With another successful AGIdeas gone, the Artisan team have a chance to reflect on the highlights from this year's massive conference. We asked each of the Artisan team to share with us which speaker made the most impact on them from this year...

Michelle Upton - Richard Seymour – FANTASTIC! Richard was such an inspirational speaker and could really articulate all the various areas of design that he has worked across; graphic design, illustrator and product design. Heaving formed Seymourpowell in 1984 with Dick Powell, they're built themselves a reputation as being one of the world's leading product design consultancies and watching him present, it became very clear why!

Debbie Younger - Well I got to see the man himself - the man Artisan sponsored all the way from Italy, Bruno Monguzzi. What an inspiration and what a character! I have to say the highlight of his talk would have to be how he showed us how the use of type can change ones internal representation of a word – the word being SHIT. Bruno got on his hands and knees and firstly wrote the word Shit in calligraphy style. It changed how I would generally feel towards the word as it was so pretty although he then proceeded to put on a glove and write the word Shit with, well... what looked like Shit. Definitely not as appealing as the first. Finally he used a very boring font and again, a very different representation. Very good audience interaction as well.

Mathew Hehir - Abe Rogers is a multidisciplinary designer, filling spaces with colour and movement. Abe and his team primarily create environments within retail and museum spaces; from a retail shop for a Russian fashion label encased in 365 mirrors with explosions of colour, dancing mannequins and large, brightly coloured, stuffed animals, to an interactive city model demonstrating how a city is dependant on energy by getting the viewer to participate in the experience. Abe had an eclectic mix of experiences that showed a dialogue between objects and space, stories that would inspire people to take an interest in the individual projects they work on, explore colour and textures and be aware of the ability of things to change within a space. Great quote from Abe - “Nothing is more important than passion . . . Maybe except colour”.

Ally Buchanan - DJ Red was FAST and FURIOUS! This talented young man uses the turntables as though he was born to scratch. DJ red is the the first Australian to win the International Turntablist Federation World DJ Championships, which took place in Prague last year. He is an artist who introduces multiple turntables, mixers and multimedia effects and combines them into a display of graphical music. This guy is brilliant, using his fast scratching skills and coordinating this with video clips, movies and generally anything he can get his hands on.

Lawrence Akers - When you think of classic Australian songs, 'Throw Your Arms Around Me' by Hunters & Collectors ranks highly amongst the best. Mark Seymour presented the concept of the rock & roll carrot; the embodiment of all things rock, cutting edge and credible. Yet, success seems to come more from the collaboration behind a single idea than to have a great concept polluted from the push and pulls of marketing departments, demographics and film clip directors who have their own agenda's at play. Besides providing an insightful presentation into the politics of the music industry, who can resist a passionate live performance which is exactly what Mark treated Hamer Hall with to conclude his talk.

Edwin Cornelissen - Only Richard Seymour could take a subject matter like toilet design and bring it back to be a powerful insight into emotional attachment. His observations on how people purchase a product baed on an emotional attachment or reasoning rather than necessarily the functionality of the product has implications reaching far beyond the toilet seat metaphor. Richard also said that they will be releasing these watches that you buy in pairs and give one to a friend, where you rub/touch one of them and the other one responds any where in the world by lighting up or vibrating or something. This works on old SMS technology; it’s just like hitting send without writing a message. Well, it’s a good example of how people buy a product based purely on an emotional response rather than technology cause this could have been done years ago.

Jenna Lewis - The guys from Anyhow have created a fun and energetic form of artwork that catches the eye with its bright colours and bold fonts. Drawing inspiration from spam emails and old comics, they do not follow mainstream design trends and love to push the boundaries. They are inspirational because their design fits their lifestyles and is a reflection of who they are and what defines them.

Cristal Cachia – Richard Seymour was a definite highlight because he was able to take age old problems and provide them with innovative design solutions. He was able to apply his knowledge of design to a vast array of design problems, reducing them to their bare bones and using design to get an outcome. He was also an interesting and animated presenter – intellectual and down to Earth who had amazing ideas. He kept his sense of humour about practical day to day encounters that we all face with poor design.

Elke Braithwaite - I loved Adam Ferrier’s bit on Branding and Hypnomarketing – He was so casual about the whole thing and definitely made a nice break from the more formal stuff that preceded him. I also got a small thrill from his complete disregard for social ethics, goes to show that we should all be a little more discerning and a lot less gullible. Ultimately Adam’s speech was more up the advertising alley so I guess I took more from it. He’s bringing branding back! Yeah.

Charlotte Buckley - Ben Frost was my favourite speaker at the conference. He is an artist from Sydney that produces the most incredible work. He creates often controversial Pop Art paintings, using a collage style approach. His work is based on the perverse side of society and the idea that advertising has a big control on how we behave as individuals. He juxtaposes the good and bad side of society today using bold imagery and colour. He produced a painting called ‘White children playing: Late 1900’s’ which showed a graphic image of children shooting-up drugs. This painting caused such controversy that it made the evening seven news. This kind of reaction shows the power behind his work and the power he has being an artist today. I hope to see his work exhibited whilst I am here in Australia although he also exhibits in London at the Cosh Gallery.