My Thoughts on Designival 2014

You may have noticed by now that I attend a lot of conferences, talks and creative events. This is probably because I’m addicted to the buzz I get from being surrounded by people who are passionate about what they do, creative or otherwise. Last week I decided to attend Designival, a half day of talks hosted in Camp & Furnace.

The last time we were at Designival was in 2012, which hosted some big names and interesting talks but a few elements that felt like they could have been a bit better organised. I was interested to see if Designival had changed much in the past 2 years and if the companies running it had really listened to feedback of attendees.

I could go into a full breakdown of the talks this year but instead I’ll just tell you I was mostly disappointed with the event. I’m not sure what the criteria for speakers is but less than half were memorable, only 1 of 5 was female (1 of 6 if you split the duo) and although I respect Baxter & Bailey for taking the headline spot at such short notice, I feel the talk would’ve been much better with a little more time to prepare.

I really don’t understand why there are so few female speakers at these events either. You can look at the archive of speakers and you’ll see that out of 25 talks, only 5 were from female speakers including Morag Myerscough this year. I don’t know if women were invited and were harder to get ahold of, but I’d prefer to see a varied line-up as Designival is really trailing behind in terms of equality and not just in regards to gender either.

The day wasn’t all bad as I really enjoyed Tom Evan’s talk and his products and I’ve fallen in love with the joyful colours exploding from Morag Myerscough’s work. The rest felt too focused on money, growth and particular projects and the excitement for the work just wasn’t there.

I’m writing this after attending TEDxLiverpool yesterday which was really inspiring (I’ll post about that separately) and to be honest most of Designival is already sinking into the back of my mind ready to be forgotten.

Here’s a quote taken from designival.com:

We take our lead from inspirational speakers … to create an incredible networking opportunity, where ambitious creatives and leading figures from the industry can meet, learn and debate in a unique environment.

The day will be packed with keynotes from icons of the industry, a design themed breakfast, masterclasses, portfolio surgeries, open studio tours across the city and an after party to end all after parties at Camp and Furnace.

There was very little about the day that was inspiring and few opportunities to actually ‘network’ with other people unless you tackled them as they started to leave during the final talk.

Five talks is hardly packed, there weren’t enough sandwiches to go around during the ‘design themed breakfast’ and there was no sign of any ‘masterclasses’ (unless I missed out on a secret memo). Most people had left as soon as the last talk was done so if you wanted any sort of after party you had to just mingle with the usual Friday crowd for C&F’s Food Slam.

If Designival doesn’t improve next year, I don’t think it’s the right event for me.

I prefer events run by passionate people, excited about sharing what they love with their peers and young people new to the industry. Events that you come away from eager to create stuff and get involved in new things, not ones that will disappear into nothingness in your mind after a few days.