Collect the most creative minds in Europe and put them inside a design museum in the most modern and innovative district of Barcelona, you will find them talking and presenting incredible ideas and projects on the present and future of the visual arts industry.
Incredible people who have made their creativity their lifestyle, swinging back and forth between the definitions of designer and artist, who bring value to society and the economy through ideas that are expressed in so many ways.
This is OFFF.
These instead are the talks I followed and the notes I took, some are more about the way of presenting than the content itself, anyway they are things written instinctively in the moment.
I have to change to stay the same.
They mainly talked about optimism and how it can be contagious, about giving "color to concrete" and changing the environments in which we live, about how powerful it can be.
Figure it out what’s important to you and make it a priority.
Automattic, the company that runs Wordpress is renewing itself to keep up with its competitors; soon there will be a platform dedicated to agencies where it will be possible to manage all customer websites in one place.
All their news here: design.blog
As for Veronica Fuerte from Hey Studio I only noted: make an animation of everything you do, lol.
I realized that even in the creative industry there are many global groups that contain agencies all over the world. They are the ones who manage the multimedia campaigns of the largest and most important brands.
In this interesting talk I perceived the importance of collaboration between all the roles who can be involved in a creative project.
This one was very funny, they showed up with a group of spanish musicians on stage, since the singer is a partner of the studio. They inspired me on many things:
Create more of what you want to see.
Personal projects are more important than client work.
I only got to this talk at the end but I had time to listen to some great pearls from the design legend Stefan Sagmeister.
During the conversation with Ben Tallon he made a distinction between functional design and aesthetic design, when these two fit together it is a project of great design.
Then he gave the example of the period from the 50s to the 90s, in which functional design was given priority and all those gray brutalist buildings were built that people didn't want to live in.
For some, beauty is a function.
He continued with another example and said: “The bag that I have here and that I love so much is 30 years old, it is still her, always here. Just think about the sustainability of that design compared to 1000 other cheap alternatives I could have.”
Below are other photos stolen from the talks of Koto Studio, Timothy Goodman, Radim Malinic, MOX London.
I hope these ideas inspire you as this week has for me!
See you soon.
Fabio