OFFSET 2015 – Highlights

March 16th, 2015 • Posted in Design, General •

Every year, Dublin hosts an international creative festival/conference called OFFSET. I previously went back in 2012 with some friends from Uni and loved it so much that I wanted to return. This year, I was finally able to return and wanted to get a load of content for my blog, so read on and follow the links to my favourite speakers of the weekend!

P.S. With so many inspirational speakers, I actually ended up writing about almost all of them, so there’s a lot to read! Jump to the list of individual posts

My oh my was OFFSET much bigger this year than previously! Everything about the event was bigger and better. From the branding, to the stage design and even the after party on the Friday. Check out the title sequence featuring all of the speakers in cat-form.

OFFSET is held at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre which is a swanky modern theatre in the built-up docklands area of Dublin.

Even the after party was bigger and better this year. With Absolut being one of the main sponsors, of course it would be great!

Before coming to OFFSET, I had been working on a redesign of this site, however getting the new version live didn’t go too smoothly. Pretty much everything that could go wrong, went wrong. In short, it took a while to stumble together a working version and will probably talk about it in another post/video some day.

After every speaker, I took notes on my MacBook whilst it was still fresh in my memory.

OFFSET Day One

Friday March 6

On top of the shenanigans with my website redesign not finishing smoothly, my camera decided to play up and not turn on. At all. I discovered this within the first five minutes of the first talk of the first morning. After much faffing and resorting to using my G7 X, I settled down and started to pay attention to the talks, whilst fixing parts of my site in between speakers. Either way, the day was packed with great talks! Here’s my favourite talks of the first day:

Barber & Osgerby

Edward from Barber & Osgerby spoke about their work on various briefs including the design and production of the London 2012 Olympic torch.

Niels Shoe Meulman

Here are my highlights of Niels Shoe Meulman's talk at OFFSET 2015. In possibly the shortest talk of the whole weekend, Niels showed a few projects including his calligraffiti (which is exactly what is sounds like) on a large scale.

Boys and Girls

This humorous talk from Rory Hamilton of Boys and Girls' at OFFSET 2015 included a variety of work including ads for Guinness internal office branding.

Hey Studio

Read about my highlights of Hey Studio’s talk at OFFSET 2015. There were various projects displayed including vector illustrations branding and personal briefs.

Annie Atkins

I absolutely loved Annie Atkins' talk at OFFSET 2015! Working as a graphic designer for movies, Annie showed all sorts of work from her extensive portfolio of designs. Her latest work for the Grand Budapest Hotel includes everything from props to signage and even carpet patterns!

OFFSET Day Two

Saturday March 7

Day two was proving to be much more successful as my camera was working once again and I was able to get better quality images for my blog. I’d also made some more progress on my website relaunch, however I had lost internet access at the place I was staying at which was a real bummer. At least I had a great day of talks to enjoy!

Declan Shalvey

Without knowing too much about the comic and graphic novel industries, I was really interest in Declan Shalvey’s talk at OFFSET 2015. Declan showed a lot of his extremely detailed illustrations and processes from conception to final rendering for comic books and graphic novels.

Tomi Ungerer

Tomi Ungerer’s interview with Steve Simpson at OFFSET 2015 was very different from all of the other talks of the weekend. Tomi was very popular with the audience as he talked about a variety of things from growing up in Nazi occupied France to illustrating political satire.

Steve Doogan

The talk from Steve Doogan’s at OFFSET 2015 was definitely split in two halves. The first half included a variety of work such as pranks he did in his youthful years and the second half was all about his professional career as an illustrator.

Forsman & Bodenfors

The Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors’ talk at OFFSET 2015 was extremely engaging. Most of the work they showed was their ad campaigns for Volvo trucks, including the hilarious stunts such as Jean-Claude Van Damme's epic split.

Snask

Read about my highlights of Snask’s talk at OFFSET 2015. Snask gave an energetic performance including a live band and other surprises!

OFFSET Day Three

Sunday March 8

After the troubles of the previous two days with equipment failures etc., I finally managed to have everything working, except for the WiFi at the AirBnB I was staying in, that was long gone. I was comfortably in the routine of visiting the venue, taking notes after every speaker and getting photos throughout. The only thing I may have been worried about was having enough room in my brain for all this inspiration!

Sue Murphy

Of all the talks over the weekend, I resonated most with Sue Murphy’s talk at OFFSET 2015. Sue showed a variety of work and opened up personally about her struggles with not fitting in with particular companies. Her talk was extremely honest and felt very similar to experiences that I have personally gone through.

Matt Willey

Matt's talk was quite possibly my favourite of the whole of OFFSET 2015. He showed a variety of editorial design work including the redesign of the Independent newspaper and his earlier work co-creating Port magazine.

Andy Altmann

Read about my highlights of Andy Altmann’s talk at OFFSET 2015. Andy showed a variety of work including early hand crafted projects and also a detailed behind the scenes look at how the comedy carpet in Blackpool was created.

Emily Oberman

I was really looking forward to the Pentagram partner, Emily Oberman’s talk at OFFSET 2015. Emily showed a variety of work and the many things she's learnt from working on Saturday Night Live for the past 20 years.

OFFSET 2016

OFFSET have confirmed that they will definitely be back next year (the first time they’ve ever been able to confirm they’ll be back) yay! Keep a lookout at iloveoffset.com for ticket information.