morning session concludes with a presentation talk by visual artist and author Oliver Jeffers. Is demonstrates his work including illustrations for several books I've ever written by himself or for others also he's working on a special animation film on the theme of the universe.

The conference continues with the afternoon session starting with a presentation talk from puppetry director and designer Toby Olié. Gaming design was the theme of the next presentation talk by Abbie Heppe Director of Live Service at Media Molescule. This incluldes developing an virtal gaming festival during the worldwide pandemic.

Focusing on the topic of the theme of play and how it is still relevant to all ages was the theme from a presentation from the global brand director at the Lego group Sonal Jhuj

Gemma O'Brien, a designer and artist came from Australia just for the Birmingham Design Festival. Not only she shared examples of work using the PowerPoint presentation she also brought a very personalised creative collection book that uses how she develops her creativity with a high level of quality and how this is used to embrace her work for clients. Not only Gemma supports artificial intelligence in generating creative ideas but also in using A.I for generating writing using Chat GBT.

The event concluded with design and creative legend Brian Collins (Global Director of Collins) returning for the second day with his insight and perspective along with some sharing of his projects from his team at Collins. Brian emphasise of developing unintentional ideas to generate creativity and design. Despite the worldwide controversy with artificial intelligence, Brian emphasised A.I will not take over us humans. The emphasizes that artificial intelligence needs to be embraced. Brian closes the final presentation of the festival with an interactive karaoke with one of the most recognisable musical films in the world. This involves selected members of the audience to join in.

Birrmingham City University's Art & Design Degree Show
Three days after the Birmimgham Design Festival has ended, I was invited to attend the latest Art & Design degree show which displays of projects from students from Fine Art, Architecture, Product Design, interiors, Fashion, Graphic Communication and Photography. This was locationed at Parkside campus of Birmingham City University. Key memebrs of the Birmingham Design Fetsival was there along some of the volunteers of the festival.

Final Point
Embracing deisgn is important, the festival and the quests has proved this.

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Notice to editors
Keith Mckenzie
Keith is an awareness campaigner, a creative designer (Graphic design and digital art) and a salsa dancing participant

With a background in Art & Design (including Graphic Design & Digital art) and a participant in music-related film documentaries, events & record label project King Of the Beats including filming and behind the scene preparations.

Keith was educated at Hereford College of the Arts, the University of Northampton, Birmingham City University and Google's Digital Garage. Since 2000, he has developed over twenty years in providing awareness projects, campaigns and activities with the Awareness brand Plus Value Awareness along with Differences Originals. Also are involved with salsa classes in the local community as an assistant. Also have participated in major dancing conventions twice a year at Birmingham's NEC for Birmingham Latinmotion and London's ManboCity.

In 2022, Keith become a featured community participant for Birmingham who became part of special projects and campaigns to promote a positive legacy beyond hosting the commonwealth games