The maiden edition of dEX Artmosphere kicked off at the Mercedez Café within the Silverstar Towers in Accra on Saturday, May 5th, 2018.
The 5-hour event was a gathering of designers and design enthusiasts who came together to interact, share ideas and inspire each other. The event, organized by Design Experience Accra, featured talks, portfolio reviews, networking sessions and an atypical panel that offered great insights into the state of design in Ghana.
The interactive and free-flowing panel discussion touched on a variety of topics, including How Designers Bill Clients, the Role of Design in Development, Design As a Viable Foreign Exchange Generator, Designer-Client Relationships, Creative Currency and Branding among others.
YouTube consultant, Emanuel Ankrah also gave a talk on Maximizing YouTube Content as a Creative. This was followed by several portfolio showcases from KiSsiWaa, Eddy Kay Jnr, Kwaku Darko and Wayazck.
The portfolio displays were a delight that showed the incredible talent Ghana is sitting on. If you’re active on social media, you may have seen the ridiculous and plain terrible logos used by some of our government institutions. Seeing these designers’ portfolios makes me wonder who directs the design choices these institutions make.
This can be attributed to the long-standing stereotype against the creative arts in Ghana. For example, it was a common assumption that people who pursued visual arts in secondary school weren’t the brightest. Absurd right? One of the biggest takeaways from the event was the statement that designers are probably one of the smartest people on earth and I wholly concur.
"If you're a designer, you're probably one of the smartest people on earth"
Heard at #DexAccra #FactsThough
— Joe (@jakuuire) May 5, 2018
Besides the conversations at dEX Artmosphere, the creative meetup included fun activities from video games, a meet and greet session, a drawing contest to logo and movie guessing games.
The meetup started on time and the turnout was good. In fact, a bigger venue will be needed for the next edition. The male to female ratio at the event was pretty low which makes me wonder if there are fewer female designers in Ghana compared to males. We’ll have to do some digging to find out.
Overall, dEX Artmosphere was a success and one that should be done more often. Kudos to the organizers and everyone that showed up. I look forward to the next one. In the meantime however, get ready for the Figma Accra Meetup this weekend.
dEX Artmosphere was organized by Design Experience Ghana in partnership with VOME, ninety3 Studios, Beehyve and Mercedez Cafe.
Gallery
See below for more images from the creative meetup.
About Design Experience Ghana (dEX Ghana)
dEX Ghana is a mentorship workshop to bring together design enthusiasts to learn, re-learn and unlearn the tricks of the trade of design, embark on impactful projects, develop new ways of telling the Ghana story through design and network with like-minded individuals. dEX Ghana aims to build a strong design community in Ghana.
