UNITEC second year student with get-up-and-go Mark Buntzen put on this wonderful ideas-swapping session last night.  I gave a presentation on Creative Federation and how we are combining the “ideas age” with the maturity of the web in terms of social networking, online software and the freemium concepts.  Got a good reception…  although at times I stopped to make sure everyone was with me - our slides rolled every 20 seconds so we didn’t have much time to go off-deck!

So we also had a demo of how to make music using Live, an astonishing collection of fine art drawings of extinct birds lying dead, an overview of the Irish design scene, the Brooklyn photography scene, the latest Milan Design show, the story behind Mountain Buggy…  the list goes on.  Have a look at their site.

Well done Mark on a great event - look forward to the next one!

Attended the launch party of the fifth issue of the Design mag Threaded edited out of UNITEC, showcasing new talent and designed like a work of art.  In fact they had the pages of it spread out along the walls like they were works of art.  Nice touch.  Well worth getting a copy (all good bookshops blah blah) and every edition has sold out quickly.  Got chatting to Agnes Ang and the Elliot, Kate and Annette from design agency EndemicWorld.com about the up-and-coming Auckland scene.  Have a look at their site and peruse the range of stuff they have.  Everyone seemed to have it in for Wanganui (they’d all been there on design immersion courses) and we thought of a T shirt design “I hate Wanganui too”.  I guess you had to be there.  Thanks to Design professor/kingpin Roger Bateman for the invite.