Reasons.London - February 2017

Fortunately, I was given the opportunity to attend Reasons. London on behalf of Moov2 and have a mental refresh of what it means to be a creator.

To kick off the day, Pip Jamieson gave an insight into what it took her to achieve success and grow from a startup company in Australia to a large team in London. I took the talk as one of strong inspiration as one day I will be starting up my own business in London and seeing how she had gone about it was very insightful. Aside from the story from start to where the business is now, Pip also covered some important topics about teamwork and who to work within the business. Pip had mentioned that taking on those with different backgrounds resulted in a different perspective of ideas, and in turn different solutions to the same issues. It was a great talk to start off the day and really set an upbeat tone for the rest of the day.

Heydon Pickering, was by far the most interesting and relevant talk, from my perspective. His talk focused on breaking the normalities of design, art and creating. This process of going against existing processes, and creating your own was similar to work that I had been experimenting with. Creating your own process will, in turn, create unique creations, and sometimes lead to styles and creations that nobody has come across before. After getting everyone interested in his abstract creation methods and brief history into his musical background, he then went on to a topic that I am very passionate about, accessibility. He discussed how he has made his web applications for experimental music to be usable by almost anyone in the world. This was truly eye-opening, Heydon was building an experimental web application that was inclusive to everyone.

Nadieh Bremer opened my eyes up to the world of data visualization. It was never an issue that I thought deeply about, I assumed any and all data could just be whipped up into a chart of some sort and it would be appropriate for anyone to use. As Nadieh broke down the different problems she had come up against, it became very clear that not only was Nadieh the most enthusiastic person I had come across when it came to large data visualizations, but not all charts are great for representing data. Nadieh also broke down how she makes her charts more usable, with intuitive hover radius effects that will only display relevant information to the end user.

Elliot Jay Stocks the most relevant talk to visual techniques for communication in design. Elliot has strong experience in typography both for web and print. In his presentation (that he was quite a bit late for!) he talked about techniques and tips that designers should carry through into their designs. Some of the points discussed, I found really important as I am still a beginner when it comes to design. I look forward to reading through his slides in greater detail and learning some advanced concepts for my designs.

Wilfrod Wood, was by far the most interesting speakers of the Reasons.London conference. Although none of it applies to my design or art, it was interesting to see how his process of creation evolves and the different methods he now experiments with for his art. Below is an example of some of his art (The cat head).

#mctiddlz #whittershambles @wilfridwoodsculptor @malcolmgoldie ?? .... #wordsfailme #drumnbass ... @nattiehall @missbettenoir @theymadethistagram @glyncog

A post shared by Tanya Paice (@bluntlondon) on Jul 9, 2016 at 3:53pm PDT

Brendan Dawes had the honour of finishing the Reasons.London conference with a talk about how his journeys from idea to creation. How he iterates on his ideas until they become what he wants. He mentioned something that I can truly relate to, about saying yes to a client's request, before you even have a solution in mind!