designswarm thoughts

I wandered into downtown yesterday, in the bitter cold (it was around 13 degrees celcius, I haven’t felt that since my dutch winter many months ago) and bumped into what appeared to be the beginning of a week-long celebration of “fashion and design”. Another use of the word design. Interesting, i thought.

As I walked along McGill College avenue (which had been closed off for the event), they were still setting things up. A huge fashion stage took most of the space. A few over-tanned youngsters were giving out free Gillette razors, American express had a corporate booth, makeup stations were giving free makeup advice, massages, etc.

Scattered around the site Sid Lee a wellknown marketing agency in town, and communications partner of designmontreal, had attempted to get the point across that Montreal had been awarded the UNESCO city of design status for 2007.

Tall monolith-like boxes acted as billboards to explain this. The first one attempted to deconstruct the design of famous architectural landscapes in Montreal. Describing a step by step design process of the Olympic stadium (a structure better known for it’s failures, notably it’s dysfunctional roof) and Habitat 67 to name just 2.

The next one caught my eye as I had seen the design online. Bright large stickers covered the entire surface of the billboard with “le design c’est…” (design is…) and left the rest to the public. So far the public’s reaction was “design is the new esperanto”, “design is ugly”, “design is nothing”, etc.. In the middle of the monolith though there was an unfolded pizza box, with “the pizza will arrive cold” drawn on it and a written short story of a pizza delivery boy and his fight through traffic among a beautiful city he has learnt to ignore.

This was somewhat of a strange mixture. It wanted to be an attempt at user-generated /public opinion content but with the guerilla-style advertising pizza box taped in the middle it was hard to tell what we were supposed to look at or if we should even participate. As I wrote about last week, in light of the AIGA talk, it’s always good to set some rules if you want people to get involved. Otherwise, well, that’s what you get. Crapucopia.

Esperanto indeed, a language which everyone should talk and understand, but noone really does.

I had dinner last night with a good friend of mine, Valérie Sangin, a photographer who specialises in creative portraits and of course we had to catch up and I got her to share some of her experience, working in Montreal.

Things weren’t that peachy. Talented to bits, and very creative, she has been freelancing for the past few years, working as a wedding photographer during summer times to pay the bills. A bitter sweet experience studying at Concordia university made her realise she wasn’t interested in photography in the world of art. “There were no criteria you could operate on. Things are so subjective, it completely depended on the mood of the tutor to determine if she would like the work or not”.

After her studies, she opened a studio with some friends from school which was quite successful. She appeared in a movie. She organised the photoshoots for “A makeover story”-type of television show for a well-known Quebec TV channel. But nothing would ever come out of it. When she met professionals in the TV industry, they already had their own photographers. There is no space for new professionals in the city. The community is small and stays small with it’s own superstars and idols. As she pointed out, when there’s only 50 people who do the same thing, there’s only competition for the few jobs around, no sense of camaraderie.

She’s now back to freelancing on her own and finds the environment difficult. “I hate having to fight for the right to do what I want to do” she cries out, “it doesn’t make sense to spend 90% of my time trying to find work that will take me a few hours to actually do. A photoshoot isn’t that long after all”.

We also spoke about former friends and colleagues, noting that most of them now have completely changed career paths, working in jobs completely unrelated to design. “People just give up” she told me.

She remains ambitious and optimistic though. When I asked her where she sees herself in 5 years, she answered “I’d like to be a creative portrait photographer for celebrities. Like Annie Leibovitz, but I want total control over the photoshoot”.