Wednesdays’ full day of Icograda‘s Design Week Vancouver had many speakers from around the world, and even one having to skype in from Kenya because of the Icelandic volcano affecting his flights. Change is happening in the world and in design especially and designers are trying to figure out how they can add value to visual communication and how the world, in turn values the work designers do. Today there is another day of speakers including Marian Bantjes, a “near” Vancouver typographer, illustrator and educator who will talk on The Cultural Value of Art in Design. Should be amazing.

The rain stayed at bay for the day but provided an amazing view from Canada place for all the locals and international visitors to Vancouver.

There are ton more photos to see!

After a breakfast speech Cameron Sinclair, Peter Busby and Bruce Hayden spoke primarily about architecture and how to create sustainable cities from their different perspectives. They each did a quick presentation and then took questions.

Cameron Sinclair, who was one of the the keynote speakers, presented the work of Architecture for Humanity in a different light.

Peter Busby presented on Vancouver and how to make the city better for living in and also more sustainable through a number of clear ways.

Bruce Hayden’s information was also in the context of Vancouver.

A few notes from the panel discussion.

A sketch of the three men.

A short coffee break with treats revived everyone for the next round.

Rethink Communications was the design studio to implement the design currency identity and site tied to the concept.

A simple focus group of sorts was in the lobby for designers to give value dots to work they though had merit in some way.

Some of the dots.

A designer trying to decide the value of work.

Peter Busby returned to the stage to do a slightly different presentation, this time about The Value of Sustainable Design, primarily through architecture.

Peter’s firm does a great amount of work in Vancouver and currently doing some with VanDusen Botanical Garden.

Notes from Peter Busby’s talk.

Oscar Pina, of Phillips, was up next and presented some of the innovative projects that the company he works for.

Oscar had an amazing Experience Cycle chart of the life span of a product. So much detail.

A few sketches and ideas from Oscar’s talk.

Lunch came and the rain stayed away so people could eat outside in the bits of sun that appeared.

Chris Bentzen, of Hot One Inch Action was at the conference as well.

The Australians were there to give away posters.

Many designers still love the smell of fresh ink.

A small Brisbane koala bear was also there for the conference attendees.

Cecilia Daude, a recent graduate of the IDEA program at Capilano University (their show of work still up at Harbour Centre) volunteered for Design Week and is able to take in most of the presentations.

After lunch, each table was tasked with describing how to Define Design’s Value in a twitterable amount of words.

Chris give it some thought.

Robert MacKay, of Price Waterhouse Cooper was our table’s delegate for speaking.

One of the groups came up with “6″ as their answer.

With a view of how India’s markets are changing, Ashwini Deshpande, showed examples from her firm.

Even the design of Indian money is complicated by the many official languages.

Due to a volcano problem, Markin Miruka, a designer from Kenya had to prerecord his presentation then use skype to answer questions.

Debbie Millman talked about Why We Brand, Why We Buy with a presentation that went all the way back to the first visual communications that was done in cave walls.

Sketch of Debbie asking “Why?”

Debbie Millman described various stages of branding and that most current being the “Limbic Brands” we use every day and sometimes every few seconds (facebook, skype, twitter…)

The last talk was a tag-team affair with Brian Collins and his younger associate, who presented a way for designers to create meaning in the work that is done for clients by thinking about Architypes.

A sketch from the Changing Design talk.

Using myths as one way to create.

A great number of speakers still to go on today!