In the weekend I headed to Auckland with a bunch of other hipsters to attend the Semi-Permanent design conference. It was well inspiring. Here's a few moments that stood out. Alex Trochut did a presentation on his favourite design robberies. He talked about how to steal an idea, change it up and make it your own. He described his process as moving from immobility to imitation to intuition and then to imagination. When he talked us through his work you could see his process unfolding inside his brain. It made me jealous. Kelli Anderson also spoke. I think she was born on fire she is so talented. Her take on design is that it should challenge reality. She talked about how design creates an experience and it's only complete when an audience interacts with it. She said that we design to peoples expectations, we can break those expectations or conform to them. She likes to break them. The Monkeys talked about being provocative. For them a creative campaign should provoke an emotion, a discussion or a reaction and get people talking on your behalf. Special Group also liked being provocative. They launched their advertising studio with an ad proclaiming 'Don't waste your money on advertising'. I liked that. Florian, the creative director from Hi-Res, likes quotes. So I shall quote him here 'If you know what your doing you will do what you know.' The best part of the conference was when Benja Harney, a paper folding guru, had the entire auditorium make colourful paper plans and toss them up into the air. It was magical chaos.