This annual exhibition has been running since 1997 and is a great platform for emerging artists to mingle and share their work and views.

Are you ready to put yourself out there? Hurry as you only have 7 days to enter!

Yours with Art Exhibitions,
Amber van Sloten

What excites you most about Brisbane’s current design / creative industries?

We’ve been following the progress of the Edge over the past few years and have been really impressed by the space and the opportunities being made for creative professional to come together and engage. The first step to creativity is making a space available in your life for creativity to happen: Brisbane is definitely doing that.

What are the biggest challenges that face product designers in the coming 12 months?

At Portable we’ve been intrigued by the amount of data that is being aggregated around the world. An hour of video footage is uploaded to YouTube every second. That’s incredible. The same applies to the iTunes App Store and to web platforms in general. There is SO MUCH. How often do you try to find something interesting before giving up with nothing? So the challenge for product designers is going to be getting your product noticed. All the tools are there. Resources have never been more easy to attain.

What are the biggest road blocks you see that prevent us from achieving great design and delivering relevant products to consumers?

I’m a fan of Steve Blank who talks about the need for product designers to spend more time undergoing a customer discovery process than a design process. I think that understanding the core needs of users and customers is the biggest road block to most designers and design process. And when I say core, I mean keeping design to one or two key use-cases or stories that relate to your user and forgetting the rest.

What do you see as Brisbane’s biggest challenges to becoming a truly ‘creative city’?

Brisbane, you already are a creative city—stop beating yourself up so much! Go out there and find other creatives and talk about your ideas. That’s how incredible ideas and companies get founded, by encouraging people to mix. Maybe spend 2012 practicing saying to people, “I love your thinking, what can we work on?” and see what comes of it Brisbane.

You can follow Andrew on Twitter here

Portable will host Portable Presents Product Design 2012 next Tuesday. You can buy tickets here 

Very recently, I and a few girls went and checked out the Twilight Boutique Markets at Portside, here in Brisbane. We were on mission to discover some last minute Christmas treats for family and friends. I will have to admit that I had finished my Christmas gift buying, but it didn’t stop a tiny splurge on something special for me.

To my delight I discovered this gorgeous stall, displaying some very beautiful hand made paper crafts, by the name of The Papertie Affair (see pics for some of their creations). I was instantly drawn to the beautifully crafted ornaments for the Christmas tree and vintage paper inspired ‘Merry Christmas’ banner (which I had to buy and have up on the wall at home).

After seeing these stunning items I get the company name and that these guys are inlove with paper. It’s a passion and an affair for the creator, since The Papertie Affair was established in 2009. Originally only creating Christmas decorations, they now offer a huge range of products created from gorgeous paper – both vintage and new – including stationery, home decor and artwork.

So why not start your own affair and check out The Papertie Affair website for more info on their products and which markets you can see them in.

Yours in beautiful handcrafted paper
Dawn

A Local’s Guide is a stroke of design genius from Map Magazine

I’m a huge fan of the magazine from the content to their design and this local’s guide to Brisbane in app form is no exception.

Map describe the app as hundreds of random curated suggestions by locals for the best experiences in Brisbane.

You can search Brisbane’s best breakfasts, lunches, dinners, gigs and shopping destinations. What could be better than the best of our city at your fingertips.

I suggest you download this gem from the AppStore pronto. Chop Chop!

You can also search the guide online or add your own suggestion!

Yours in app love,

Justine.

A firm favourite was Harrison Saragossi, a local photographer who was this year named as the Walkley Young Australian Photographic Journalist of the Year  for his work documenting the Valley Nightlife. Harrison’s photos show raw, real and disturbingly human moments in the familiar “Valley Nightclub” right of passage many travel through in Brisbane.

Some of the “sound bytes” I jotted down from the day include:

Lisa Kingsberry
“Push the boundaries when no-one will give you an answer”
“If you can’t do it differently you shouldn’t be in the industry. Always question why you’re doing something.”

Scott Sneddon
“Make something bigger than yourself in a small moment”

Meg Cooper
“I always attract I need. Always be aware of your thoughts.”

And the heartwarming video from Benjamin Zander was a delightful accent to the day:

Yours in TED-inspiration,
Justine.

Sneak peak of artwork by Maria Cleary (designer/maker) + Ralph Barnett (art-director)

Tomorrow night (Friday)  will be the opening night for the third Seven with Another exhibition at Substation No 4. As with the previous exhibitions, seven creative types have been paired off with a contrasting and/or complimentary counterpart who is an expert in a different field. Each pair responds to a brief to come up with a conceptual piece of art that forms part of the exhibition. In the past this has ranged from interactive, illuminated sculptures to more traditional, beautifully crafted artworks.

THIRD: Seven with Another creatives include:

Alex Chomicz (film director) + Cezary Stulgis (sculptor)
Colleen Morgan (interaction designer) + Kate Stein (stylist)
Dane Middleton (sound designer) + Kirsty Boyle (robotics artist)
Igor Coric (animator) + Jesse Smith (photographer)
Kitty Horton (illustrator) + Patrick Ozmin (architectural graduate)
Maria Cleary (designer/maker) + Ralph Barnett (art-director)
Riki Salam (indigenous artist) + Steve Minon (copywriter)

If you can’t make it along on Friday, the exhibition is open from Saturday 8 October to Friday 14 October.

Yours in exhibitions,

Anya

Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, 1932

‘Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, The Image and The World’ celebrates the life and work of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004), one of the most influential artists in the history of 20th century photography.

This major retrospective exhibition features some of the most famous and powerful work from the renowned photographer’s extraordinary career, which spanned over 70 years.

‘The Man, The Image and The World’ showcases some of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s most acclaimed images including iconic moments in history and intimate insights into everyday life in America, Mexico, China, Japan, Bali, India, Europe and the USSR, and portraits of many of his contemporaries in the fields of art, literature and philosophy.

This exhibition is exclusive to Brisbane from 27 August – 27 November 2011. Make sure you see it before it is too late. For more information visit Queensland Art Gallery

Yours in influential artists,
Tanya.

I’ve recently stumbled across the Facebook page for a new cafe and it caught my eye. Set to open soon, the West End cafe combines my two great interests: design and coffee. The Rabbit Hole Ideation Cafe will be a space for creative types to meet, share ideas, tackle briefs and brainstorm concepts.

The cafe will provide individual workstations of three varieties:

• drop in desks for once off visits
• semi-permanent desks if you go there on a part time basis
• long term desks, booked per month.

All desks are equipped with power to plug in your laptop, internet connection, but best of all… $2 coffees! And it’s not just any coffee, it’s specialty coffee brewed by champion barista, Tim Adams.

The Rabbit Hole Ideation cafe also includes a board room, which can be booked to meet with clients, brainstorm ideas or collaborate with a team of creatives. The board room will have blank walls and designers will be encouraged to use the walls as a blank canvas to write/draw/scribble their ideas and thoughts.

I love that this new concept cafe is encouraging creativity in Brisbane. Can’t wait for it to open!

Yours in ideas and coffee,

Anya

“Pre-cinkt” A clearly defined area in which to browse, shop, meet, watch, eat, learn and be inspired.

Nat Duncan had the idea for Precinkt, a visual destination guide, after moving to West End (an inner Brisbane suburb) and discovering just how many activities were on offer at her doorstep.

“I could spend 10 hours just on Boundary Street going to Yoga, having breakfast, browsing a book shop, helping out at a community centre, going for coffee, shopping for gifts, buying a new dress, people watching, having a cocktail,” she explained. “The precinkt idea grew from there. To showcase what’s great to see and do in a small area.”

As a visual person, Nat wanted to avoid lines and lines of kooky copy and let the images speak for themselves.

“I’d love Precinkt to be known as an inspiring site. We don’t need to be travelling all over the city to get our needs and wants met. My main aim is to develop an awareness of the vast possibilities that lie in precinkts for visitors and locals.”

Drawing on local knowledge and contributors, who are already out-and-about exploring and being tourists in their own city, this pleasant-on-the-eye website highlights the quirky, chilled, unique, delectable and often forgotten places. From cafes to shops to boutiques to art galleries – Precinkt has you covered.

In an era when we’re seemingly always attached to a digital device, Precinkt is a gentle reminder of the benefits of “looking up and around” as we walk through the city.

“Once you ask yourself,  ‘Can this little area meet all my needs and wants?’ and start looking at it through the lens of a camera – you realise how valuable your local area is to you,” Nat said. “Once you’ve embraced your local area you start to move with it and become part of the fabric.  That’s a nice feeling.”

Visit www.precinkt.com to check out the guides available already or register to contribute your local Precinkt.

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Tell us, what draws you to a destination? Where are some of your favourite places to hang out in your city?

If you enjoy Precinkt you might also like:

• The Urban List  - described as, ” “go to” source for all that’s worth eating, drinking, buying and booking in our fair weather metropolis”
• The Good Guide 
• Touris.ms

Yours in exploring local,

Justine.

Pecha Kucha visited the Brisbane Powerhouse again last night, with 11 speakers presenting loads of neat ideas. For those not familiar with Pecha Kucha, it is an event where designers, artists, architects, or other creative people are given 20 seconds per slide to present 20 slides on their designs, thoughts or ideas. Each speaker gets 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame.

There were quite a few thought-provoking ideas that came out of last night’s event (Volume 24) but one speaker that I particularly enjoyed was Yen Trinh. It became apparent that Yen’s name is very fitting, as she has a yearning and passion for improving society. Her presentation ’20 wishes for Brisbane’ listed  20 awesome ideas for ways we could improve Brisbane based on her previous experiences in other countries.

Some of my personal favourites were:

• City-wide putt putt golf: the course exists all around the city on streets and laneways, and each hole is designed by a different person/group.
• Pop-up drive-in movie theatres: drive-in movies that pop up in suburban shopping centre carparks, where the space goes to waste at night time.
• Cooler street furniture: including hammocks, recliner chairs and movable furniture.

• Someone like Candy Chang: whose projects include the very cool ‘I wish this was‘ sticker.
• Front yard cafes and friendlier neighbourhoods: Suburban Grind is a community building project travelling around Brisbane, setting up in people’s garages and serving free cafe style coffee in an effort to bring neighbours together.

Very cool! Can’t wait to see some of these projects up and running!

What would you like to see in Brisbane? What existing space would you redesign?

Yours in creative ideas,

Anya