Blog TEDGlobal
By Various frogs - September 17, 2009
Giddy. That’s the best word to describe the design mind editorial team as we gathered in London’s Paddington Station to take the train to Oxford this past July for the TEDGlobal conference. Jacob Zukerman, intrepid art director, Tim Leberecht, stalwart publisher, and yours truly, worried editor, were meeting Antonia Ward, our British guide and local wordsmith, at the statue of Paddington Bear (pronounced “bare” in American English and “bey-ah” in Antonia’s UK English — yes, we’d already given each other plenty of good-natured guff over our accents).
One might expect there to be a statue of Paddington Bear in Paddington Station — the bear has been a popular literary character for English kids for generations — though one cannot be sure why, other than the similarity in name. What one would not expect is for the bear to be so small and so tucked away behind a partition, divorced from the main concourse, almost hidden under the nearby escalator. Did the sculptor botch the job? Did Michael Bond, the man who created Paddington Bear in 1958, have a falling out with executives at London metro? And indeed why is Paddington Bear in Paddington Station? Could it really be as obvious as the name, or is there more to the story?
Such is the inquisitive mind of a reporter, which was exactly what I was there to do, what we were all there to do — to investigate all sides of the TEDGlobal conference, onstage and off, find speakers to interview, parties to attend, ideas to chew on, and friends to make. In short, we were there to take part in the very theme of the conference, “The Substance of Things Not Seen” — and then figure out a way to mash it up into words and pictures for the next issue of design mind.
Blog TEDGlobal
By Various frogs - July 10, 2009
With the TEDGlobal conference right around the corner, the design mind editorial team is gearing up for plenty of fun in the sun….. er, wait, we’re going to England….
With the TEDGlobal conference right around the corner, we’re gearing up for plenty of fun in the grey and drizzly (note the British spelling of “grey” as opposed to “gray”; we’re nerding up for loads more fun with the U.K.-U.S. language subtleties such as honor vs. honour, tire vs. tyre, and my favorite, oriented vs. orientated).
