Design of the times

Imagine walking into a club and everyone’s dancing to no music. They’re jumping around, maybe singing along too loudly, with random isolated whoops bouncing in the air. Are the speakers busted? Are the kids on some kind of new energy drink? Welcome to Silent Disco, where the beats are belted out only through a personal set of headphones. It’s like spazzing out to Lady Gaga on your iPod, except with a whole bunch of other people doing the same.

A well-known instance of this type of event took place in London in 2006, when a bunch of people — as in a few thousand — gathered at the Victoria Station and started raving quietly until the police cleared them away. Nowadays silent discos are more than just novelty acts at music festivals, but function in the fight for the right to party in places where there might be noise regulations.

Even larger than than the Victoria station incident was the International Pillow Fight day in 2008, when over 25 cities around the world participated in the festivity of flinging feathers, mostly by word-of-social-media. The “flash mob,” as it is known, congregated in a public space, whacked each others with pillows, then dispersed. While absurdly fun, the origins of the flash mob are rooted in performance art, protest, and Internet mobilization.

For a week in August, there will be both a silent disco and a flash mob happening in the city courtesy of Manila Design Week, a festival packed with free design-related events. Every day from August 8 to 15, design is going to take over the streets. There will be public art promoting green thinking at Bonifacio High Street, fashion editorials-turned-avant garde exhibit, music video-a-thons (and the silent disco) at Cubao X, student art shows with a programmed T-shirt designing flash mob, and a brainstorming session for influential movers and communicators.

Organized by Team Manila, the idea behind Manila Design Week is “to bring graphic design to the streets and to the people. MDW is not an elitist thing. It’s an open, honest chance for all of us to show just how much talent the Philippines has got,” according to Team Manila. For several years now Team Manila has been elevating low-brow Pinoy culture to cultish art forms through designs on T-shirts and accessories. Their iconic graphics, fusing modern digital style with kenkoy humor, have been widely copied (which is not necessarily a bad thing, since it means an aesthetics of design is spreading.)

We know you daring designers are out there, wielding Sharpies and Lomos and mad Photoshop skills as you make our city a much more visually interesting place, one CD cover/T-shirt/skateboard at a time. Here is the week where you come together and celebrate in all your design geek glory, culminating in a conference with design legend Stefan Sagmeister at a partner event with Graphika Manila. Take your creativity to the next level. You’ll learn something new, and at the very least, you’ll get to dance like no one’s listening. 

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Visit www.maniladesignweek.com for creative briefs and festival schedules.