Why you should go to the OFFF Festival
A shot to write why a designer student have to go to that kind of event
It’s been 4 days since the OFFF Festival is over. I’ve taken advantage of being in Barcelona to keep 1 day to visit and enjoy the playa with my friends. I’m writing this because since I came back to Paris, I’ve spoken a lot about the festival with my friends, almost all the students in my school. About the great festival, nice environment, inspiring talks, occasion to see great designers, nice design stuff to buy, etc. I’ll keep a great memories about it, and I’m trying to share the best as I can my experience about the event. As I wrote in my last shot, I highly recommend Design’s event for every design student. Here I’ll try to explain why.
Lack of inspiration & motivation?
You need to go out of your bubble!
There are a lot of talented people in my school and in my friend circles. Some of them have great design skills, good projects and concepts, but for the most of them, they have some problem sometimes, they’re lack of ideas and they’re going around in circles with their experimentation. The solution which oftenly works for me is simply to stop working and to take 1 day to have a rest: go out for an exhibition, see friends, wandering in my favourite place or check for an interesting event, etc. The OFFF Festival was a good mix of all of them. I’ve come to Barcelona with 8 friends, to hear and watch famous designers talking about their projects, experimentation, their philosophy and sharing their experience. The Disseny Hub is a nice museum to host the event.
Design stuff and some awesome gift
Cool fact about the OFFF is the design stuff that you can buy. And it was hard for me because I would like to buy all of these and going in bankrupt ☺. Fortunately, they were some gift gave by the staff or speakers.
Chat with every person to get motivation
Going to the OFFF was a real surprise and a good one. Even if you’re shy, it’s really easy to speak with every person around you. You know that you’ll be in contact with only creative and passionate people. Even with the people at the booth like Carlos Toledo with his daily sketches. He gave me the motivation to do the same process after my diploma’s project. I tried to speak to my favourite designers after their talks like Jodi Terwilliger, the Creative Director from Hush Studios.
I was really happy to speak with Bakea, a famous illustrator from Madrid. He got a great presentation with every illustrated slide designed by himself.
Let people know about your work
It was an occasion to talk about my project. My dissertation that I gave to Radim Malinic, a freelance Creative Director from Brand Nu. I didn’t expect him to give some goodies when I came to speak with him at the end. It was a suprise and I received a nice poster and pencils. And the fact that he recognized me when I was wandering at the Adobe booth was a nice surprise. After talking about using our design skills for a good cause, it was an opportunity to show my work about Alzheimer and the IoT. Speaking about your project with professional and famous designer is really good for every student. It allows you to have some new vision for your project. Sharing new references, have some feedbacks and speak about your motivations, your goals, etc. It’s something that I learned at school: you need to know how to communicate about your work.
Let’s summarize this…
What I want to share with this article is really simple. The festival helped me to have more inspiration, more motivation and stand back from my project, because we all need of this. During the most designer’s talks, I heard that “you have to try and go outside of your comfort zone”. Because the most things that you’ll learn is when you put yourself in danger, you’ll experience new things, and sometimes you’ll have good surprise ☺. Finally, the OFFF was a great experience for me, I feel a bit more confident in my diploma’s project.
