The day started of quite well, I slept great and the weather was not too bad. But I soon learned that _just like at the Colophon Seminar_ Panel discussions are not really worth coming out of bed for!

Fail gracefully panel:

Leaded by Florian Schmidt and featuring: , Mushon zer-aviv, shual, Aaron Koblin, Joshua Davis and PES. (Alva Noto and Stefan Sagmeister did not show up.) I have to say that Florian tried his best to lead the panel but the sound was terrible, we could not hear a word Mushon Zer-aviv was saying and Joshua Davis has an enormous ego, so he is only a good speaker if it is a one man’s show.

(photo by the offf-team offfestival)

I do liked the solo of Florian Schmitt (from Hi-res) at the start of the panel conversation about how some Hi-res projects were examples of failing failures. so I would like to tell you a bit more about what we learned from him.

This website has an amazing animated navigation and looks great. The whole world is clickable and unfolds itself for the visitor, but it was a beautiful failure because during the making of the site they realised that the client had so much content to put in that the whole concept of making a experience site wasn’t really a good choice.  So in the end of the project they had an amazing website but only few visitors would ever find al the content they needed. See the video 01 and video 02

The next project he showed us where animations on the wall of a store _I don’t remember which store_ the fun thing was that visitors could change the animation by sending an sms with the words ‘water’, ‘balls’, ’snow’, etc. see the example video 01 and video 02. The hole installation worked perfectly and looked great but the problem was that not many people actually used the project. So afterwards the Boys from Hi-res came to the conclusion that the sms system was not really user friendly in this case and that they should have used a big touch screen in the store where people could just press a button to change the wall-animation. Again failing gracefully!

And last he talked about a campaign they made for Agent provocateur to promote the new Collections ‘Sirens’, ‘Virgins’, ‘Pirates’ and ‘Witches’.

And so, Hi-res made 4 stunning movies and an experience site. only to find out that a lot of the visitors to the site where mostly men over 40. But still a fantastic experience site with images that look like scenes from old paintings like the Flemish Primitives.

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SI Scott studio

I really had to concentrate very hard to understand Scott’s extreme English accent and to be honest even when I listen to him again on Youtube I still can’t understand a word his saying! This guy really needs some subtitles. But it doesn’t matter because he  is one of my favourite designers ever! I love how he can just pick up a pen and draw any kind of image in his rich refreshing Rococo style! More work on his website.

(photo by Tartanna)

(live presentation @ offf)

More video’s: Working, interview

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Grey London

did not show up…

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Nerdference Panel

Featuring: Eric Wilhelm, Peter Kim, Gijs Gieskens, Julia Carboneras.

(photo by the offf-team offfestival)

This was a bit to geeky for my taste, so the only thing that I really remember of this talk is the strange music instruments of Gijs Gieskes and esspecialy his hillarieus gameboy bricks!

“Gameboys have the shape of a brick and they are quite heavy (when there are batterys inside the gameboy). Thats why gameboy musicians often call the “gameboy classic” → “the brick”… So this snowballed into me making real gameboy bricks..
The benefit of this gameboy is that it will last much longer than the real one!” (Gijs Gieskens)

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Digital Kitchen

Digital Kitchen came to OFFF to present their newest project for HBO. After making many different Main title movies like Six feed under, Dexter and many more they are know for there expertise, so director Maurice Marable asked them to make the main title for a (new) vampire series True Blood.True Blood.

(photo by TWT Interactive)

Don’t forget to watch the making of!

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Stefan Sagmeister

(photo by r is for rioo)

The presentation of  Stefan Sagmeister this year at off was totally based on his newest book ‘Things I have learned in my life so far‘. And like the title gives away it is a best of version of the experience he has after being in the graphic industry for so many years. I would not take any fashion advise from him because for this presentation he came on stage wearing a dotted dress what triggered quite a reaction from the audience.

Of course his presentation was like always very inspiring. Not only did he share tips to have a happy (designers) life but he also showed a big part of his conceptual work. One of them was the design of the ‘Villek prize 2009’ for ‘Mike Nilhuls’. Instead of just making a nice little statue he thought of a very creative way to make the prize something very personal. If the award is standing up you only see an abstract pyramid form, but when you turn it upside down you realise that the source of the shapes are the letters of the winner’s name!

There was another installation that caught my eye ‘Obsessions make my life worse but my work better’ made out of copper euro coins. It was a very beautiful piece but there was also an anecdote with it. A big group of volunteers and some of the people that lived near the square had worked all day to complete the piece, but in the evening a low-life came by and started filling his pockets with the coins. So the people that lived near the square called the cops to arrest the man. But the funny thing is that to prevent further theft the police just swept up the money and put it in a volt for safe keeping. Very ironic!

But the project that really intrigued me was the new identity for Casa da Musica in Portugal. This very beautiful music building designed by Rem Koolhaas_ has a very specific abstract form. The concerts that are given in Casa da Musica can be very different in music style. So Stefan Sagmeister took 6 pictures of the building from different angles and these formed the base of the logo. To make sure that the logo perfectly blends into any concert poster of any music style they developed a tool that the people of Casa da Musica could use themselves to layout new concert posters. Once they chose a good image to represent a concert the tool can determine the colour of the logo by using a 17 point color-picking mechanism. This way the designer of Casa da Musica can choose from 6 different logo’s that fit perfectly in the poster. Very simple but so ingenious!

Here is a more detailed article about the new identity.

(live presentation & podcast @ offf)

(TED talk 01 & TED talk 02 Stefan Sagmeister)

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Kyle Cooper – Prologue films

Kyle Cooper gave a presentation on behalf of his company Prologue films who made the Main Titles for OFFF this year:

http://www.vimeo.com/4673875

(Photo by rawmeyn)

Kyle Cooper showed us some of his older and newer work but with little extra interesting info so I would suggest that you visit there website and explore the amazing work of Prologue films yourself. They have al long and inpressive list of projects that they did for famous films and TV shows but the must see projects for me are the opening/closing titles of ‘pushing daisies‘, ‘married life‘ and ‘Ironman‘.

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To rap it up a little taste of the atmosphere at OFFF 2009:

http://www.vimeo.com/4636269