I think perhaps a better title for this entry would be:
We need more brochures! But that seems to be the way here.
After a long day – 25 hours in fact – travelling and then a clear day doing not much apart from walking around the city soaking up the culture, graphics, smell and delightful lack of street advertising the main event started.
Well there was a 3 hour set up for the stand at Dragon Design Festival - the annual design festival held in china with the mission of promoting industrial (that’s graphic and product to us) design in china. but this was down whilst the other members of the UK delegation were derelict of their duty in the local pub – Bavarian themed, of all things!
So first day of the festival the Clear Focus exhibition stand was well prepared with bilingual designs and brochures – thank you Pauline Weng for your translations – but nothing would prepare me for the sheer onslaught of interest we were subjected to. From 9.30 for the next two hours the stand was engulfed in a swarm of brochure hunters, voraciously consuming every element of design we had to offer.
Taking photos of our posters, asking for photos in front of the giant logo on the pop up stand and requesting business cards. Curiously and almost the opposite of meeting people in the UK, I ma now very used to exchanging cards with person two whilst hardly breaking conversation from person one.
Meeting a huge variety of wonderful and interesting characters, from local students to national leaders in their field, all of whom were equally interested in learning anything they could about how design in the UK differs from their city and their country.
In between meeting and topping up the literature stand I managed to slip off for a cheeky photo with one of the two Olympic torches, larger than it seemed on TV that’s for sure.
But the most heart warming element was the endless photography of the posters though – what greater flattery is there for a creative and marketing company than other designers seeking inspiration from our own work!
Thank you Guang Hua foundation for inviting us to your country and your festival, there’s days two and three plus the forum yet to go.
We’re gonna need more brochures (sorry Barry, I know as head of client marketing you’d soundly tell off anyone for running out of marketing material). But as Geoff McCormick of Alloy put it when I asked him – it gets too expensive to produce that many brochures. Interest from China is enormous.
