Design discourse
MANILA, Philippines - When you can make people dance around in a silent disco, you know you’re doing something right.
Last year, Manila Design Week made its debut into the design-literate Filipino’s consciousness with a week of activities, events, discourse on graphic design in the country, and, yes, the infamous Silent Disco. This year, Manila Design Week is keeping the basic structure — one week of design events that combine graphic design with related fields with lots of music and some fashion — but infusing some fresh flavor with different a few surprises up their sleeve.
Everything and anything graphic design, in all media, will be featured: from print and publication design to web and motion graphics passing through its applications in photography, advertising, music and fashion. Daily activities in venues around the metro are scheduled, like last year, for one whole week in August, from today to Friday (August 13).
“Manila Design Week is a new festival,” explains Clara Balaguer, the project head. “It’s only in its second year, so change is a pretty constant factor for us.”
Change comes in the form of Manila Design Week 2010’s line-up of events. Instead of dancing around in a quiet room, 2010’s attendees will be privy to a design battle, a fashion exhibit, a freedom wall, and even a design collabo on ’70s era album art.
The highlight is, of course, Graphika Manila 2010, which brings together internationally-renowned industry names like Tara McPherson, Danny Yount, Phunk Studio, Cynthia and Arnold Arre, Rocksetship Post, and Underground Logis for a design conference.
“The Philippines is an odd destination for artists and designers in general,” Clara says. “They’re not asked here often. There aren’t that many platforms or large-scale events able to shoulder the cost of bringing folk like them over, a circumstance that plays to our advantage. They are curious about the country and the city. We still sound esoterically exotic, at least to the non-Asian people.”
This is exactly what Manila Design Week seeks to demolish—the image of the Filipino as design-challenged. “Filipino graphic design is alive, looking for its own style and standing on its own two feet,” Clara says. “Our modern graphic heritage is richer than we realize. Our urban landscape is full of beautiful things we constantly hear called ‘baduy’ or ‘skwater’ or ‘pangit.’”
“Especially with the theme for this year, ‘Design Everyday’, we hope to remind everyone of how lucky we are. We are surrounded by so many graphic influences, all of them with such strong local character. There’s enough flavor to go round, graphically speaking.”
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Manila Design Week 2010 is a project of Team Manila.
Co-presented by Manila Beer, Power Mac Center and Bratpack.
In cooperation with Velprint, HP Printing, Maximum Advantage, Rickshaw Productions Locked down Entertainment and Ayala Malls.
