Friday 22 November 2013

Creative Networks: Wayne Hemmingway


  • member of the design council
  • started on camden market - selling clothes to get rent
  • Kensington market - like afflicts palace
  • Macys - new york - asked for a order
  • Red & Dead shoes 
    • friendship partner with people 
    • only as good as those around you
  • close to war
    • better red than dead protests
  • weetabix and cornflakes
  • what you stand for - affordable design
  • be street and where we came from
  • worlds first affordable design label
  • making life better - feel better
  • "design is about improving things that matter in life"
  • need everyone to understand what your doing
  • housing development - like prison
  • wrote an article - slums of the future
  • don't need training to do something - just passion
  • testing / research - learning where it works
  • free - range kids
  • design thinking better than manifestation
  • have to live your 'stand for' though
  • can't bullshit it
  • hush puppies video - website
  • GPLAN - brand - brought back to life
  • Mcdy's uniform
  • no advertising - just philosophy
  • follow instincts
  • vintage festival - setup
  • dreamland - look it up
I was massively inspired by Wayne's talk and i'm really glad that I went. I really understood what he was saying and felt motivated by his story. He showed that something amazing can come something small if you allow it and build up people around you. He saw things that bothered him and he acted upon it which has now led him to massive projects to change it. He also showed how you don't have to confine yourself to just one thing. They left the Red & Dead label they had created and went in entirely different direction. Sometimes I won't try something because I don't no anything about it or haven't tried it. His story is testament to the fact you don't need to be trained in something to do it.

After his talk I visited there website, Hemmingway Design where I found there blog.
One article:


WAYNE HEMINGWAY – ON CREATIVE EDUCATION

I’m a great believer in nurture and the concept of “practice makes perfect.” With a lot of people who excel at something, you can more often than not trace their expertise back to their childhood. If you do something all your life it becomes second nature, and you can’t always pick it up later. Famously, Andre Agassi learnt his trade at 3 years old and David Beckham learnt his signature skill of being able to “land a football on a sixpence” by spending hours and not going inside till he had kicked a ball through a tyre hung from a tree 10 times consecutively.
I know from families like mine, that kids growing up with creativity around them more often than not become creative almost by default. Matthew Syed’s book Bounce, The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice says more than I can say here.
I therefore have a problem with people who go to college at 18 in the expectation of becoming creative. It is extremely difficult to come at it from a standing start. Being creative is in you in some way by adulthood or it’s not. You can choose to turn it off, but it won’t be easy to develop without nurture early on.
I was brought up in a tremendously creative household. It was a working class family in Morecambe, Lancashire that wanted to do things. My granddad made all my toys, fishing rods and so on and my mum and gran always had two sewing machines whirring. They even dyed their own fabrics.
Gerardine and I have four kids and they are all very creative. They were brought up surrounded by magazines and books, attended fashion and materials shows when we ran Red or Dead and frequented vintage, design shops. And after we sold Red or Dead came to visit housing developments and regeneration schemes around the world with us. We never had time to teach them, but they were immersed in design and creativity.
You can go out and learn things, but you have a better chance if you start that learning early in your life. Our son Jack left college after 18 months, for example, because he felt he was gaining nothing. He just wanted to go out and do it and was ready for that.
This is why primary and junior schools are very important. They give children a chance to indulge their passions early on. It can be too late at 18. I do though, have a problem with the lack of creativity in state schools – when we sent our younger two kids to private school they were much happier with their creative schooling.
There has been an increased demand for creative education over recent years. In my generation parents wouldn’t have seen it such a good idea, working in a bank or for Marks & Spencer being seen as better options. That perception has changed, particularly among middle class parents who see design as a viable alternative and one with “bragging rights.”
In our business we need designers who are fleet of foot and can work across disciplines. For example, our daughter Tilly studied urban design, works with us at Hemingway Design and is equally at home designing G-Plan furniture and on uniforms for McDonalds.
If you’ve got a creative mind you can be flexible, but colleges don’t generally allow for that. Design for us is a state of mind rather than a particular course of study.

I felt this partly very true, I think creativity is within you from a very young age, however some people don't discover there use for it until later in life. I never realised that me doodling, me thinking weird ideas, loving packaging and materials and images meant anything or could become something. I didn't even no graphic design existed. I thought about advertising because that was a topic that I knew about due to being exposed to it however I don't think it's an industry that necessary suits my morals and personality. If I had decided that and not discovered design then my creative talents could of gone to waste and I do a degree in something that didn't feed my brain of ideas. I think that education should teach about the creative possibilities more to you as a student because many peoples talents can be lost if they don't have the drive to discover it. Those who understand there talents and how it can be used then all hail to them and enter the world without teaching but those who don't I think need to be directed or shown what possibilities they potentially have. Wether that course even shows them that it's not there direction, it'll defiantly eliminate the option and teach them what they do like because they no what they don't like. This I think personally can be invaluable to a creative and a person.

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