Designing south africa’s creative economy final

Ashraf Jamal (Film & Video Technology, Faculty of Informatics & Design, CPUT)

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ZA A Matter of Design

zv a matter of design

zv a matter of design

Ashraf Jamal - Film & Video Technology, Faculty of Informatics & Design, CPUT

Creativity is just connecting things

Steve Jobs – Wired Interview

When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

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And the reason they were able to do that was that they had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people….

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…. Unfortunately that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.

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The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

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Why is experience a rare commodity?What does having diverse experiences entail? Why is a broader perspective critical?What is the relation between experience and design?

Answering these questions require a local, regional, continental, and intercontinental or transnational perspective.

Experience in today’s world demands the splicing of these connected-yet-dissonant factors.

Given the rich complexity of our worlds where does one locate design in the world?

?

“Adequately nurtured, creativity fuels culture, infuses a human-centred development and constitutes the key ingredient for job creation, innovation and trade while contributing to social inclusion, cultural diversity and environmental sustainability.”

UN Creative Economy Report, 2010

What defines our “real needs”?

What constitutes the mesh of the Real and the Imagined in our creative economy?

How have we positioned ourselves at that cross-roads of a national-and-postnational creative economy? How have we as a social network informed by the visions of the government, business sector, civil society, and academia, maximised not only the market share of our creative economy but its mind and emotions share?

“We tend to blame our problems on development, on inequality, on history, but we forget that we do have choices about the future, and those choices lie in design … and we are faced with the need to re-imagine the world in which we live in very fundamental ways.” Mark Swilling

“Designers on our continent need to focus on the needs of a predominantly youthful population with exceptionally high unemployment rates and other pressing challenges associated with this reality” Mugendi M’Rithaa

“The City of Cape Town is heading for disaster and is already in deep crisis if one cares to look close enough. It has manifested most starkly in the dire situation that faces the majority of the City’s residents, who are excluded from the formal economy and must rely on sub standard public services and their own makeshift shelters” Edgar Pieterse

“Emotional Branding is about building relationships; it’s about giving a brand and a product long-term value. It’s about sensorial experiences: designs that make you feel the product, designs that make you taste the product, designs that make you buy the product. “

What conceptual and emotional investments are we making in South Africa as a brand?

How does this investment manifest itself in our creative economy?

Where is the best start-up point and point of reflection, mediation, and consolidation?

“Shopping is arguably the last remaining form of public activity. Through a battery of increasingly predatory forms, shopping has been able to colonize – even replace – almost every aspect of urban life. Historical town centers, suburbs, streets, and now train stations, museums, hospitals, schools, the internet, and even the military, are increasingly shaped by the mechanisms and spaces of shopping. Churches are mimicking shopping malls to attract followers. Airports have become wildly profitable by converting travellers into consumers. Museums are turning to shopping to survive. The traditional European city once tried to resist shopping, but is now a vehicle for American-style consumerism. ‘High’ architects disdain the world of retailing yet use shopping configurations to design museums and universities. Ailing cities are revitalized by being planned more like malls”

Rem Kolhaas, Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping

James Ford, “Holiday Time in Cape Town in the 20th Century” , 1899

It is not things in-and-for themselves which make the difference but the imaginative leap built into things.

“Objects do not exist in a vacuum: they are part of a complex choreography of Interactions”

The Age of Absurdity: Why modern life makes it hard to be happy – Michael Foley.

“Brain scans have shown that high-end brands evoke the same neural response as religious images; that … an iPod has the same effect as Mother Teresa.”

The Age of Absurdity – Michael Foley

Contemporary shift in values which favours “change over stability, potential over achievement, anticipation over appreciation, collaboration over individuality, opportunism over loyalty, transaction over relationship, infantlisim over maturity, passivity over engagement, eloping over coping, entitlement over obligation, outwardness over inwardness and cheerfulness over concern”

It is the organisational power of the Web which is its most potent strategic value, for in working in this way it best ensures the “ways that people would want to connect with one another.”

Marc Gobe: “The Web is the most emotional of all media because people made it that way; people gave social media their human substance and have expanded their context.”

To be listened to.

A forum to share opinions.

A blank canvas for creation.

A bazaar for buying anything.

A way to search or find most stuff.

A place to change identities and become whomever we want.

To know the people we are dealing with.

“New ideas (not money or machinery) are the source of success today, and the greatest source of personal satisfaction, too.”

FROM CONSUMERS TO PEOPLE FROM PRODUCT TO EXPERIENCE FROM HONESTY TO TRUST FROM QUALITY TO PREFERENCE FROM NOTORIETY TO ASPIRATION FROM IDENTITY TO PERSONALITY FROM FUNCTION TO FEEL FROM UBIQUITY TO PRESENCE FROM COMMUNICATION TO DIALOGUE FROM SERVICE TO RELATIONSHIP

Marc Gobe

The critical importance of creativity in the

world meets creativity because of the world.

SUSTAINABLE LIVING COMMUNITY RESILIENCECREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

INTENSIFY WEB MANIFESTATION. HARVEST UNIQUE MEMORABLE

EXPERIENCES / RICH CONVERSATION/ GROWTH.