Recently our creative team took a day trip to Birmingham to attend the first ever Birmingham Design Festival. A celebration of the local, national and international design industry, the festival indulged visitors by treating them to a very high calibre of speakers.

With a lot to squeeze in, the team started with a talk from Lou Hisbergue, a graphic designer from North, who spoke about their work on the Science Museum Group rebrand. Highly in-depth, the presentation gave a lot of insight into their strategy, the ideas they explored and developed, and how they used the final brand to create sub-branding for the family of museums. This was followed by a presentation on designing with data from the team at RG/A who gave their perspective into how using digital technology and data insight helps to innovative new products and exclusive services for their clients that have a casual yet direct approach to ensure closeness to customers.

After lunch, the team experienced a frank and honest talk from Russell Clayton of Rosie Lee on how they as a team use their differences of opinion to create some of the best creative work for the likes of Nike, Samsung and Heineken. He explained that he and his fellow director Mark are the complete opposites in so many ways, and that this often causes conflict between them. However, they use these contrasting views to create some of the best creative work for their clients. What was also interesting is how they both manage to run their business together despite one being located in New York and the other in Frome – Devon!

The pièce de résistance for the team took place during the evening, with presentations on advertising and branding from design heroes such as Marina Willer from Pentagram, Trevor Beattie, advertising extraordinaire and Norwich’s very own Jim Sutherland of Studio Sutherl&. 

^{Trevor Beattie, advertising extraordinaire}

Bidding a fond ‘tara-a-bit’ to the festival, the team have come away feeling truly inspired and loaded with new knowledge and insight. Always looking to develop what we do professionally, we can apply some of these new learnings and inspiration to our very own projects.

(Pictures courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/designfestbrum/)