Nat Hunter (photo: Gerhard Kassner)

Still sitting there with my 3D glasses listening to Lynda and Dale discussing the prospect of eye implants in the near future – I am somewhat relieved when Nat Hunter goes back to basics ‘Story Telling’. Nat Hunter from Airside is also the only female speaker for today.

Firstly Nat tells us her own story how she went from Chemistry via Psychotherapy, where she got fascinated with the first Apple computer the became a programmer for the RBS and ended up joining the first MA in Interactive Multi Media at the Royal College of Art. At her graduation show her first creation was an Interactive Urinal called ‘Your Flow Makes it Go’

Airside started up us a collective between three very different creative minds – they realised very early on that their strength is narrative design. And it clearly is. Nat takes us through some of their projects and the once that really stuck with me is an animation for Think Tank exhibition at the Northern Gallery of Contemporay Art (http://www.airside.co.uk/work/projects/demos-power) about ‘What is Power?’ Confronted with endless data on spreadsheets Airside bring across the essence of power with very simple pictogram like graphics. It seems like such an opposite perspective to the previous speaker Dale Herigstad. Technology is simply a devise to tell the whole history of power in 3 minutes – a sword becomes a mobile phone as the shield becomes the brief case.

It is refreshing to listen to Nat as they tackle projects as big as the touch screen navigation for Virgin Atlantic with a target group of simply everyone. Asking the client of whether the project was a success the feedback is simply ” the bar bill has gone down”.

I can’t really relate to the project for the D&AD catalogue, and it seem an odd one out, but that might be simply a problem I have with sustainable design. She was brought on board as the sustainability consultant as part of her side kick project ‘Three Trees don’t Make a Forest’. I always wonder about all the costs created and time spend on bringing down the CO2 emissions – how much energy does this money and time waste? Maybe that question is for another day.

Erik Spiekermann and Nat Hunter (photo: Joana Niemeyer)

Last but not least an animation done for Aid Organisations which was shown in Haiti earlier this year. A beautiful animation bringing across the importance for communication in a crisis situation – something needed as much as food and medicine. For some reason this animation is not up on their website but do check out Airside’s website – specially if you are looking for a job as she told us Airside is looking.

I clearly won’t consider eye implants to experience information in a new way if people like Nat Hunter are still out there spoon feeding it to me in such a beautiful way.

Text: Joana Niemeyer, Graphic BirdWatching