Toscani at The Edge
Creative Review
Oliviero Toscani holds forth on the privileged life of the designer at the DBA's Edge event, much to Erik Spiekermann's evident exasperation...
Oh Dear!
To view this video you will need the Adobe Flash Player and JavaScript turned on.
You can download the Adobe Flash Player here
The Edge was the Design Business Association's event matching young creative talent with more experienced practitioners, such as Michael Wolff, Erik Spiekermann, Michael Place and Richard Seymour.
These so-called 'Pioneers' – 'creatives who have achieved great things in business through their passion, vision and daring' – held workshops and one-to-one sessions over the two day event which took place last December.
As a grand finale, they all came together for a closing debate, which in this clip seems to have been dominated by ex-Benetton creative director Oliviero Toscani (much to the obvious exasperation of Spiekermann)
8 Comments
Talk about can't get a word in edgeways!
Toscani did make some very good points, and I particularly liked his comment about taking risk.
2010-01-16 08:35:14
Maybe that's because I couldn't follow the whole debate, but Toscani's comments seemed to be totally out of context. He measures success based on quantity of wifes, why can't others measure it based on quantity of clients?
2010-01-22 09:53:10
Have you heard of the joke with the english man, german and italian?
2010-01-26 13:33:33
Clash of the titans. Brilliant.
2010-02-02 12:35:53
Oliviero Toscani is a fucking genius. End of Story.
2010-03-02 11:16:44
Oliviero is a classico designer in his thinking. Design is persued by 'privelidged'. He hits on core aspect of design which are not truly observed I feel; Philosophy.
2010-03-03 14:28:46
Toscani made me laugh out loud (in a quiet office right now). He has one massive heart and spoke from it - with honesty. Spiekermann on the other hand was disingenuous (to use a word in vogue) with his weak intellectualised response. Respect to Toscani's big heart. Cracking stuff.
PS. re gcraparotta's comment: 'He measures success based on quantity of wives'. I think he was referring to having 3 daughters that had given him 11 grand children. He fleetingly mentioned that he'd been married to his wife for 30 years.
2010-03-19 13:26:57
There isn't a rule to measure success.
There isn't one way to approach design, so both Spiekermann and Toscani are right.
Toscani is more an idealist that had the luck and skills to achieve his successes. He is an old school thinker a free designer. (which I like) Spiekermann speaks about the present and the challenges we as designer all face when working in the industry. He is a realist and fits today business oriented mentality especially in the US. (that i understand and agree with)
I believe Branding and the idea of it is what changed the way we design or think about design today.
Privilege is something that you might have been born with but it is also a status you can achieve if you believe in what you are doing. As designer we have the privilege of creating, solving problem more or less crucial to the overall cycle of life.
Of course he I was born in a poor country in the African continent I would have struggled more to get to my design career, or I might have not even thought about design since my primary goal will be survival.
2010-03-23 20:51:08
