Design Festa, day 1

The day started with three disaasters, but turned out OK despite them.

First disaster: my can of paint toppled from its perch as I tried to get my cart out the door of the apartment building. Paint all over me but thankfully mostly inside a plastic bag, otherwise. Photo here.

Second disaster: I arrived at the venue to discover no walls or tables. They’d misplaced my order. Fortunately, they found it after digging around and they had enough stock on hand to bring me my stuff within 30 minutes. Photo here.

Third disaster: The capsule machine jammed. I ended up standing by with the key and doing Ceasarian sections as needed. When Tod arrived at 1:30, he got it working again and I was free to roam the event.

And it was good that I walked away; my booth seems to attract more attention when I’m not there. (I watched from a distance for a while to see how it was going.) People stopped and watched the video. Reactions varied from stony-faces to laughs. Some people stood and watched it several times - I think they liked the robot porn scene.

Lots of people ran up for a look at the capsule machine and walked away without buying one, though by the end of the day, I’d moved 42 of them. I think the opaque capsules confused people. They didn’t want mysteries. I put a sample out, but they still were confused.

I was at my booth to receive visits from friends. Camilla and Andy came by; and Rob with his friend Miki were interviewed for the Design Festa website while they stood talking to us; Greg & Yasu ran into us at the food court and stopped by for a chat later on. And Ian from Tiltyhouse did a video interview for his podcast.

When I wasn’t hanging round the booth, Tod & I roamed the other booths. My goodness, there is a lot of creativity on offer. Some of it is fabulous, some of it is wretched and there’s a lot in between. I now have enough postcards to last the rest of the year and a beautiful glass wind chime for the summer, but I kept my shopping to a minimum. No telling what I’ll see today in the sections I didn’t get to yesterday.

Overall a good day. I’ll be back today from 11 - 7. If you stop by and I’m not there, ring me and I’ll come running.

Posted by kuri at May 27, 2007 08:09 AM