When Ramy Alawssy returned to Dubai in 2010, having completed a degree in graphic design in Malaysia, he identified a gap in the UAE's creative landscape. "I was still fresh, in the sense that I was not familiar with the creative scene here. I realised there was a huge gap between me as someone starting up here, and the big advertising agencies and the rest of the creative community."
Alawssy spent the next two years working as an in-house designer, while organising events, on a voluntary basis, for Behance, a New York-headquartered online platform for the creative industries. In 2014, he met the co-founder of Behance in New York, who offered to introduce Alawssy to big-name international speakers if he wanted to start organising larger-scale creative events in Dubai. “And that’s what happened. He connected me with big speakers. I decided that if we were going to do it, we would do it right – that’s how ING came about.”
ING is the creative agency responsible for the annual ING Creative Festival, which is taking place this year from April 28 to 30 at Dubai Design District. “ING is a suffix for doing and making,” Alawssy explains. “I realised that there aren’t many workshops that take place at conferences. A lot of conferences are focused on talks, and a lot of those talks are focused on showing work. But I wanted to see a festival – and a community – that would go beyond inspiration and really push the idea of making things.”
When Alawssy says “things”, he means it in the very broadest sense of the word. “It could be anything from fashion to graphic design, to illustration. Depending on the discipline of the speaker, they need to share their process. So if the speaker is a world-renowned illustrator who makes posters, we want them to show the process of making posters through a workshop. If they are an incredible graphic designer who makes beautiful books, they can explain the bookbinding process.”
This year’s festival will include 20 big-name speakers, an art exhibition, networking sessions, panel discussions, portfolio reviews and workshops on everything from the aforementioned bookbinding, to 3-D design and printing, Arabic calligraphy and branding for start-ups. Alawssy has attended events across Europe and the United States in search of speakers of the highest calibre, he says. “I’ve listened to talks by some of the most incredible speakers. There were some, such as Francesco Franchi, where the moment I left their talks, I knew I needed to get them to give a similar talk in Dubai. These people were so inspiring and so informative, and they had such a positive energy.
“We’ve tried to diversify it and not focus too much on one topic. We try to make it so that different creative disciplines can enjoy the event, and even a person who just enjoys art can take something from it. The talks are not particularly technical. They will be very informative for people [who work in the creative industries], which is our biggest audience, but I believe that anyone who walks into these talks will definitely enjoy them,” he says.
Last year’s inaugural ING festival featured the likes of Bruno Sellés, who has worked with Jay Z and was responsible for designing the jerseys for FC Barcelona. “The people who came down to the event last year were blown away by it. I don’t think they expected it to be at that level. For us, the focus is on the content. Everything else is secondary. The venue is interesting, and what we offer is nice, but in the end, what will stay with people is what they learn during the festival.”
This year, pre-event ticket sales suggest that people are travelling from as far afield as Europe, Asia and the US to attend the festival. “This shows that we’re able to compete with international creative festivals,” says Alawssy.
This year's high-profile speakers include David Delgado, who works as a visual strategist in Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Recent projects by Delgado include Metamorphosis, an interactive experience where people can walk through a recreation of the tail of a comet; the Nasa Orbit Pavilion, which allows people to listen to satellites streaking across the sky above them; and the Visions of the Future poster series, which envisages a day when we will be able to travel to far-flung corners of the universe. Excitement is also building about the presence of Neville Page, a British-American film and television creature and concept designer, who has worked on movies such as Watchmen, Star Trek, Tron: Legacy and Avatar.
The focus for the moment is on big-name international speakers, with limited local content, Alawssy explains. “The aim is, firstly, to get creatives together over the course of two days; and secondly, to earn their respect and trust. We’ve discovered that in order for people in the region to take you seriously, you need to bring them speakers that they would not otherwise have access to. So the ING festival is focused on doing that, but we are trying through that approach to get big names in the region to take us seriously, and then want to participate in the future. So we are looking in the longer term to work with big names regionally and locally. And we do events that are 100 per cent local at other points in the year.”
Among these are a recent celebration that Alawssy refers to as “our wall event”. The story goes something like this: for two years, Alawssy used to walk past a bare concrete wall in Jumeirah Lakes Towers, on his way to work. He decided that, with a lick of paint or two, the wall could be transformed into a great public art installation. “I got in touch with the JLT authorities, and I didn’t hear back from them for a over a year. When they got back to me, they said: ‘Do you still want to paint this wall?’ A month later, an artist friend of mine came down and painted it. We celebrated the one-year anniversary of the wall this month with an event that included local artists and musicians. There was live music by Freshly Ground Sounds, as well as a Ripe market.
“We also make our own content – we are creatives ourself,” Alawssy continues. “When we created the bookbinding workshop, we also created a kit that we handed out to every attendee. And for the promotional material for the festival, we filled balloons with Holi powder, popped them, and then photographed the explosion against a desert landscape. We wanted to mix that creative element with the UAE landscape.”
So is the gap that Alawssy identified in 2010 any closer to being filled? “Absolutely. Just the fact that Dubai has opened the Dubai Design District is massive, in terms of how much the country recognises the importance of design. There is a big design scene emerging in Dubai now.
“I’m a true believer that design is the future. If you look at people’s motivation when they are purchasing something – these days, it’s always design-driven. People are more design-savvy than ever. I believe it is the age of the designer.”
What not to miss
• Bookbinding by Jiani Lu
This hands-on workshop will see the graphic designer Jiani Lu share her knowledge about bookbinding, and paper and print design. It will begin with a keynote presentation introducing and demonstrating the use of bookbinding tools, paper folding, thread preparation and hole punching. Participants will then be able to apply their knowledge in an individual bookbinding exercise, resulting in the creation of an exposed-spine bound book. Taking place: April 28, 6.30pm to 9pm
• Design Scale: Ten to Ten Million Users by Hal Wuertz
As a design researcher and facilitator at IBM Watson, Hal Wuertz has led design-thinking workshops for hundreds of designers, developers and business leaders. In this workshop, Wuertz will present IBM Design’s approach to “design thinking”. Attendees will be set a design challenge, and should leave the session armed with a set of techniques that can be applied to anything from designing an enterprise software product to a party. “This deep dive into IBM design thinking will supply you with human-centred methods you can apply to design challenges, wherever you find them,” is the ING promise. Taking place: April 29, 3.30pm to 6pm
• Soup to Nuts by Neville Page
Neville Page is a British-American film and television creature and concept designer who has worked on films such as Super 8, Watchmen, Star Trek, Tron: Legacy, Cloverfield and Avatar. In 2010, his works were featured in an exhibit titled From Page to Screen: Character and Creature Design of Neville Page at the Oceanside Museum of Art in California. In this workshop, he will be presenting his process of developing characters for films and video games, with specific demonstrations on exactly how he crafts his creatures. This is a unique opportunity to see how the seeds of an idea are transformed into fully fledged digital sculptures. Taking place: April 30, 3.30pm to 6pm
• Arabic Logotype Design by Wissam Shawkat
Wissam Shawkat is a graphic designer, as well as a master of Arabic calligraphy. He has a degree in civil engineering from Basra University, but has been fascinated by the written form and abstract shapes of letters since an early age. His talk will offer insights into the rules of Arabic logotype. Attendees will then be given two tasks – to create a full Arabic logotype that matches a specified English type, and to complete missing letters from a pre-designed Arabic logotype.
Taking place: April 30, 3.30pm to 6pm
• Travel Posters to Alien Worlds by David Delgado
This workshop promises “a mash-up of science and imagination” as attendees work with David Delgado, a visual strategist from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to develop advertising concepts for future travel to new and alien worlds. The goal is to create simple posters that clearly communicate a message about what makes your selected destination unique, elevated and fine-tuned using images and text.
Taking place: April 30, 6.30pm to 9pm
Access to the exhibition floor is free, while workshop tickets start at Dh660 if bought in advance; for a 35 per cent discount, visit www.ingcreatives.com/tickets before April 25 and use the promo code ING16D3.
sdenman@thenational.ae
