Not that I have noticed, but it’s a common thing for famous speakers to have the same speech over an extended length of time. For example, 5 years ago I attended Syd Mead’s lecture for the first time, and 2 more later. Each time, it’s the same speech, same images, same jokes told. Well, having speech-worthy contents to share isn’t easy, but if a speaker keeps repeating the same speech, then won’t that show a lack of progress? Syd Mead is old, but what about other young and supposedly active players in this creative business?
Many other lectures of well-known people which I have attended do it in a similar fashion. They are in no doubt inspiring, but the same inspired crowd is going to come back for future lectures wishing to be further inspired.
I have no point to make really, but this, in a way, serves as a reminder for myself to keep the exploration going constantly. Not so much as to inspire others, but to sustain my passion for what I do.
Unfortunately that is the case for most people who make a living on performance. The person or group makes a living by touring, therefore they spend most of their time on the road. The only time they have to develop new material is when they take time away from gaining income to do research for a book, or write new songs, or what have you. Some people are definitely better at finding a balance than others.
I’ve never seen Syd Mead in person, but I would suppose he would talk about drawing. After you perfect certain skills, it is hard to build on that as a topic.
I think design is definitely a profession where lectures do get monotonous. Therefore, some people like to deride design as being superfluous, because we are incapable of translating what we do into an executive brief of 30 minutes or less. Jacques Giard at ASU put together a presentation a few years ago arguing that design that was developing a new sort of knowledge beyond words and numbers. I prefer the second explanation
but I always feel that creative thinking of different ideas appear to slow down at a faster rate as one ages… few people genuinely have a lot of different topics to talk about unless they really spend a lot of time observing what is happening around them. I feel most people are merely
socialising far more than they look and listen…
supposedly if we were to venture just a little more into other subject areas and translate them into design, there should be way more things to talk about. And therefore new concepts and ideas…
I just always assumed it was like that. I saw Syd speak when I was in college. It was cool, I’m not sure why I would go back again… he didn’t design the sets for Blade Runner again since then (10 years ago now), so I’m not sure why I would go back, I got the content the first time, unless I wanted to see that content again.