OFFF 2016
OFFF - Barcelona Creators Festival - appeared as much as 16 years ago, in 2000, and the name stands for Online Flash Film Festival. The initiator of the party was the Spanish designer and artist Héctor Ayuso . Hector himself calls OFFF not just a festival, but a life path that is constantly changing and evolving.
The festival is not about how to work and solve problems in the processes according to the instructions. It is completely about the opposite - about how to always love what you do, do not be shy to be open and not be afraid to make mistakes, trying new things.
My interest in OFFF was born recently, after the Russian version of the festival, which was done by the guys from Caviar. Then, for the first time, I found out how crazy Joshua Davis is in mixing the analog and digital worlds . I saw firsthand that it is not for nothing that IDEO is considered one of the greatest innovators. And at the after-party of the festival he tried for a long time to make Igor Nikolaev from AKQA drink for love.
And then six months later, I realize that I am standing in line for registration for the original OFFF near the Barcelona Design Museum .
They put a bracelet on my arm to enter, in another hand they give me an Archetype book about festival participants and don’t give a T-shirt that was intended only for those who bought festival tickets a year (!) Before this day.
A little about how we spent time during breaks. We drank satanic coffee.
We walked in the neon corridors of the hotel.
OFFF in Barcelona is something. Cool atmosphere, more than three thousand participants and masters of various art forms, standing with you in line for burgers to the old truck Citroen, in which they are prepared (burgers, not masters!). Denis Kortunov and Yura Vetrov stand here.
Queues, by the way, have always been huge.
Those who were closer to the hot Barcelona sun than the huge cool room inside the Design Museum sat on the street and watched the live broadcast on the big screen in the food area.
In the hall, meanwhile, almost all the seats were filled, and those who wanted to sit closer, but did not have time to take a seat, settled right on the floor between the rows. We, too, have done so many times, by the way.
The first impression of the speakers is that people are not at all afraid to be themselves, sincerely and openly up to the most personal topics. Many said that it is extremely important to love what you are doing, because it is then that you will be able to give all your best and do really good things, for which you will not be ashamed then.
Next, a little about those performances that I liked more than others. And in case you want to read more about speakers, I’ll put links on the topic.
The festival has a very cool tradition. Each time, specially for the festival, one of the participants makes opening credits and main credits that are shown on the last day. This time there was an insanely cool and bright teaser, which the authors described something like this: “We wanted to show how every organizer and participant of OFFF feels every year: an incredible mixture of sheer madness, hard work, adventure, nerves and fun!”:
The teaser was made by students of Atelier, an independent design school located in Barcelona. Thanks to them, not only a teaser appeared, but also opening credits. And the whole corporate identity of the festival, including t-shirts, they did too.
After the opening credits, the guys talked about how they invented and implemented a teaser with captions, experimented with branding for the festival and at the last moment changed the format of the book to fit everything they wanted.
It's funny that the characteristic joke from the world of Russian design “It's too expensive and my son can do this on his laptop in 15 minutes” is typical for the whole world design, judging by the quotes from the guys from Atelier.
The studio was represented by two people who talked about the same thing as Mans Adler in Russia. If you were not on Strelka in September last year, then I advise you to read the interview . The guys are famous for doing Monument Valley, which earned $ 14 and a half million two years after the release. And a day after they accidentally appeared in the House of Cards - 40 thousand dollars!
Do you know what the guys led to success? Here's what: “I don't give a damn about your marketing, monetization, and so on. Let's just make the game what we want! ” And this perfectly reflects their internal motto “Just F # @ king Do It”.
A bit about the processes of the company. Everyone works as sprints, including designers, and the Build Test Test Learn cycle for them is in order. Ustwo reminds you of important things: always work together, forget about your ego and remember that people evaluate the result of your work in the part that is done the worst.
A little blurry story, but still interesting. Among the good thoughts is that it is worth looking for inspiration in nature and reviewing your experiments from the past. If you do not know who these guys are, then be sure to visit their website - they talk about many projects at the intersection of science, technology and art. A very interesting project is a framework that allows you to generate sounds and visual effects based on the movements of the human body. The theme of mixing analog and digital is super popular at the festival - it was most clearly revealed by Joshua Davis and Rama Allen, but more on that later.
The coolest masters of special effects and visual technology from New York. The Mill was represented by Rama Allen, creative director of the studio. Rama spoke of “magical thinking,” the essence of which is to find your ritual that brings the most results. In his case, a simple method works (it also helps me, by the way): you need to pick up a special playlist, plug in the headphones and go out for a walk outside the office.
Among the studio's projects are several works with biometric data in addition to the “usual” commercials for market monsters and special effects for films. I’ll show you the story of creating the project that I liked the most: a gorgeous mix of analog (mascara, oil and alcohol) and digital (generating a sacred geometric patterns framework and a “flower” that changes the look of music): an article and video for those who don’t wants to read a lot of letters:
Stylish and very thinly feeling his niche, Canadian James White and his studio Signalnoise . James talked about how his children's drawings on the theme of comics and various sports icons of the time grew into what he is doing now. And he insanely cool plays on the themes of the eighties that are gaining popularity: neon noir, multi-stage bright gradients and illustrations on the theme of retro pop culture of the 80s. He quite rightly mentions his slogan “Do not try to ignore the stupid idea” and continues to do “joint projects with yourself” after 30 years.
James did the credits for last year's OFFF, I'll show them to you:
Since James (like many other speakers, by the way) lived in the same hotel with us, I managed to catch him and take a picture together:
And James also reminds you not to be afraid to show others what you are doing. Who knows where it will lead you:
My unconditional favorites of the festival. Joshua Davis is a person who has been doing what I want for a long time, but can't find the time to learn. Wonderful generative art, a mixture of analog and digital. But then he moved it to a new level in my mind: this time Joshua performed with the beautiful drummer Kiran Gandhi . Kieran itself is a very interesting figure - a feminist activist who, by deed, proves her views, and does not build an offended and destitute girl. You just look how talented: Kieran played the role of drummer with the MIA and most recently received an MBA. And engaged in art, and at the same time improves professional knowledge.
Video of the first minutes of the speech, which I shot while sitting on the floor between the rows:
Toward the end, the entire audience danced and applauded. It is precisely at the moments when the conference turned into a party that the real atmosphere is felt:
For people who are rich in free time, the full version of the video sequence along with music:
Here is what Kieran says about his speech: “I realized that the best moments in life are those when you remain true to yourself and share the best of what you can do.” Fast Company recently posted an interview with the guys. Read , it's worth it.
Spin's Tony Brook spoke a lot and melancholy about various British-style prints, book design and print guidelines from different companies (hell, I did lie about the design systems) and the cool rebranding of Ministry of Sound .
But the coolest thing he showed was again a mixture of different disciplines. A joint project with Universal Everything about the evolution and movement of architecture:
Anyone who does not know Patatap should be ashamed now. I did not know, but it turns out that they spent as much as 60 thousand hours on development! If you are not familiar with this project, then you should know: this is a very cool mix of music with visual effects, but in the most simple and affordable shell. The guys even made a special version for OFFF, poke a little on the keyboard: offf.patatap.com .
This is how the guys experiment with finding sound:
And they also have a very interesting project about how words sound. Here, too, tell the meaning, you need to go to typatone.com and write, write, write.
If you liked these two projects and these links are already few, then here are a couple more from the same guys: lab.johnwai.co.uk/ideogram and jonobr1.github.io/two.js
Johnny talked about how he got a little hobby for making T-shirts to grow such a business in himself. The whole story can be fully read on his website .
Johnny focuses on the importance of user experience from product delivery to packaging.
He positions himself as the world's first “T-shirt bakery”. Of course, this is connected with a bunch of funny stories about how people came to his store, hoping to eat cupcakes, but left disappointed and after that posted dissatisfied reviews on the network.
An interesting approach with limited series is, for example, the Breakfast special series, which could only be purchased at breakfast time. Johnny had a special campaign for distributing T-shirts: within 20 minutes after he posted an advertisement on Instagram, anyone who caught him received a T-shirt.
Another favorite of mine, but now in the presentation and courage of the product. Incredibly cool storyteller, bold and crazy just as much as everyone should be. When Mr. Bingo was about to launch a Kickstarter campaign called Hate Mail (be sure to check the degree of insanity at: www.kickstarter.com/projects/mrbingo/hate-mail-the-definitive-collection ), he asked himself: why shoot boring video that every other kickstarter campaign has? You can do something cool, one that no one dared to remember! That was how the banter rap clip was born, which he shot with his friends:
We did not fully watch his speech for a good reason: Denis was strangling me at the Adobe Stock booth.
Tim talked about how he built his career thanks to what he wrote with a regular Sharpie marker and about his projects that were supposed to help him and other people become more human.
Among what he did, what I liked most was the Human Relationship Project, 40 Days of Dating . This is how Tim and his best friend Jessica describe the experiment: “They say that a person needs 40 days to break a habit. Therefore, in an attempt to study each other and get rid of fears, Tim and Jessica will go through all the thorns of the relationship over these 40 days. Can they learn to help each other? or will they remain with their habits? Will they destroy their friendship? Or maybe they will fall in love with each other? ”
“ 12 types of kindness ” is another experiment about trying in 12 steps to learn to be kinder and more attentive to each other.
The main credits were made by Gavin Strange with Merlin Crossingham and Aardman Animations . A certain OFFF dude appears in the credits, symbolizing the participants of the festival. And the guys got confused and made vinyl figures of this very dude, but they only got to the front row.
It is difficult to surprise a modern person with something - I see this both by myself and by other people. But I can’t move away from OFFF magic so far. Incredible in atmosphere and energy, an event that normally gives you a kick in the ass and says, “Have you really relaxed yet?” It was at the end of this festival, standing at night knee-deep in the cold Mediterranean Sea, I experienced an almost forgotten feeling when it becomes sad that something ended.
Do not forget that your future determines what you do in your free time, go crazy and do your own projects. And do not slow down and go ahead for tickets to the next OFFF: tickets.offf.ws/events . It's worth it!
Our trip could not have taken place at all, if not for the encouragement from our Acronis company. This is incredibly cool when the company understands the value of such conferences, where they talk not about processes, methods and instructions (these are also very necessary events!), But fill them with real inspiration.
Special thanks to Jura Vetrov for arranging a 14-block walk to the trendy Danish brewery Mikkeller. Thanks to that evening, now many people know that trying Chipotle Porter is a big risk and danger.
My interest in OFFF was born recently, after the Russian version of the festival, which was done by the guys from Caviar. Then, for the first time, I found out how crazy Joshua Davis is in mixing the analog and digital worlds . I saw firsthand that it is not for nothing that IDEO is considered one of the greatest innovators. And at the after-party of the festival he tried for a long time to make Igor Nikolaev from AKQA drink for love.
And then six months later, I realize that I am standing in line for registration for the original OFFF near the Barcelona Design Museum .
They put a bracelet on my arm to enter, in another hand they give me an Archetype book about festival participants and don’t give a T-shirt that was intended only for those who bought festival tickets a year (!) Before this day.
A little about how we spent time during breaks. We drank satanic coffee.
We walked in the neon corridors of the hotel.
OFFF in Barcelona is something. Cool atmosphere, more than three thousand participants and masters of various art forms, standing with you in line for burgers to the old truck Citroen, in which they are prepared (burgers, not masters!). Denis Kortunov and Yura Vetrov stand here.
Queues, by the way, have always been huge.
Those who were closer to the hot Barcelona sun than the huge cool room inside the Design Museum sat on the street and watched the live broadcast on the big screen in the food area.
In the hall, meanwhile, almost all the seats were filled, and those who wanted to sit closer, but did not have time to take a seat, settled right on the floor between the rows. We, too, have done so many times, by the way.
The first impression of the speakers is that people are not at all afraid to be themselves, sincerely and openly up to the most personal topics. Many said that it is extremely important to love what you are doing, because it is then that you will be able to give all your best and do really good things, for which you will not be ashamed then.
Next, a little about those performances that I liked more than others. And in case you want to read more about speakers, I’ll put links on the topic.
Teaser and opening credits
The festival has a very cool tradition. Each time, specially for the festival, one of the participants makes opening credits and main credits that are shown on the last day. This time there was an insanely cool and bright teaser, which the authors described something like this: “We wanted to show how every organizer and participant of OFFF feels every year: an incredible mixture of sheer madness, hard work, adventure, nerves and fun!”:
The teaser was made by students of Atelier, an independent design school located in Barcelona. Thanks to them, not only a teaser appeared, but also opening credits. And the whole corporate identity of the festival, including t-shirts, they did too.
After the opening credits, the guys talked about how they invented and implemented a teaser with captions, experimented with branding for the festival and at the last moment changed the format of the book to fit everything they wanted.
It's funny that the characteristic joke from the world of Russian design “It's too expensive and my son can do this on his laptop in 15 minutes” is typical for the whole world design, judging by the quotes from the guys from Atelier.
Ustwo
The studio was represented by two people who talked about the same thing as Mans Adler in Russia. If you were not on Strelka in September last year, then I advise you to read the interview . The guys are famous for doing Monument Valley, which earned $ 14 and a half million two years after the release. And a day after they accidentally appeared in the House of Cards - 40 thousand dollars!
Do you know what the guys led to success? Here's what: “I don't give a damn about your marketing, monetization, and so on. Let's just make the game what we want! ” And this perfectly reflects their internal motto “Just F # @ king Do It”.
A bit about the processes of the company. Everyone works as sprints, including designers, and the Build Test Test Learn cycle for them is in order. Ustwo reminds you of important things: always work together, forget about your ego and remember that people evaluate the result of your work in the part that is done the worst.
Creativeapplications.net
A little blurry story, but still interesting. Among the good thoughts is that it is worth looking for inspiration in nature and reviewing your experiments from the past. If you do not know who these guys are, then be sure to visit their website - they talk about many projects at the intersection of science, technology and art. A very interesting project is a framework that allows you to generate sounds and visual effects based on the movements of the human body. The theme of mixing analog and digital is super popular at the festival - it was most clearly revealed by Joshua Davis and Rama Allen, but more on that later.
The mill
The coolest masters of special effects and visual technology from New York. The Mill was represented by Rama Allen, creative director of the studio. Rama spoke of “magical thinking,” the essence of which is to find your ritual that brings the most results. In his case, a simple method works (it also helps me, by the way): you need to pick up a special playlist, plug in the headphones and go out for a walk outside the office.
Among the studio's projects are several works with biometric data in addition to the “usual” commercials for market monsters and special effects for films. I’ll show you the story of creating the project that I liked the most: a gorgeous mix of analog (mascara, oil and alcohol) and digital (generating a sacred geometric patterns framework and a “flower” that changes the look of music): an article and video for those who don’t wants to read a lot of letters:
Signalnoise
Stylish and very thinly feeling his niche, Canadian James White and his studio Signalnoise . James talked about how his children's drawings on the theme of comics and various sports icons of the time grew into what he is doing now. And he insanely cool plays on the themes of the eighties that are gaining popularity: neon noir, multi-stage bright gradients and illustrations on the theme of retro pop culture of the 80s. He quite rightly mentions his slogan “Do not try to ignore the stupid idea” and continues to do “joint projects with yourself” after 30 years.
James did the credits for last year's OFFF, I'll show them to you:
Since James (like many other speakers, by the way) lived in the same hotel with us, I managed to catch him and take a picture together:
And James also reminds you not to be afraid to show others what you are doing. Who knows where it will lead you:
Joshua Davis + Kiran Gandhi
My unconditional favorites of the festival. Joshua Davis is a person who has been doing what I want for a long time, but can't find the time to learn. Wonderful generative art, a mixture of analog and digital. But then he moved it to a new level in my mind: this time Joshua performed with the beautiful drummer Kiran Gandhi . Kieran itself is a very interesting figure - a feminist activist who, by deed, proves her views, and does not build an offended and destitute girl. You just look how talented: Kieran played the role of drummer with the MIA and most recently received an MBA. And engaged in art, and at the same time improves professional knowledge.
Video of the first minutes of the speech, which I shot while sitting on the floor between the rows:
Toward the end, the entire audience danced and applauded. It is precisely at the moments when the conference turned into a party that the real atmosphere is felt:
For people who are rich in free time, the full version of the video sequence along with music:
Here is what Kieran says about his speech: “I realized that the best moments in life are those when you remain true to yourself and share the best of what you can do.” Fast Company recently posted an interview with the guys. Read , it's worth it.
Tony brook
Spin's Tony Brook spoke a lot and melancholy about various British-style prints, book design and print guidelines from different companies (hell, I did lie about the design systems) and the cool rebranding of Ministry of Sound .
But the coolest thing he showed was again a mixture of different disciplines. A joint project with Universal Everything about the evolution and movement of architecture:
Lullatone
Anyone who does not know Patatap should be ashamed now. I did not know, but it turns out that they spent as much as 60 thousand hours on development! If you are not familiar with this project, then you should know: this is a very cool mix of music with visual effects, but in the most simple and affordable shell. The guys even made a special version for OFFF, poke a little on the keyboard: offf.patatap.com .
This is how the guys experiment with finding sound:
And they also have a very interesting project about how words sound. Here, too, tell the meaning, you need to go to typatone.com and write, write, write.
If you liked these two projects and these links are already few, then here are a couple more from the same guys: lab.johnwai.co.uk/ideogram and jonobr1.github.io/two.js
Johnny cupcakes
Johnny talked about how he got a little hobby for making T-shirts to grow such a business in himself. The whole story can be fully read on his website .
Johnny focuses on the importance of user experience from product delivery to packaging.
He positions himself as the world's first “T-shirt bakery”. Of course, this is connected with a bunch of funny stories about how people came to his store, hoping to eat cupcakes, but left disappointed and after that posted dissatisfied reviews on the network.
An interesting approach with limited series is, for example, the Breakfast special series, which could only be purchased at breakfast time. Johnny had a special campaign for distributing T-shirts: within 20 minutes after he posted an advertisement on Instagram, anyone who caught him received a T-shirt.
Mr bingo
Another favorite of mine, but now in the presentation and courage of the product. Incredibly cool storyteller, bold and crazy just as much as everyone should be. When Mr. Bingo was about to launch a Kickstarter campaign called Hate Mail (be sure to check the degree of insanity at: www.kickstarter.com/projects/mrbingo/hate-mail-the-definitive-collection ), he asked himself: why shoot boring video that every other kickstarter campaign has? You can do something cool, one that no one dared to remember! That was how the banter rap clip was born, which he shot with his friends:
We did not fully watch his speech for a good reason: Denis was strangling me at the Adobe Stock booth.
Timothy goodman
Tim talked about how he built his career thanks to what he wrote with a regular Sharpie marker and about his projects that were supposed to help him and other people become more human.
Among what he did, what I liked most was the Human Relationship Project, 40 Days of Dating . This is how Tim and his best friend Jessica describe the experiment: “They say that a person needs 40 days to break a habit. Therefore, in an attempt to study each other and get rid of fears, Tim and Jessica will go through all the thorns of the relationship over these 40 days. Can they learn to help each other? or will they remain with their habits? Will they destroy their friendship? Or maybe they will fall in love with each other? ”
“ 12 types of kindness ” is another experiment about trying in 12 steps to learn to be kinder and more attentive to each other.
Main titles
The main credits were made by Gavin Strange with Merlin Crossingham and Aardman Animations . A certain OFFF dude appears in the credits, symbolizing the participants of the festival. And the guys got confused and made vinyl figures of this very dude, but they only got to the front row.
In the end
It is difficult to surprise a modern person with something - I see this both by myself and by other people. But I can’t move away from OFFF magic so far. Incredible in atmosphere and energy, an event that normally gives you a kick in the ass and says, “Have you really relaxed yet?” It was at the end of this festival, standing at night knee-deep in the cold Mediterranean Sea, I experienced an almost forgotten feeling when it becomes sad that something ended.
Do not forget that your future determines what you do in your free time, go crazy and do your own projects. And do not slow down and go ahead for tickets to the next OFFF: tickets.offf.ws/events . It's worth it!
Acknowledgments
Our trip could not have taken place at all, if not for the encouragement from our Acronis company. This is incredibly cool when the company understands the value of such conferences, where they talk not about processes, methods and instructions (these are also very necessary events!), But fill them with real inspiration.
Special thanks to Jura Vetrov for arranging a 14-block walk to the trendy Danish brewery Mikkeller. Thanks to that evening, now many people know that trying Chipotle Porter is a big risk and danger.
