London Design Festival 2008

This year Kooji went along to this year's London Design Festival, an event that spans several weeks covering all kinds of creative work. Getting to London (by coach) was a chore but as soon as we arrived in Marble Arch a swift full english breakfast got us back to full health and ready to discover the festival's goings on.

Whilst there we caught some short film competitions, "The Smalls" and "Filminute", the latter being hosted by Selfridges and found completely by accident when the lift went down instead of up! There was a large darkened room where the 60 second movies were played, some better than others. Once we'd seen all of the entrants we headed over to the pcs at the back to vote. http://filminute.blogspot.com/

We both agreed that "Wall Street" by Gary Leib should win as it was imaginative, brilliantly animated and witty. http://www.filminute.com/2008/screeningroom/index.php?id=25

Afterwards we found are way into The Smalls, another film competition using small screen formats. iPods to be precise. The quality of the finalists' work was really impressive and we spent a good hour or so watching them all one by one!




"Come Wander With Me" by Director Phillip Van was absolutely stunning.

Designers block has been running in previous years with some cool exhibitions of product design work so this was next on our list. Finding the place was suprisingly hard at first until we realised that the friendly chap in Covent Garden had give us the wrong directions! If only we'd turned left instead of right! Embrassingly it was then blatanty obvious where it was. Somewhere below the gigantic posters shouting "DESIGNERS BLOCK!" on them. Ahem.

The artists were mostly on-hand to show off their new designs, a lot of which was brilliant. The highlight of the exhibition was the portable cardboard shelter for homeless people. The designer explained that he was seeking funding for these to be provided to those in need. We hope he's succesful. http://www.verydesignersblock.com/

Leaving the exhibition we had one thing on our minds, food. First we popped into a cool looking diner on Covent Garden but two rude waitresses later and were on our way to nearby mexican where we had learned there was a 2 for 1 deal going.

The second day was for relaxation before the dreaded National Express journey home and luckily the rare British sunshine made an appearance so it was over to Hyde Park for some chilling. Oh and Pizza by the ducks.

Next year we'll be heading down south again for Design Festival 2009, by train that is!