Semi-Permanent, the exclusive inclusive digital symposium returns to Wellington on November 17th.  The Embassy Theatre plays host to speakers from around the globe sharing their personal experiences, insights and expertise in the design, animation, advertising, graphic and illustration worlds.

It’s great for students of design, fans of design and people who just want to expand their mind a little more.

We’ve got a double pass to give away! And we got a chance to ask a few questions of one of this year’s speakers, Ariane Spanier – a Berlin graphic designer and art director making waves in the industry.

The series of images created for “The big draw berlin’ plays with depth, colour and time. Did you have a brief for that and how did you begin?


The brief wasn’t really about that but the theme of that edition of the drawing event was “Drawing space“, which aimed at including a few more space-related projects or workshops in the festival. It is a participatory event, that wants to bring “everyone“ back to the basic activity of drawing, as we all did, when we were kids.

At the beginning I wanted to create something dimensional and what could be more lame to use a drawing for a drawing event? so I turned to drawing material – color pencils, that while standing and shot from above provide a fairly interesting perspective. later the idea for a little stop motion animation took over which in the same time, created a series of posters for the promotion. so while working on one set we could create several images, an animation and it all refers to the act of drawing which uses pencils that need to be sharpened to continue to draw.

Peak Alphabet is another well known work of yours. It feels incredibly organic & affected by time. What was your process creating it?

Yes the organic feel about it is very well intended, because it was created entirely for an on-screen app – “Notegraphy“ that allows the users to shape their writings into a designed note they can publish on social medias. Much screen content is extremely flat and two dimensional, vector graphics that are created on and for a screen. I had a completely open brief and immediately felt I wanted to do something that plays with that flat perception of stuff on screens, something that looks real and grows towards you, almost leaves the flatness and rises up. I played around with ferrofluid first, a similar thing to the magnetic paint, but its much harder to control because it’s basically an oil. It also produces the little spikes through tiny iron filings in it, but it was too fluid. But with that paint it was possible to create any shape I wanted and as soon as I put a magnet under these little mountains arose. simple, fascinating and effective.

For your animations for FUKt have you enjoyed applying your process to constant movement & sound? Is animation something you are exploring more?

FUKT Magazine # 14 Teaser from Ariane Spanier on Vimeo.

I love animations and if possible I try to implement them into a concept. But since I am doing a lot of print work, they always come up on the side, as these little extras, that are usually real fun to do but weren’t requested in the first place by clients and therefore often not budgeted properly. But more and more animated content will be part of our screen reality, so that’ll change even more and there is more to come in the future.

What is inspiring your work at the moment?
I can never pin point inspiration really. Sometimes I think one can’t even ask that question, nor answer it. Because inspiring can be everything around us, the yellowing leaves outside my window, a book I have read, a concert I’ve seen or an energy I felt. but where inspiration happens, inside of each one of us, something happens that’s just hard to explain. and something that I drew inspiration from might not talk to someone else at all. Because often there are no direct connections made, it all gets mixed up, put some personal taste and personal interest and personal history to it and there you go.

Is there a design trend you are looking forward to saying goodbye to?
Haha, i am looking forward to an end of type that’s been put on a scanner and gets a wavy form by pulling it away while it gets scanned, for sure. Frames, inside frames inside frames inside frames too.

Empty brainless repetition of looks in general. But we all are part of our time and we get stuffed with visuals continuously from all sides, so it’s a pretty hard fight to avoid these “ideas“ that unconsciously pop up, that feel so cozy – simply because you have seen it somewhere and forgotten about it.

But i also love the website trendlist.org, you always are half scared or ashamed when you recognize something of that stuff or appear on it yourself. I love the categorizing and exposing. It’s a little bit of a design voyerism. It might invite certain people to check out what to do next though, but the ambivalence about this website I really like.

What piece of advice would you give to a young creative starting out on their own in 2015?
When starting out on your own, I don’t have the super smart advice but do all the works you can, whether it’s for Granny or good friends or the little flower store down the street and/or not so well paid. All is valuable experience and fills a portfolio and will attract more people interested in your work. But only do the work the way you like / enjoy it and can be proud of. Also the bad work will attract future clients. there are too many people out there liking bad work and you end up doing things you don’t want to do.

OR wait a moment with starting out alone and collect some experience at good design studios whose work you are a fan of. take a course in economy or get as many advice on how to built up your own studio 🙂 then do it anyway the way you want it after.

We’ve got a DOUBLE PASS  to Semi-Permanent Wellington to give away. Just comment here with the name of a speaker joining Ariane Spanier at this year’s event before noon on the the 12th of November. We’ll announce the winner on Friday the 13th making it a lucky day for one person.

(For a second chance to enter keep an eye on our Twitter feed, as we are all about double entries)
UPDATE – follow and reply to our twitter question for a second chance to win that pretty amazing double pass to Semi-Permanent

UPDATE – we have a winner it’s Mitch who has been emailed and if we don’t hear from her by midnight friday we’ll run that random number generator again