Radar: Designival at Camp and Furnace

We’ll be revisiting this again, but for now it’s enough to say we’re officially excited about Designival: the grudge match.

Actually, that’s not what it’s called. But there is a spicy undercurrent to this hotly anticipated festival, heading to Camp and Furnace in November. For it pitches together two designers from very different worlds: Iconic Mexico 68 Olympic designer (our favourite ever poster), New York’s Lance Wyman, with Simon Manchipp, the ‘logos are dead’ man who believes that ‘branding is a conversation, not a broadcast’.

Should be fun when these two gurus get head to head and talk typefaces (we know, that’s terribly reductionist of us) .

“I believe in the 10,000 hours rule. One cannot be considered an expert in anything until they have racked up a lifetime of design,” Manchipp (who branded Eurostar and Amnesty International, and whose pictograms were the visual cues to this summer’s Olympic sports) said.

Wyman passes that test - and some - having created searingly memorable identities for libraries, undergrounds, expos and hotels over the past 50 years.

Two great bookings, then, for one essential show this November. Helmed by Liverpool heavyweights, Black and Ginger, Smiling Wolf and Uniform, the event is supported by Millky Tea, Apposing and RIBA. That Liverpool’s looking good these days is, in no small measure, down to on-the-money agencies like these. Well worth flipping open your lambskin Smytheson day-to-dayer and making a few red circles for their masterclasses and keynotes.

We’re hoping that ‘Designival’ is a working title, though boys? Yes?

Designival
22-23 November
Camp and Furnace


Tickets: £50