Trend and Designers
Designers these days have used different multimedias and techniques for their own designs. We are in the digital world and we are no longer restricted to use our own hand drawn illustrations to create good artwork. The trend I have noticed from most of the outstanding designers are simplicity of their artwork. Illustrators like Apex Lin from Taiwan and Vladimir Chaika from Russia did amazing artwork with the same concept but different types and variations. That shows that even though the concepts are the same, if it is strong enough, it could have many different kinds of variations and it's still interesting and inspiring for designers to observe.
Concept Evaluation
"The Lost Thing" video clip, original idea by Shaun Tan is the most inspiring and meaningful artwork I've seen from the conference. I like how the video reflects the real life of human beings. One is the way how Shaun Tan's human being character met the lost thing. The storyline of them hanging out at many places killing time with each other communicating, sent me the message that whenever you feel lonely, there will always be someone there for you. The other message I got from the movie is how the appearance of the lost thing has been created. It's a combination of a whole lot of existing tools and items that doesn't mix with each other. That inspires me that whenever a design is in a producing process, anything could be involved and could make a huge different result from ordinary designs.
Reference
http://www.thelostthing.com/
http://www.shauntan.net/projects1.html
