Sitting in McDonald’s trying to kill some time before meeting up with my old pal Francois, I saw a magazine called ‘Creative Thailand’ awesome … I opened it and realised it was written in thai, but an advert on the back cover was advertising a design exhibition. As a graphic/web designer with a passion for design I had to go.

Just down the road on the sky train stop Phrom Phong, on the 6th floor of the Emporium shopping centre (a high end designer shopping mall) was a floor dedicated to design.

The exhibition was concentrating on design in public transport, filled with user experiences from booking your train ticket, figuring out where you are going (London underground map always an icon in this field, New Yorks maps sucked) to walking out of the station. Was pretty interesting stuff. From the few countries I have used public transportation, especially trains, the sky train is a great example of ease of use, considering the language barriers here, the maps and systems are so easy to use a 5 year old could get around. Compare this with New York, where there is no language barrier- we ended up get ourselves in a twist and losing hours going the wrong way. You can definitely get an idea of the power and importance of design in these instances.

It was a pretty small exhibition but to our surprise just round the corner was the design museum. The exhibit walked you through several iconic designs by country and time- the first telephone, a beautiful vintage white vespa and lesson on the American Dream.

For anyone interested in design get yourself down there. This exhibit is only on until 27th July, but I am sure there will be different ones. I think the design museum is there all year round. It was a really good and it was free. They also have a shop bolted on the side with lots of quirky design products. When you are done check out the bakery in the shopping mall for a tasty doughnut (which was the icing on top).

I had to leave my calling card armed with decimal stickers. It seemed like a good time to plant my first one in Thailand

Stephen x