OFFF 2017, Barcelona
Let’s feed the future
By Vasco Valentim
Creative at VBAT
For sixteen years now, OFFF takes place in Barcelona at the Museu de Disseny. It’s a platform where a vast variety of creatives share knowledge and experiences across all disciplines of Design. It’s where we go to drink and soak our creative souls.
Nowadays, OFFF is a creative hub and platform based in Barcelona with extensions all over the globe: Mexico City, Porto, Milan, New York City, you name it.
This year’s edition had an incredible line-up. From the holy Lance Wyman to legendary Vaughan Oliver, Imaginary Forces, Buck, or Vallée Duhamel, Annie Atkins, Stink Studios, Gary Baseman, Moving Brands, Anthony Burrill, Joshua Davis, and many many more.
The vibe and outside mood made it feel almost like a music summer festival.
Thursday I made sure to attend to Buck , a house of motion-graphics to be reckoned with. Here, the main venue had its biggest crowd of the day and it was completely justified. These guys are really solid and an inspiration. Just check the video below and you will know what I mean. Fascinating to learn how this short was created and realize that everything really starts with pen and paper.
Afterwards, it was Vaughan Oliver’s turn. I was looking forward to this one. Oliver was a delight to listen to — to learn how he created, back in the 80’s, together with the 4AD label, some of the incredible album covers for The Cocteau Twins, Breeders, Lush or Pixies. Looking back, as he said, he ended up doing what he loved most — designing covers of music albums, specially during that exciting post-punk period. His work is very recognizable — bold, vigorous, and ironic at times. Photography played a huge part in his work. He collaborated intensively with Chris Bigg throughout his golden days at 4AD, juxtaposing powerful imagery with puzzling blackmail lettering. Pure graphic design.
The crowd now was not as enthusiastic nor as full as with Buck; you could see that the young scene is not really familiar with Oliver, and I couldn’t help feeling bad for him. A great opportunity wasted out the window! Generation gap, I suppose.
The first day was coming to an end, and Imaginary Forces were the last speakers. These are the guys behind the hyped Stranger Things TV show main titles, Mad Men, Jessica Jones, Band of Brothers, Boardwalk Empire or Vinyl. Karen Fong and Michelle Dougherty were the speakers in charge.
Again it was interesting to see that even with the most mainstream media, everything starts with a piece of paper and a pencil.
It’s a very hands-on process, very intuitive and empiric some-how. For the Jessica Jones main titles sequence, for instance, they wanted to be true to the original covers of the comic books Jessica Jones: Alias, by David Mack, in which he uses watercolors profusely, something that became very iconic and popular among the fans. So, they started exploring ways of filming and portraying ink mixing with water, on glass or other media. The idea was to blend it eventually with actual footage.
Friday, was the day of Annie Atkins and Moving Brands.
“My name is Annie and I do graphic design for movies”.
That’s how Atkins introduced herself to the crowd. Annie is from Dublin and studied at Film School, only to realize that what she’s really passionate about is, actually, graphic design. Her first job was doing the graphic design for the 2007 Showtime The Tudors. She was working with the graphic design department on the show, and would create everything that you can think of: from patterns for tapestries, to medieval calligraphy on a wide variety of documents of the kingdom of Henry VIII.
The project was successful would lead to new opportunities and eventually she managed to work with directors like Steven Spielberg (on A Bridge of Spies) or Wes Anderson, on The Grand Budapest Hotel. Here her role as a graphic designer got to its higher, since she and her peers had to design virtually everything to the fictional Empire of Zubrowka. Documents, stamps, passports, telegrams, newspapers (!), maps, or other items, like packaging for pastries or even book covers. It was interesting to learn the difference between hero props and regular props, background props; some of these props are of course always in the background, out of sight, out of focus even, whilst when you have a hero prop, like the Mendl’s pastries box in The Grand Budapest Hotel, eventually you may get to have your piece shine in the silver screen for 2–3 seconds, in all it’s majestic glory.
In film, every item is unique and has to be replicated at least a dozen of times, so that, for instance, an actor can open an envelope (prop) on any given take and that this envelope is new and look the same, with its stamp and handwriting looking the same from a scene that possible did appear before in the film. Atkins loves her craft. She truly does.
Moving Brands turn was up next, with co-founder Jim Bull. Well known among us creatives, Moving Brands has offices across the globe. Originally from the North of England, Bull gave a non-apologetic talk, direct, honest and inspiring. Their work speak for themselves, so Jim was more interested in sharing mind-sets: sheepism, as he called it, is a terrible but avoidable tendency that ought to be stopped. We, as creatives that are responsible, must avoid sheepism at all costs, to follow hollow trends that lead to empty and fake brands that look like carbon copies of each others. Brands that in the end lack added value or recognition at all.
Saturday was the last day and I tried to make the most out of it. American illustrator and painter Gary Baseman, was interesting, unexpected, wild and crazy.
Anthony Burrill, gave a talked focused on typography and letterpress. Burrill shared is love for bold shapes, urban signs and symbols. To be passionate and honest about yourself and your work. He is the creator of the poster Work Hard & Be Nice to People, all set and printed manually, on a letterpress machine.
And lastly, Lance Wyman. Graduated from Pratt Institute in NYC, Wyman is regarded as one of the greatest, just like Paul Rand or Otl Aicher.
It’s incredible to think that Wyman was only 29 years old when he won the pitch for the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games. A time that brought him success, recognition and effectively launched his now long and vast career.
As he shared with us, at the time, he and his partner didn’t have enough money to get return tickets from Mexico, so they ended up staying there for a few years, leading up consequently to work on the Mexico City Metro visual identity as well, something that Wyman is very proud of, especially how such a complex premise could be simplified and systematized virtually using only a set of bold icons and colors — something still new at the time.
Wyman has transformed cities and public spaces across the world through the simple power of iconography. It is a reminder that often good design is timeless, pure, simple — and above all transversal and understandable to all cultures.
All in all, OFFF Barcelona is an experience you should not miss, refreshing and inspirational.
So, OFFF 2018, May 24–26. Make sure to be there.
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written by Vasco Valentim
Creative at VBAT
edited by Connie Fluhme
PR at VBAT
