Stereographic does plus07
We've just come back from 5 crazy days holed up in a warehouse in Digbeth, Birmingham observing the antics of visitors to our stand at the international design festival plus+.
It has been a great time all round, except for a lack of sunlight and the cold. We've made some great new friends, had copious amounts of strong coffee, hopefully given some snippets of useful advice to students and maybe most importantly we've intrigued, inspired and confused lots of people.
So, what did we do...?
The Idea
We got together for one of our ideas sessions to explore the theme of plus07 - "Moving Type". We thought it would be an interesting idea to create an interactive display where visitors could contribute to a canvas of evolving and moving type, and we would document the results [look left].
Vinyl sign writer's letters were chosen as they would provide a colourful media that we could stick to the exhibition stand walls. The vision was of a beautiful colourful wall full of interesting words, thoughts, patterns and shapes.
We set up a camera in the corner of the stand with an interval timer on and sat back to let the chaos commence.
The Outcome
Well, for a while we were unsure whether it was going to work (interactive stands where people have to participate can be a bit hit and miss), but once a few people realised that they were actually allowed to stick the letters to the wall everyone slowly followed. Then they quickly followed until the stand was so full that they decided to start sticking things to the side wall as well.
So what do people write or create when given the opportunity to contribute to wall of moving type...?
Well, they usually write their name. It seems the principle of graffiti tagging is inherent in all of us. Given a blank canvas we want to put our mark on it, but we want people to know we did it! Given that most people still seemed unsure that they should be let loose to write on a wall (Grafitti is a crime afterall), their name was the quickest and easiest thing they felt confident they could do. And once a few people start, it becomes contagious.
People became more confident and cheeky over time. The obligatory swear words started to appear and people finally started to get creative with a few thoughts, interesting words, pictures and patterns.
The most interesting thing that we witnessed though was that everyone took pictures of what they did. They wanted to make a record of what they'd contributed, and in many cases they wanted an actual photo of themselves next to their name.
We aren't dismissing what anyone has contributed as you've made our idea work and the result (albeit different from our "vision") is a colourful wall full of interesting names, words and the odd picture and pattern.
If anyone is interested in exhibiting the final piece please get in touch as soon as possible.
Thanks
Thanks to everyone who came and contributed. We'd like to gather all the photos people took of their names/words/pictures and of themselves next to their names/words/pictures and put them up on our site. Just send them to Sam at the email address below.
Thanks to Steve (Cross Signs) for sorting the letters.
Thanks to Caroline, Alex & everyone at Type Events for organising things.
Thanks to the letter cutters - Lak & Kavita, Chris, Tim & Ian (Second Home Studios), Andy (fatsuma) and mum.
Additional shouts go out to - Paul Antonio, Conway & Young, Ben (Type Tours), Stef, Pete Ashton, Paul Ward (sorry I missed you, sir) Bobby & Co., all the other nice people exhibiting and visiting (you know who you are), and of course Remi & the mad ginger bloke for the excellent coffee and pastries!
