Design tales from Turn Up for the Books

This April, our studio attended Turn Up for the Books – a Birmingham Design Festival event held at The Crossing in Digbeth. Hear from our Creative Director, Dan Sharp, about this brilliant event, which brought together over 250 members of the West Midlands’ creative community.

We started the evening with some delicious Vietnamese street food from Brúm Mì, which went down a treat. After sniffing all the books in the Birmingham Design Shop, we headed in to enjoy the first speaker, Sauman Wong, Senior Design Director at MUBI, who shared some of her favourite projects at Victionary and Fashionary and wowed us with her incredible approach to content and book cover design, which utilised printers’ expertise to achieve some crazy finishes.

Jamie Ellul and Jim K Davies then spoke about their first book, Logo Rhythm, a homage to band logos. Many bands they spoke to said it was the first time they had been asked about their logo designs, and so the book is full of genuinely unique interviews and insights. Hearing about the design and production of the book was also interesting as there was lots to learn about the publication process – including all the ups and downs!

After the break, we were treated to an on-stage interview with designer, educator and researcher Dr Danah Abdulla, hosted by Luke Tongue. Danah discussed her book, Design Otherwise – a book about design education in the Arab region that is largely based on Eurocentric models, and “considers the purpose and relevance of design education in contemporary postcolonial societies”. She also shared an overview of her other book, Designerly Ways of Knowing, which is described as “a guidebook slash notebook of things designers should think about in order for them to know”.

Finishing off the evening was British graphic designer (and favourite of our Creative Director) Chris Ashworth. He took us firstly on his career path from Creative Director at Getty Images, Nokia and Microsoft to a designer “creating alternative street culture work for brands and music artists”. We had only ever known Chris from his work at Raygun, so it really was fascinating to hear about this other (very corporate) journey. He then shared a vast collection of photography he collected over the years which features in his book, Disorder: Swiss Grit Vol II. This catalogue of work displays Chris’s fusion of Swiss principles and typographic street aesthetic.

You can read more about BDF and upcoming festivals, conferences and workshops here: https://birminghamdesignfestival.org.uk/