David Pidgeon "Geometry of Type" talk

I was fortunate to attend David's presentation "The Geometry of Type" on Monday (December 7, 2009) at the Australian Museum. Looking at David's work, I got many ideas for future projects about how to take an idea and simplify it to its essence. How to use simple shapes, lines and colour to communicate deep and complex concepts.

Event Summary
Keen to see the alphabet from a different angle? David Pidgeon, from Design By Pidgeon in Melbourne, looks at restricting the roman alphabet to strict geometries in an attempt to explore form, legibility, visual perception, dimension, points of view, perspective, colour, animation and modularity.

His passion for design excellence can be witnessed in the evolution of his work in the last decade. The son of a mathematician and of Italian/Anglo Saxon descent, David has embarked on a journey in design that is influenced by the way he sees the world. He pursues diversity in clients and output, which in turn employs a curious mix of playful yet intelligent; precise yet intuitive output.

His experiments in typographic form are a process that he has pursued since being a student and one of the creative threads that draws his work together.

David is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) and has recently returned from speaking at the ICOGRADA World Design Congress in Beijing.
(source: AGDA's event listing)

David Pidgeon's typography work





http://pidgeon.com.au/

Wisdom by Andrew Zuckerman

Have you ever planned to attended a lecture not expecting much, perhaps even thinking it will be boring... Well, Andrew Zuckerman's talk about his Wisdom series was just the opposite of that! Right from the beginning he established a connection with the audience, and shared his passion generously. To me, this was one of those fortunate opportunities, where I found myself at an event, which left me thinking for days to come.

On October 16, 2008 photographer Andrew Zuckerman gave a talk at the opening of his exhibition, titled Wisdom. Through his work Zuckerman hopes to revive the tradition of the elders being the wise members of the tribe, and to helps us realize that we are a collective group, which possesses an enormous amount of knowledge and experience. He interviewed and photographed 51 people over the age of 65, whom we consider to be wise. Those include Nelson Mandela, Clint Eastwood and Judi Dench.

The exhibition is currently still running until November 16th at the State Library of New South Wales. The exhibition space is set up beautifully and simply, utilizing only black and white colors with clean typography along the walls. If you have a chance, go see it!




In addition to the exhibition, Andrew Zuckerman also produced a book and a movie with the same title, Wisdom. Here is the movie trailer. May we find the wisdom within ourselves and share it with the world.



The full video of the talk and some additional "behind the scenes" videos are available on the State Library website here [long link].