‘Offf’ festival 2009- ‘Fail Gracefully’
‘Offf’ is a design festival focusing on Graphic Design, Motion Graphics and Interactive Design. This year, the festival took place in Oeiras, Portugal and lasted 3 days. Some of the highlights were Stefan Sagmeister, who came on stage wearing a dress and helped us to understand how to become happier , Karsten Schmidt’s amazing digital animation for Audi and Nokia, Pes’ ‘Human Skateboard’ Stop-Motion animation, Chris Milk’s video clips for the Chemical Brothers and the collaboration between Amit Pitaru and James Paterson which connected beautifully between dance and animation.
Although there were some amazing speakers, the organization of the event ‘failed ungracefully’. Terrible sound quality, almost unbearable temperatures and chairs from the inquisition. It was difficult to get food or drinks and walking to the toilets took around 10 minutes because of human traffic jams… The price of a ticket was cheap comparing to other design festivals and we were thinking that we would have paid more for convenience.
Neville Brody spoke first and was really boring, with nothing new to say. Joshua Davies gave an enthusiastic talk about ‘what is space’. It was interesting to see his work process which involves the creation of animated systems generating unlimited design options. He also spoke about how we lose the ability to have fun and play as we grow up. In one of his exhibitions, he gave people crayons to fill in his creation with color and was amazed to hear people asking him ‘Is this for kids only’…
UVA showed how they use real-time 3d animations in music concerts. It wasn’t just random visuals like the one you see in many VJ performances, there was a strong connection between music and visuals. Grey London didn’t show up and one of the organizers, described it like working with a tough client… Aaron Koblin uses 3d scanning technique to create music videos which was quite impressive to view.
Multitouch Barcelona created a Space Invaders game in which people need to throw actual soft balls on a screen. These guys are really talented and they are only in their twenties…
It was definitely worth it to go to Offf despite all the organizational problems. It is the type of festival which makes you think and encourage you to create more by yourself.
