Caroline Archer is a Partner in UKType (www.uktype.com) and blogs here about this year’s Plus International Design Festival exhibition, part-sponsored by media partner 4Talent.
Plus International Design Festival
There’s not much to queue for on River Street, especially in November, but for four days last week cars were doubled parked, coaches arrived in convoy and expectant delegates lined the pavement outside the newly opened Fazeley Studios. They’d traveled to Eastside from across Europe and the Middle East, from London and around the UK and had even found their way from far-flung corners of Deritend. River Street sprang to life.
The reason for this influx was the Plus International Design Festival, which had returned to Birmingham for its third year.
This year the exhibitions were disparate and unconventional. Agencies and freelancers exhibited work that was unproven and untried. Two of my favourite pieces included Shanghai-based WOKmedia who showed Between Lines, a three dimensional, flexible typographic ‘bookshelf’; whilst type designer, Timothy Donaldson produced Plus non-Plus: a vast canvas covered in letters so large they had to be formed by the whole body with the assistance of scaffolding. Alongside established exhibitors such as Clusta and Fluid was Smile a trio of exciting young newcomers to the local design scene who are definitely ones to watch for in the future.
The lecture series is always the jewel-in-the-crown of Plus. This year an international line-up of speakers - both known and unknown - held the audience over three days during which time they delivered a series of informative and inspiring talks. In particular Jonathan Barnbrook commanded an audience that would have been the envy of the Guillemots and which roused as much passion.
However, the Festival was not simply about watching and listening - it was also about doing, and there were plenty of workshops to keep the visitors entertained, and the ever popular walking tours ran to capacity as visitors explored the typographic complexity of Birmingham’s urban environment under the able guidance of local historian, Ben Waddington.
But what was the purpose of all this activity?
Plus is not about acquiring clients or pecuniary gain: it had a more significant and richer purpose than simple commercialism. To this end, it was edifying to seeing a stone carver from Devon, chatting with the creative director from a London agency who was talking a young graduate from BCU who had engaged the attention of an eminent type designer. This, in microcosm, was what Plus is about: the great and the good mixing with the great unknown in parity.
