II: Design Festa

Design Festa is a twice-yearly art event in Tokyo. I feel like I’ve heard somewhere that it’s the biggest art event in Asia. I’m not sure though. But if you and I walked into Design Festa, and I turned to you and said, “You know, this is the biggest art event in Asia,” you wouldn’t be inclined to disbelieve me.

In November last year (2007), Rebecca and I went to Design Festa at Tokyo Big Sight. This is the same place Comiket is held, but you wouldn’t realise – Comiket is an impenetrable nerd swarm; it’s Hell on Earth, whereas Design Festa is fun, colourful and exciting, with room to breathe, and full of creative, attractive people with unique ideas, selling things that a mentally sound person might actually want to buy.

Becca and I are sane, and bought a great many postcards. We didn’t buy any craft objects, only because the day ended before we had time to explore the crafts section. It was wonderful and terrible, how many great artists filled those halls. If you ever get the chance to attend Design Festa, I can’t recommend it enough – but bring a water bottle, lots of money and an empty bag. And have good, strong legs. Or rocket skates I guess, if you can get them.

(If you can get rocket skates, please get in touch with me.)

So, we had an amazing day at Design Festa, because Design Festa is amazing. But we could have left early and still had an amazing day, because the most amazing thing of all happened almost as soon as we arrived.

We had just bought some postcards from, I think, the very first artist whose work we stopped to admire, and were slowly making our way along the corridor of booths, when I spied a booth where some DSes were set up. “Ho!” went my eyebrows, and I made a beeline for it. Here is what I thought along the way:

“How ingenious for an enterprising young indie developer to set up at Design Festa, alongside artists who work in more traditional media. They know their game is art, and they know it will get more attention here, among artists, than at a business-focused event like Tokyo Game Show, among games journalists, who are scum. Plus there’s the novelty value, ‘cause I don’t see any other videogames around here. I can’t wait to meet these people!”

I may have in fact said all this aloud to Rebecca, because I recall that we arrived at the booth at about the same time and introduced ourselves, to two men and two women, a couple of whom were not as young as I expected them to be, and all of whom were very friendly and happy to meet us. One of the women was in the middle of painting the back wall, with a bright pink and purple character.

Page << 1 2 3 4 >>