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.
Decode at the V&A
I was lucky enough to be invited by Guy Moorhouse to this evening's opening of Decode, at the V&A - a new exhibition of interactive design co-curated by Onedotzero. It's great that such a high-profile venue is showcasing interactive design in this way, and raising its profile towards it becoming a recognised, genuine art form. The exhibition (itself designed by Francesco Draisci) featured works composed using Processing, Arduino, openFrameworks and other concoctions of technologies intertwined with cameras, sensors, projections and displays to create artworks that respond to human interaction in fascinating and sometimes creepy ways.
"Weave Mirror" by Daniel Rozin is my favourite piece - a stunning juxtaposition of craft and technology - whereby the viewer's portriat is gradually formed from 768 motorised C-shaped gradient prints.
"Venetian Mirror" by Fabrica is beautifully subtle, where a ghostly, greyscale imprint of the viewer appears in a shattered mirror, only to fade away and morph into whomever takes the viewer's place.
Troika exhibited their stunning Digital Zeotrope, commissioned by Onedotzero.
More details of the exhibition can be found on the exhibition microsite. (As an aside, it's a shame that an exhibition of cutting-edge interactive design has such a badly designed and uninspiring website...)
The City of Melbourne re-branding
This has been posted everywhere, but I absolutely love this work by Landor for Melbourne's identity, conveying the multiple facets of the city in a structural way. (Check out Landor Sydney's blog post here.) I just have a sneaking suspicion that the branding exercise for London is going to land horribly on its face, particularly since Moving Brands' really interesting effort was just rejected by the committee.
Bring Fling: How Mobile is Changing Design
I've only just realised that Adam Greenfield and Bring Fling look alike. Maybe it's time I go for the shaven head and specs look. (The image was borrowed from Maykel Loomans' Flickr stream.)
Brian Fling is a interactive designer for both the web and mobile and has worked with hundreds of businesses from early stage start-ups to Fortune 50 companies. He is currently the president (and co-founder) of mobile and web-app agency Pinch/Zoom. His talk at dConstruct was focussed around the idea that mobile is in fact be changing the way in which designers are thinking differently about the user and their context, and how this has implications on application design.
Michael Lebowitz on D&AD’s “viral” category
Big Spaceship's Michael Lebowitz on judging the viral category at the D&AD awards. He calls for the category to be completely removed, and I couldn't agree more. He argues that viral describes an effect of a piece of communication, not the communication itself.
Julien Vallée, motion artist from Montreal
Yes yes, I know I’m the last person on the internet to post something about Julien Vallée but I just re-visited his YCN profile for the first time in ages and was once again blown away by his stuff even though I’ve seen it all before.
And look at his non-motion stuff…
Visit his website for more incredible work.
Ab Rogers, interior design
Emperor Moth
I had the pleasure of visiting a residence designed by interior designer, Ab Rogers last night, and it was the most extraordinary place I have ever experienced. He’s known for his boldly colourful yet minimal design, which can lead to bizarre but usually brilliant results. Take a look at his website for some more examples of his work. (It includes a somewhat sparse blog which I hope will be updated soon.)
Ab is the son of architect Richard Rogers, and recently gained public notority with his redesign of Little Chef, as part of Heston Blumenthal’s “Big Chef takes on Little Chef” (the results of which can be seen below).
Little Chef
Tate Modern
Grafica Fidalga; making posters on a 1929 German letterpress
I just saw this video on the ever-excellent, Coolhunting, featuring Grafica Fidalga of São Paulo: a printing press that makes posters on a 1929 German letterpress using hand-carved wooden letters.
Six recent additions to my RSS feeds
I recently discovered a few really nice design blogs that I regularly follow… I don’t think any of them are particularly new, but I’ve only just found them!
New version of It’s Nice That launches
The boys upstairs have just flipped the switch on the new version of everyone’s favourite design blog, It’s Nice That. It has been a while in development, but looks really great and they have added a ‘features’ section for longer posts such as interviews, as well as a shop.
You can find details of their new physical publication. I saw a copy the other day and it’s really… nice.
Mari Stølan, A Lot of Pixel
I have been enjoying the blog of Norwegian design student Mari Stølan, based in London, who seems to collect the most random images from around the web. Like a mini-Ffffound.
Monocle Weekly; business, arts, new and culture podcast
I was very critical of Monocle magazine when it was first released, with its focus on everything that was that was totally irrelevant to me (I’m personally not in the market for a Wally any time soon, for instance). However, I’ve recently rediscovered the magazine - which is an incredible piece of design in itself - and a relatively new podcast that they produce called The Monocle Weekly.
I haven’t missed an episode yet, genuinely enjoying the mix of news, culture, business, politics, design, music, etc. all expertly produced into a very accessible 30-minute-or-so package presented by the magazine’s editor, Tyler Brûlé (who is a pretty big ponce, as demonstrated by this FT article). Definitely something to subscribe to (on iTunes), published every Sunday.