Having felt very removed from what Cape Town is doing as host of World Design Capital 2014, I decided to attend its first Pitching session at the German Club yesterday.  It was an interesting collection of presentations, aimed at pitching to the audience and the World Design Capital operation company Cape Town Design NPC for R10000 seed money to start the business of their dreams.  Out of thirteen presentations, the judges chose to allocate their money to 100 Bicycles.

The German Club venue was quite contradictory to what one associates with design, but one could say that being so old it had some charm and could be described as retro design, with odd camouflage wall effects, and panels of pink fibre glass visible on one side.  It must have been an attractive venue to the organisers in having seated at least 100 interested design persons, and a quirky element was the R50 entrance fee buying one a Birkenhead beer or BOS tea, and a packet of popcorn.  There were some technical hitches with video presentations, and the quality of presentations varied vastly, from amateurish to sophisticated and high tech.  All in all, the event was contradictory to what one expected of and associated with World Design Capital 2014.

The unifying factor of the event was the passion of the presenters, all having a dream project they Continue reading →