Design Indaba Goes Dutch

Irma Boom and Joost Alferink from The Netherlands came over to run this one.

Irma Boom needs little introduction. As a speaker at the 6th Design Indaba, Irma was back in South Africa - this time focussing on reaching soon-to-be-leading designers at the workshop. Book designer extraordinaire Irma Boom is known for not getting any briefs for her books - almost 200 of them.

"Most briefs sound so uninteresting that I get paralysed," says Irma in an interview on www.typotheque.com.

Joost Alferink, partner at WAAC's and a graduate of the Technical University Delft, is principally a product designer whose forte is design consultancy. There's nothing special about being a product designer, as far as he's concerned, and what one does for a living is unimportant.

What's important is how one feels about what one does. "Whatever it is I'm engaged in, I'm essentially addressing the question: Who am I?" Alferink seeks inspiration in irritation (like the pearl and the oyster). Emotion is his catalyst.