Alarm rings, the air feels hot, you can feel the sun outside, your eyes and brain don’t want to wake up but something is telling you that an incomparable selection of lecturer is waiting for your attention. You suddenly know it is time for Offf day two.
The crowd is warmed with a series of illustrators on the stage explaining their overwhelming portfolios: David O’reilly and Pat Perry.
KarlssonWilker
This was sort of opening the way for the ever great and fresh Icelandic breed and NewYork Based design studio KarlssonWilker. Lecture that astonished and impressed the few people that still didn’t know them and reiterated the respect and profound admiration for a small studio with such an innovative approach to design- a studio always embracing new technology and in a search for innovative design techniques to implement in their cutting edge practice.
In an interview he gave me he told me what he believes are the secrets behind the success of his studio:
“Keep small and always take on board concepts that you don’t know how to realize in advance, this will push you to explore new realities and possible outcomes.”
James White
Then, the stage got possessed by a kick ass Canadian named James White that amused the audience with an incredibly fun lecture full of anecdotes and personal works that left everyone amazed by an impressive body of works. Flashy colourful images coming straight from his youth in the 80s paired by surreal bucket lists and crazy clients requests. Truly inspirational and fun.
We interviewed him and asked him how does he know when a piece of work is finished:
“I work my ass off till late at night, go to sleep. If in the morning I still like it, then it is finished maaaan.”
Gmunk
And then, then it was time for a truly gifted and talented American designer, motiongrapher, filmmaker, UI designer, you name it. It was time for Gmunk. Audience got literally flabbergasted by the quality of works and incredible fun of the talk with images of dolls, chimpanzees and stupid dance shoots randomly thrown into the presentation, so hilarious! He went through a year worth of work behind the realization of TRON legacy special effects, as well as the opening titles for FITC and Flash on the beach. He was giving out some interesting insight in the workflow of his small studio (5 people) but never ever ever being too serious, always entertaining the audience with fun events, dances or pictures of the moments when the crew is chilling or “fucking about.” Incredible.
