A few notes from OFFF, Paris 2010
I just came back from a lovely, hot sweaty weekend away in Paris, the primary purpose of which was to attend OFFF - the self proclaimed "international festival for the post-digital creation culture". In essence, it is a 3 day event whereby an extraordinary collection of artists get to show off their work and talk about their processes. I thought I'd note down a few of my favourite artists, and one or two pieces of their work.
This is a piece by the terrifically talented Craig Ward - a typographer whose work spans letter press, to the piece above created using Processing, to typography created in petri dishes. He talked about the workings behind a number of his best known pieces, and it was great to see that underpinning each was a focus on craft, time and effort rather than Photoshop.
For me, DixonBaxi stole the show. The massive auditorium was at it most full when Simon Dixon and Aporva Baxi talked about some of their work and the culture that underpins their agency. They are a two man team with a wealth of large agency experience, but deliberately choose not to employ too many people, preferring to simply outsource and manage their projects themselves. They talked about relying on a rich network of collaborators (similar to Universal Everything, which I'll cover later) to execute their projects. It was particularly "relieving" to hear them talk about the success of this arrangement since ultimately this is what I am doing with kulör.
Particularly exicting is the launch of DixonBaxi Film - a separate venture which will draw on the superb work they have done already collaborating with one of my favourite directors, Christopher Hewitt. I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of feature films they will produce.
A surprise hit for me was David Hillman Curtis. I was vaguely aware of him being a web designer, but couldn't quite place him until he explained as part of his opening gambit that the web design world had got to him. After spending two years designing the Yahoo! homepage, he was fed up and recreated himself as video artist. His key style is the "video portrait" which has informed a lot of his recent work, including some great documentaries about artists (for example, Lawrence Weiner above). They can all be viewed on his website, alongside his commercial work and short films.
I won't talk about Universal Everything - everyone knows how amazing Pyke and his gang are. Their recent work for MTV got a rapturous round of applause, quite rightly!
Dvein are a motion and interaction studio based in Barcelona, who presented some of their most recent work. Interestingly they seem to be most famous for creating the credits for motion conferences, and then talking at said conferences, which is an interesting virtuous circle (including OFFF 2006's titles). They seem to have a squidgy organic aesthetic to their work which you can explore in detail on their (rather awkward to use) website. I particularly like their credits for the F5 titles, and the approach they took to creating the narrative: by asking each speaker what their 5 favourite things were, and subsequently trying to tie it all together in a pretty stunning cohesive piece.
Sosolimited are an extraordinary design firm formed by 3 MIT grads with an obsession for hugely complex interactive pieces, that seem to be underpinned by an interest in deconstructing human dialogue into statistical semantics. I couldn't possibly convey their work in this sufficient detail on this post, so check out their website, and specifically Prime Numerics which should give you an insight into their work.
Kjell Ekhorn of design agency Non-Format presented a hugely entertaining talk about the company, basing much of the content around what they called the "wheel of style". I couldn't find anything about it, but I did find this Vimeo clip of him in action. Essentially the crux of his talk was how Non-Format try to avoid their work becoming a cliche, and keeping their work fresh and relevant.
The incredibly talented Julian Valleé was at this year's OFFF, presenting the sponsor titles, which were as brilliant, clever and witty as everyone expected them to be.
GF Smith Exhibition at 33 Portland Place
I was lucky enough to be invited to an exhibition of GF Smith's archive of promotional material, spanning over 100 years featuring fantastic design work from the likes of Saul Bass, Peter Saville, and MIlton Glaser, all exhibited in the incredible surroundings of 33 Portland Place: a beautiful old residence owned by Edward Davenport. Take a look over on my Flickr account for a few more pictures of the space.
Listening to Susanne Sundfør
I just discovered Norweigian singer Susanne Sundfør, via Mari Stolan's blog. Check out her album, "The Brothel" and take a look at the haunting video for the title track.
A little feature in .net magazine
I haven't written anything for a while since I've been busy with a few things, but just opened up my latest copy of .net magazine and found my face in there, where I talked about siteinspire.net.
Lucky 7, Westbourne Park…
Here's an amazingly bad photo of an amazing burger which I had at Lucky 7 on Westbourne Park Road. It feels like a very authentic American diner (though I'm sure no American would agree), with requisite tatty leather booths and quaint pieces of Americana stuck on the walls. Go there, check it out, but be warned it gets busy and you can't book.
The Brit Design Awards at the Design Museum
Last Tuesday I went to the opening of the Brit Insurance Design Awards at the London Design Museum, where all the nominees for this year's prize were on display. YCN has been nominated for the library at 72 Rivington Street (for which I developed the website) in the Interactive category, kindly nominated by Jeremy Leslie.
It was nice to see the rainbow of books resurrected again by Anna of Jiggery Pokery (the picture above was stolen from their blog), and was a nice surprise to see it sitting close by to Will and Alex of It's Nice That's nomination for their magazine.
With a lot on display, and a very crowded exhibition space, I didn't spend as much time as I would have liked browsing the other nominations. I did spot that the late Alexander McQueen was nominated for his incredible Showstudio collaboration, which I think will make a very deserved posthumus award.
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Amazing aerial virtual tour of New York City…
The Solitary Life of Cranes
I watched this superb documentary about the life of crane operators in London who spend their lives sat high up in the sky, who talk about their daily observations of people below. It's beautifully shot and feels so calm. You can catch it on 4oD at the moment.
Peter Callesen, paper cuts
Just discovered the work of Peter Callesen: an artist who has recently dedicated himself to producing these incredible paper sculptures from single A4 pieces of paper.
(via @jamesrkent)
My interview on MinimalSites.com
I feel very honoured to be featured as the member of the month on the newly redesigned and very sexy, MinimalSites: a website dedicated to profiling the very best minimal web design right now. In it, i talk about why I started siteInspire, and some details of my new venture, Kulör.
It does feel odd though that a web design gallery profiling another web design gallery, like one big Droste effect...!
Many thanks to Jung of MinimalSites!
Do you eat crap?
I really love the little details in this ad for The Pump, in NYC... Look out for subliminal bacon.
American Pixels
I really like these images from a series called American Pixels by Jörg M Colberg that use JPEG compression algorithms to create unusual artworks.
The Uniqlo digital creative archive
I am a huge, huge fan of Uniqlo's digital work, so I was excited to see that they have created a handy archive featuring all their past projects. Make sure you check out all the Uniqlock pieces featured there, which I think started the whole thing off.
Currently listening to… Mumford & Sons
I'm currently really enjoying Mumford & Sons' new album, Sigh No More. The London-based band were formed in December 2007, and have an unusual mix of folk, rock and country, that has been compared to Kings of Leon and Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young (at least on their website). I get the same feeling from these guys as when I listened to the Fleet Foxes for the first time.