Offf 2009 - Happiness is a warm concrete bunker
I had never been to Offf before, and aside from visiting a few of the London BD4D events (now defunct), and speaking at Semi-Permanent London with Pixelsurgeon way back in 2005, I'd never actually travelled abroad to any design events previously. It turned out to be an inspirational weekend, and even with some of the downsides considered, I definitely plan to visit more festivals in the future. In this case, Preloaded kindly offered to send five of us out there, if we could cover the accommodation costs.
Offf has been running since 2001, and this year was in Oeiras for the first time. Oeiras is about a fifteen minute train journey along the Portuguese coast from Lisbon. Our apartment turned out to be a good find all in all, although let's just say we had a few 'issues' with the drain outside the back door and our patio area was a, ahem, no-flow zone. But I've said enough already - we got a discount on the accommodation so all is good.
The underpinning theme this year was 'Fail Gracefully', which meant that all the presenters tried to show projects that had been unsuccessful for one reason or another, whether it was for pitches, commercial work or just personal projects. This was hugely welcome because too often, design events run the risk feeling a bit self-congratulatory. If you only get to see the coolest things in people's portfolios, then why not just head to their online showreels?
Over the course of the weekend, we learned that for some people it's all about working incrementally on something they're not happy with, figuring out what they want as they go along. For others, projects were doomed from the start, and had to be abandoned. As a result, Offf 2009 felt like a very honest festival, with people being happy to expose their failures in the context of how they arrived at something successful. For the industry as a whole this can only be a good thing.
There was a good balance of 'young' designers showing off their latest and greatest experiments, alongside more experienced presenters, such as Stefan Sagmeister, Robert L Peters and Pentagram's Paula Scher.
Jonny, Luke and Jon from Preloaded in the main hall
In general the better-known presenters gave the best talks. Stefan Sagmeister was a real highlight for me. He focused on the idea of happiness in design, via several personal anecdotes about times when design had made him happy or unhappy, whether that's the happiness he gets from having time to truly focus on one project, or the unhappiness he experienced when a badly designed cotton bud got stuck in his ear. It was great to see presentations with an over-riding theme that went beyond the usual breakdown of a few pieces of recent work.
Stefan Sagmeister's presentation was one of the most coherent and inspiring
Robert L Peters is a Canadian designer who makes no bones about the fact that his activism is an important component of his approach to graphic design. Okay, so some of the 'Bush = bad' stuff felt a little tired, but he always brought things back to the importance of graphic design, and that even in the smallest ways, as designers we're all responsible for improving the world around us, whether in a virtual or actual sense. He also looked a lot like Mark Kermode, albeit with a ponytail rather than a quiff.
His presentation was full of great quotes from the likes of Confucius, Marshall McLuhan and Thomas Edison, who said "I have not failed 10,000 times. I've simply discovered 9,999 ways that didn't work." Those quotes segued neatly into an abundance of what could be described as visual quotes, with graphic design explored as a language that is to be spoken by designers and understood by all. Sometimes the quotes were both visual and phonic, such as the great poster Robert presented which read 'Practice safe design. Use a contract'.
Robert made his views clear about how the proliferation of speculative work is greatly damaging to the industry. I couldn't agree more, and the subsequent standing ovation he received (apparently the first in Offf history) was testament to the fact that the audience shared his passion, even if throughout the course of the presentation he hadn't actually shared a great deal of his own work.
Offf was also very lucky to be blessed with the presence of Pentagram's Paula Scher, who was my personal highlight from the weekend. It was just so inspiring to hear about her influences and experiences, as she really is someone who has spent her whole professional life exploring type. Few bodies of personal work feel as initimate and compelling as her maps, and I could have listened to her talk for much longer.
On the flight over we bumped into a friendly David Ferner (I guess we were pretty conspicuous on a plane full of regular holidaymakers and Portuguese!), senior designer at UVA (United Visual Artists), whom it turned out was also delivering their presentation. It was nice of him to say hello, and in terms of work especially, the UVA presentation was one of the very best. They have a body of work to be immensely proud of, whether it's the concert graphics they've created for the likes of Massive Attack and the Chemical Brothers, or the interactive installations they've created for numerous events. Perhaps most interestingly, they develop proprietary software and techniques if they feel that off-the-shelf solutions aren't giving them what they need, and see themselves as 'designing tools to make art'.
UVA's work is consistently awesome
One of the real crowd-pleasers was Pes, a stop-motion animator with a highly impressive body of work - be sure to look up human skateboard if you've not seen it. Although to start with it looked like he was falling into the 'here are a few things I've done that you could have seen at home' category of presenters, once he started to break down some of the trickery he's used on various films, it was truly fascinating stuff.
In fact I couldn't wrap this up without also mentioning the presentation by the audaciously talented James Paterson and Amit Pitaru, who collaborate with each other under the monicker of InsertSilence. Amit Pitaru's sonic wire sound tool, which developed into a 3D drawing tool, may be a few years old now, but it was new to me and is certainly worth seeing if it's new to you too. A more recent project, their beautiful collaboration with dancer Dana Gingras, showed that they really don't feel that they're limited to any medium. And as for the Rotten Fruit Tardis? That really does need to be seen to be believed.
Overall, some technical issues with the sound levels in particular, and the acoustics of the venue in general, took some of the sheen off(f) the event, but most of the things we saw sparked interesting debates, and I think I speak for the rest of the Preloaded crew in attendance when I say that we all came back feeling reinvigorated and inspired. I would definitely recommend anyone to go to these events if like me, for whatever reason you've not quite got round to it before. It's a great way to put our industry into context, to see how it's always moving and evolving, and most importantly, that to some small extent we're all part of those changes.
And as consolation for those of you couldn't make it out to sunny Portugal, perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that it also rained heavily.
You can see more of the photos I took over in my Flickr set.
I'm also using these as inspiration for a few sketches, the first of which is below:
Offf has been running since 2001, and this year was in Oeiras for the first time. Oeiras is about a fifteen minute train journey along the Portuguese coast from Lisbon. Our apartment turned out to be a good find all in all, although let's just say we had a few 'issues' with the drain outside the back door and our patio area was a, ahem, no-flow zone. But I've said enough already - we got a discount on the accommodation so all is good.
The underpinning theme this year was 'Fail Gracefully', which meant that all the presenters tried to show projects that had been unsuccessful for one reason or another, whether it was for pitches, commercial work or just personal projects. This was hugely welcome because too often, design events run the risk feeling a bit self-congratulatory. If you only get to see the coolest things in people's portfolios, then why not just head to their online showreels?
Over the course of the weekend, we learned that for some people it's all about working incrementally on something they're not happy with, figuring out what they want as they go along. For others, projects were doomed from the start, and had to be abandoned. As a result, Offf 2009 felt like a very honest festival, with people being happy to expose their failures in the context of how they arrived at something successful. For the industry as a whole this can only be a good thing.
There was a good balance of 'young' designers showing off their latest and greatest experiments, alongside more experienced presenters, such as Stefan Sagmeister, Robert L Peters and Pentagram's Paula Scher.
Jonny, Luke and Jon from Preloaded in the main hall
In general the better-known presenters gave the best talks. Stefan Sagmeister was a real highlight for me. He focused on the idea of happiness in design, via several personal anecdotes about times when design had made him happy or unhappy, whether that's the happiness he gets from having time to truly focus on one project, or the unhappiness he experienced when a badly designed cotton bud got stuck in his ear. It was great to see presentations with an over-riding theme that went beyond the usual breakdown of a few pieces of recent work.
Stefan Sagmeister's presentation was one of the most coherent and inspiring
Robert L Peters is a Canadian designer who makes no bones about the fact that his activism is an important component of his approach to graphic design. Okay, so some of the 'Bush = bad' stuff felt a little tired, but he always brought things back to the importance of graphic design, and that even in the smallest ways, as designers we're all responsible for improving the world around us, whether in a virtual or actual sense. He also looked a lot like Mark Kermode, albeit with a ponytail rather than a quiff.
His presentation was full of great quotes from the likes of Confucius, Marshall McLuhan and Thomas Edison, who said "I have not failed 10,000 times. I've simply discovered 9,999 ways that didn't work." Those quotes segued neatly into an abundance of what could be described as visual quotes, with graphic design explored as a language that is to be spoken by designers and understood by all. Sometimes the quotes were both visual and phonic, such as the great poster Robert presented which read 'Practice safe design. Use a contract'.
Robert made his views clear about how the proliferation of speculative work is greatly damaging to the industry. I couldn't agree more, and the subsequent standing ovation he received (apparently the first in Offf history) was testament to the fact that the audience shared his passion, even if throughout the course of the presentation he hadn't actually shared a great deal of his own work.
Offf was also very lucky to be blessed with the presence of Pentagram's Paula Scher, who was my personal highlight from the weekend. It was just so inspiring to hear about her influences and experiences, as she really is someone who has spent her whole professional life exploring type. Few bodies of personal work feel as initimate and compelling as her maps, and I could have listened to her talk for much longer.
On the flight over we bumped into a friendly David Ferner (I guess we were pretty conspicuous on a plane full of regular holidaymakers and Portuguese!), senior designer at UVA (United Visual Artists), whom it turned out was also delivering their presentation. It was nice of him to say hello, and in terms of work especially, the UVA presentation was one of the very best. They have a body of work to be immensely proud of, whether it's the concert graphics they've created for the likes of Massive Attack and the Chemical Brothers, or the interactive installations they've created for numerous events. Perhaps most interestingly, they develop proprietary software and techniques if they feel that off-the-shelf solutions aren't giving them what they need, and see themselves as 'designing tools to make art'.
UVA's work is consistently awesome
One of the real crowd-pleasers was Pes, a stop-motion animator with a highly impressive body of work - be sure to look up human skateboard if you've not seen it. Although to start with it looked like he was falling into the 'here are a few things I've done that you could have seen at home' category of presenters, once he started to break down some of the trickery he's used on various films, it was truly fascinating stuff.
In fact I couldn't wrap this up without also mentioning the presentation by the audaciously talented James Paterson and Amit Pitaru, who collaborate with each other under the monicker of InsertSilence. Amit Pitaru's sonic wire sound tool, which developed into a 3D drawing tool, may be a few years old now, but it was new to me and is certainly worth seeing if it's new to you too. A more recent project, their beautiful collaboration with dancer Dana Gingras, showed that they really don't feel that they're limited to any medium. And as for the Rotten Fruit Tardis? That really does need to be seen to be believed.
Overall, some technical issues with the sound levels in particular, and the acoustics of the venue in general, took some of the sheen off(f) the event, but most of the things we saw sparked interesting debates, and I think I speak for the rest of the Preloaded crew in attendance when I say that we all came back feeling reinvigorated and inspired. I would definitely recommend anyone to go to these events if like me, for whatever reason you've not quite got round to it before. It's a great way to put our industry into context, to see how it's always moving and evolving, and most importantly, that to some small extent we're all part of those changes.
And as consolation for those of you couldn't make it out to sunny Portugal, perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that it also rained heavily.
You can see more of the photos I took over in my Flickr set.
I'm also using these as inspiration for a few sketches, the first of which is below:
posted by Sam G at 3:53 PM
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