One of my favorites things about NYC is its unlimited resources for designers. We have great museums, a lot of galleries, way too many hip bookstores, and weekly design conferences (or so it seems). This past weekend I went to an AIGA NY event, Body/Language. It was a full day of interesting design talk. Here are some notes/thoughts:

• There were a lot of girls.
• I wish they had left the lights on in the auditorium, so we can take notes.
• Debbie Millman was the host. She was funny and very well-spoken. Ms. Millman also keeps a blog and hosts an international radio show called Design Matters.
• Isaac Mizrahi came on stage with a cane. He wore all black. He was funny. I don’t remember what he said.
• Paul Boudens is a Belgian graphic designer. He’s very good. He said that design with Photoshop is not as ‘timeless’ as designs with physical material. Millman asked him how his design has changed as he became older, and his answer was that his design has become more classic, but not boring. I like Boudens’ earlier, non-classic designs better. You can see some of his designs in my flickr set of blurry pictures.
• I was looking forward to hear the talk by Bumble and Bumble’s Alexander Brebner, because I like BB’s design - especially the black & white illustration style adverstisements. He didn’t talk about graphic design at all. It was a 40-minute presentation of important hair dressers. I was bored.
• Marketa Uhlirova is the curator for the recent Fashion in Film festival at the Museum of the Moving Image, and she gave us her dissertation on photographer William Klein. The film clips she picked were interesting, her presentation was dry.
• Pentagram’s Abbot Miller gave us a mildly interesting analysis of fashion brands and their typeface (Armani’s Didot-like typeface versus Channel’s Futura versus YSL’s in-between : female vs male vs sexual). I’m a fan of Miller’s work, and I wish he would’ve talked more about his own work.
• John C Jay + Jeff Ng/Staple + Gordon Hull and Daniel Jackson of Surface to Air. This was an entertaining panel that I wish could’ve gone on longer. John Jay pointed out a common thread of both Staple and Surface to Air - both groups are artists and designers first, business men second. My observations: both groups have their own products, retail spaces, and both consult for big corporations such as Nike, Adidas, and still maintain their street credibility somehow. I’ll write a separate post about this later.
• Etienne Mineur is a skinny French designer, and co-founder of Incandescence Studio. I first heard of them a few years ago when I was looking at the amazing Issey Miyake’s website, which made my stomach turn. And this afternoon I could not believe my ears when Etienne said that he did each of those Flash pieces by himself, with just one other music production person. This is the presentation of the day, and I lost count of how many times during the presentation I said, ‘Holy shit…’ and I was not the only one. I’m very aware of the good Flash designs out there these days, and this skinny French man who worships John Maeda is on a whole different level.
• Ruth Ansel and Yolanda Cuomo came on to gave a presentation on the legendary art director, Alexey Brodovitch. It was painful. First they used a terrible picture of Brodovitch, old and drunk (incidentally, Benedict Fernandez has taken a great series of Brodovitch, old, but much more dignified). Then they just kept going on and on about Brodovitch and Dick (Richard Avedon). This is one of those occasions where I wished people can be more narcissistic and just talk about themselves. Ansel and Cuomo were art directors when women did not take such large roles in the design field, and I would like to hear more about that (and to hear their perspectives on the glass ceiling).
• Andy Spade. I had a Jack Spade bag on, and so did half of the men there, I suppose, and that was embarrassing. It was a weird presentation. It started off with this short film about the Spades that was a video montage of clips from movies and music videos they like (2-3 clips from Bjork/Spike Jonze’s It’s Oh So Quiet, a lot of Godard’s, a lot of technicolor), and he said that the short film represents who they are. What popped in my head was - stealing and cheesy? What made me feel most uneasy about the presentation was how contradictory everything is. Spades want to be cool and hip, but they are clearly making bags for rich people - rich white people with big houses, as their new ads suggest. The strange feelings aside, I think the Spades are amazing in building their own little empire, and I applaud them for caring about art and staying “indie” (even though it comes off rather phony). An elaborate and well-written analysis + thoughts of the presentation on five and a half’s blog.