Gareth James
Bio
From award winning advertising to hacked-at-home internet connected taxidermy. Gareth is a Creative Director and Coder based in Brighton and London.
His Commercial work as Chief Creative Officer of Global Creative Agency TMW Unlimited includes the #ArriveAwesome re-boot of Virgin Trains in the UK, the Billion+ viewed #TurnOffToTurnOn Durex campaign and the European launch of Infiniti Luxury Cars with a series of interactive CGI experiences.
His non-commercial work explores designing the spaces between the physical and the digital world. Exploring a new language of interactivity that is being created as more and more physical stuff becomes digital.
With an obsession with breaking the internet out of the screen he's given birth to a collection experiments and art-objects that bring the internet into the physical; A touch sensitive photo frame that connects to Skype, smile activated photo booth, a train departure board for the home, even a stuffed squirrel that tweets your secrets. His work has featured at the Brighton Maker Fair and the Mall gallery London and seen awards from Cannes, Campaign and The Webbys.
Session
Make, Do and Learn
Sometimes the best ideas are the ones that pop into your head at random and won't go away. What are you going to do with those ideas? Perhaps wait for the perfect client brief that allows you to use one? Perhaps hide it away in a sketch pad marked 'Ideas I might do one day'?... And what if you imagine the kind of ideas that you couldn't imagine being asked for?
Like picture frames that connect to Skype, squirrels that listen to your secrets or a bicycle bell that follows you on Instagram?
If you wait for someone to ask for them it'll take forever to get them out of your head and into the world.
My realisation: make them yourself. If it's a good (or crazy) idea, get busy and make it real - it's the only way to be sure. And extra points if you don't know how to make it, because that's when the learning kicks in and learning is the magic sauce that keeps us coming back for more.
I'll be sharing a number of personal projects and ideas that explore the endless pursuit of learning; getting your ideas made, putting magic into the internet of things, new twists on interface design, usability and how making and doing = learning.