Some penetrating insights from Ashraf Jamal

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Ashraf Jamal (Film & Video Technology, Faculty of Informatics & Design, CPUT)

2. A Matter of Design
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a matter of design

4. zv a matter of design
Ashraf Jamal - Film & Video Technology, Faculty of Informatics & Design,

7. Creativity is just connecting things
Steve Jobs – Wired Interview

8. When you ask creative
people how they did
something, they feel a little
guilty because they didn’t
really do it, they just saw
something. It seemed
Robin Rhode
obvious to them after a
while. That’s because they
were able to connect
experiences they’ve had and
synthesize new things.

9. And the reason they were able to do that was that they had
more experiences or they have thought more about their
experiences than other people….
Robin Rhode

10. Robin Rhode
…. Unfortunately that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people
in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they
don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very
linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.

11. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the
better design we will have.
Robin Rhode

12. Why is experience a rare commodity?
What does having diverse experiences entail?
Why is a broader perspective critical?
What is the relation between experience and
design?

13. Answering these questions require
a local, regional, continental, and
intercontinental or transnational
perspective.
Experience in today’s world
demands the splicing of these
connected-yet-dissonant factors.
Given the rich complexity of our
worlds where does one locate
design in the world?

16. ?

18. “Adequately nurtured, creativity fuels culture,
infuses a human-centred development and
constitutes the key ingredient for job creation,
innovation and trade while contributing to
social inclusion, cultural diversity and
environmental sustainability.”
UN Creative Economy Report, 2010

19. What defines our “real needs”?
What constitutes the mesh of the
Real and the Imagined in our
creative economy?

20. How have we positioned ourselves at that
cross-roads of a national-and-postnational
creative economy?
How have we as a social network informed
by the visions of the government, business
sector, civil society, and academia,
maximised not only the market share of
our creative economy but its mind and
emotions share?

21. “We tend to blame our problems on development,
on inequality, on history, but we forget that we do
have choices about the future, and those choices
lie in design … and we are faced with the need to
re-imagine the world in which we live in very
fundamental ways.” Mark Swilling

22. “Designers on our continent need to focus on
the needs of a predominantly youthful
population with exceptionally high
unemployment rates and other pressing
challenges associated with this reality”
Mugendi M’Rithaa

23. “The City of Cape Town is heading for disaster
and is already in deep crisis if one cares to
look close enough. It has manifested most
starkly in the dire situation that faces the
majority of the City’s residents, who are
excluded from the formal economy and must
rely on sub standard public services and their
own makeshift shelters” Edgar
Pieterse

24. “Emotional Branding is about building relationships; it’s
about giving a brand and a product long-term value. It’s
about sensorial experiences: designs that make you feel
the product, designs that make you taste the product,
designs that make you buy the product. “

25. What conceptual and emotional investments
are we making in South Africa as a brand?
How does this investment manifest itself in our
creative economy?
Where is the best start-up point and point of
reflection, mediation, and consolidation?

26. “Shopping is arguably the last remaining form of public activity.
Through a battery of increasingly predatory forms, shopping has
been able to colonize – even replace – almost every aspect of urban
life. Historical town centers, suburbs, streets, and now train
stations, museums, hospitals, schools, the internet, and even the
military, are increasingly shaped by the mechanisms and spaces of
shopping. Churches are mimicking shopping malls to attract
followers. Airports have become wildly profitable by converting
travellers into consumers. Museums are turning to shopping to
survive. The traditional European city once tried to resist shopping,
but is now a vehicle for American-style consumerism. ‘High’
architects disdain the world of retailing yet use shopping
configurations to design museums and universities. Ailing cities are
revitalized by being planned more like malls”
Rem Kolhaas, Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping

27. James Ford, “Holiday Time in Cape Town in the 20 th Century” , 1899

28. It is not things in-and-for themselves which
make the difference but the imaginative leap
built into things.

29. “Objects do not exist in a
vacuum: they are part of a
complex choreography of
Interactions”

30. “Brain scans have shown that high-end brands
evoke the same neural response as religious
images; that … an iPod has the same effect as
Mother Teresa.”
The Age of Absurdity: Why modern life makes it hard to
be happy – Michael Foley.

32. Contemporary shift in values which favours
“change over stability, potential over
achievement, anticipation over appreciation,
collaboration over individuality, opportunism
over loyalty, transaction over relationship,
infantlisim over maturity, passivity over
engagement, eloping over coping, entitlement
over obligation, outwardness over inwardness
and cheerfulness over concern”
The Age of Absurdity – Michael Foley

33. It is the organisational power of the Web which
is its most potent strategic value, for in working
in this way it best ensures the “ways that people
would want to connect with one another.”
Marc Gobe: “The Web is the most emotional of
all media because people made it that way;
people gave social media their human substance
and have expanded their context.”

34. To be listened to.
A forum to share opinions.
A blank canvas for creation.
A bazaar for buying anything.
A way to search or find most stuff.
A place to change identities and become
whomever we want.
To know the people we are dealing with.

35. “New ideas (not
money or
machinery) are
the source of
success today,
and the greatest
source of
personal
satisfaction, too.”

36. FROM CONSUMERS TO PEOPLE
FROM PRODUCT TO EXPERIENCE
FROM HONESTY TO TRUST
FROM QUALITY TO PREFERENCE
FROM NOTORIETY TO ASPIRATION
FROM IDENTITY TO PERSONALITY
FROM FUNCTION TO FEEL
FROM UBIQUITY TO PRESENCE
FROM COMMUNICATION TO DIALOGUE
FROM SERVICE TO RELATIONSHIP
Marc Gobe

37. The critical importance of creativity in the
world meets creativity because of the world.
SUSTAINABLE LIVING
COMMUNITY
RESILIENCE
CREATIVITY AND
INNOVATION

38. INTENSIFY WEB MANIFESTATION.
HARVEST UNIQUE MEMORABLE
EXPERIENCES / RICH CONVERSATION/
GROWTH.