Last night saw the momentous occassion of the first Mat Dolphin studio outing of the year. The destination was the headquarters of London advertising agency JWT to hear a talk entitled ‘To Go on a Journey, You Need Strong Legs…’ by Simon Sankarayya, the art director better known in design circles as Sanky.

Learning the ropes designing for i-D magazine (his first photoshoot was with Kate Moss, Nick Cave and LL Cool J, not bad work for a 24 year old…), he went on to become art director at the newly established Digit before co-founding multi-discipline digital agency AllofUs. That was seven years ago and in that time he’s been rather busy. AllOfus has gone on to produce some of the most groundbreaking digital and interactive design around, for the some of the biggest clients in the business. Alongside regular talks around the world, Sanky has also found time to teach at the London College of Communication, Hyper Island in Sweden and Space Invaders in Copenhagen. Oh, and he’s the president of D&AD, arguably the most respected organisation in the creative industry which is responsible for recognising, nurturing and rewarding excellence in design. I presume he must also find time to sleep at some point.

The talk, organised by the Typographic Circle, took us through his career and influences, starting at the beginning with his misspent youth as a graffiti writer. He explained how graffiti gave him an early understanding of visual communication, language, letterforms, typography, colour, composition, form and teamwork which informs his work to this day. Next we were shown examples of the handmade books and magazines which were made whilst studying Information Design at Nottingham. The pieces highlight a point Sanky regularly referred back to; the importance of content that people will engage with rather than simply nice looking work with little or no substance. We were shown early outside influences such as Jenny Holzer’s Truisms and the work of Edward Tufte (whom Sanky was lucky enough to have a chance encounter with during a recent trip to New York) as well as some of the college work which played a huge part in shaping his future career path.

Moving forward to the early days of AllofUs, Sanky explained the importance of morals in his work and proudly stated how the agency have stuck by their guns about who not to work for – no gambling, no cigarettes, no fast food. This philosophy resulted in the relatively new (and broke) studio turning down a huge sum of money to work with an online gambling site. This kind of decision making based purely on ethics is a hugely refreshing thing to see and certainly hasn’t affected the long-term success of the business.

Next up we were shown early experiments with user-interaction which aimed to put ‘human-ness’ at the heart of the experience. An early example was the typographic tree, the growth of which was activated by voice. Users would speak into a microphone built into 3D model of a tree stump, as they spoke, the volume, tone and pitch of their voices would cause a computer generated tree to grow in various different ways. A highly innovative use of technology at the time which, although relatively pedestrian now, completely exemplifies Sankys approach to his work – making the use of sophisticated technology and design invisible and allowing the user to engage with the content in a personal and emotional way. Hiding the computers and letting the user engage with the technology without noticing it.

AllofUs however, are not just a bunch of techy wizards. Sex was next on the agenda with examples of a branding project for Filthy Gorgeous Things – an online ‘posh porn’ magazine created by a a rotating selection of designers, artists and photographers. The logo employed an oblique slash, the grammatical character used ‘to both disrupt and to bind’ which is suggestive of the content of the magazine. This device, alongside various phallic icons and embelishments, became the basis of  the entire brand and was used throughout print and digital work in a huge number of different ways. A simple ‘/’ was (at the time) new, edgy, clever and completely appropriate for the audience. Another example of this was the work for Coco De Mer. One of the AllofUs team wrote an email to the erotic luxury boutique, complaining that basically their website was rubbish. Moments later, the phone rang and Sam Roddick, the founder of the company requested a meeting to find out how they could help out. From that point, a working relationship was formed which resulted in, amongst other things, a project involving a camera being set up in the changing rooms of the store.

The aim of this slightly dodgy-sounding idea became clear when it was explained that users could choose to take pictures of themselves trying on their sexy new gear in the changing rooms and upload it to the members area of the Coco De Mer website. The response has apparently been amazing with users of both sexes uploading a huge number of, mostly tasteful, images of themselves. Maybe not everyone’s cup of tea for a Saturday afternoon shopping trip but the key to this project’s success is another of Sankys philiosphies – an accute understanding of the the client you’re working with.

To illustrate this example, Sanky spoke of a branding and website project for a Russian news channel. The only real breakthrough in the project came when they started to understand Russian culture, the personalities of their clients and what made this particular organisation unique from, say, the BBC or CNN. It turned out the main difference was humour (apparenty in Russia, joke websites are massively popular and gain far more hits than porn sites). Once they’d arrived at this understanding, the question of ‘how to position’ the design was answered and the client was delighted. The designs happened to look very nice as well.

There were countless other examples of the way Sanky’s work puts human experience at the heart of design, technology and communication. As well as the above, the talk included some cheesy 80’s pop, some worrying statistics about Walkers Crisps, desire lines, an argument for the death of advertising and a terrible Russian accent. The overriding theme and mantra for the evening was a pearl of post-it note-on-fridge wisdom from Sankys dad – ‘To Go on a Journey, You Need Strong Legs…’

All in all, the talk was an entertaining and inspiring night out. Sanky was interesting to listen to, interested in the way communications work and seemed like a genuine, nice bloke.

In all honesty, we were actually a bit late to the event because we were in the pub discussing a very exciting upcoming collaboratove project with a friend of ours. If anyone can fill us in on what happened in the first ten minutes, that would be great. Did we miss anything?

Thanks for reading

Mat