Offset 2015: what we learned

The devil is in the detail

Annie Atkins’s talk on the Friday evening of

Offset

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Know what you want: Ashleigh Smith’s clarity of vision was as impressive as the quality and craftsmanship of her Atlantic Equipment Project bags

was a riveting lesson in professionalism and detail. Atkins played a prison scene from Wes Anderson’s film

The Grand Budapest Hotel

, which won an Oscar for best production design. Atkins went through the scene’s graphic-design elements. The most jaw-dropping were the stamps on a brown package on which a map was drawn. You could barely make them out, but that didn’t matter. The stamps included emblems and an emperor, postmarks and other details. This was just one example not just of Anderson’s lust for detail in creating a world but also of the follow-through of Atkins and her colleagues. From patterns on carpets to “detective walls”, Atkins’s insight was fantastic, as were her remarks on the point of it all: they’re creating a world for the benefit not only of the cinema audience but also of people who look out for these things, and in order to build an authenticity that helps the actors. If anyone in the room wasn’t in awe of Atkins before this talk, they certainly were by the end.

UM

Go big or go home

On Saturday afternoon the Swedish takeover began with a creative duo from the Forsman & Bodenfors agency. Björn Engström, a copywriter, and Anders Eklind, an art director, spoke mostly about their advertising for Volvo trucks, which was far more entertaining than it sounds. The agency doesn’t do things by halves, and this attitude, combined with their dry Swedish humour, made for some pretty awesome advertising. The lesson? Go big, go home or get Jean-Claude Van Damme to do the splits in your ad.

DMM

Know what you want

Ashleigh Smith

of the Atlantic Equipment Project, who spoke at the “Le Cool Presents: First Out of the Traps” panel discussion, avoided the scenic route to creativity. She studied industrial design, then launched her company, which produces backpacks, satchels, camera bags and laptop and tablet sleeves. What was as impressive as the quality and craftsmanship of the products was Smith’s clarity of vision. The products will always be made in the west of Ireland, she said. She won’t emigrate, but the brand will become global, she says, and its manufacturing will stay local. Smith is determined and ambitious. It’s essential to know what you want, but for many entrepreneurs that can seem a luxury as they try to figure out what journey they’re on. Smith’s focus is admirable.

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Side projects aren’t just for fun

Veronica Fuerte and Ricardo Jorge of Hey, a design studio in Barcelona, spoke about the importance of side projects for experimenting, and doing things you want to do without the constraint of a brief. “Working with friends can sometimes be a disaster, but when it goes well it’s the best project,” they said of working on a friend’s jam brand, Jammy Yummy. Their “Every Hey” Instagram project of characters made for the fun of it has also won tens of thousands of fans. Something started for a laugh can end up having a bigger impact than the stuff that pays.

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Not all Swedish designers are cool

Snask’s line is “Make enemies and gain fans”, and the agency did both at Offset. Its talk opened with a song from Snask’s in-house band. The music wasn’t bad, and having musicians who were also designers seemed like a neat set-up. But then the real designers came out, with tambourines and maracas, and stood uncomfortably in the middle of the stage. When the band finished, Fredrik Öst, Snask’s creative director, and Richard Gray, one of its art directors, spoke about their work – and every so often the band played a jingle. This mash-up felt a little forced. The work the designers showed was beautiful. The lesson? Designers shouldn’t try to be rock stars.

DMM

Abstract vandalism is our new jam

Niels Shoe Meulman, the Dutch artist who calls his mix of calligraphy and graffiti “calligraffiti”, nudged our brains around pleasantly, with tweetable one-liners in his slides, such as “Why is it called a painting when it has already been painted?”, as well as some beautiful examples of his big acrylic-on-linen paintings. Revisiting

Territorial Pissing

– the video, now six years old, in which the Swedish graffiti artist Nug tags a train before leaping through one of its windows – gave an edge to Friday’s schedule. Strangely, given the exciting subject, Shoe’s presentation was oddly muted and oddly short.

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Be obsessive

Veronica Ditting is a little obsessive when it comes to the details – and it pays off. The art director of the cult

Gentlewoman

magazine taught us that no detail is too small to obsess over, that long-form writing still has a place and that every good magazine should know its paper stock inside out.

DMM

More is more

Funnily enough for a conference on creativity, Offset follows a traditional format: keynote talks in a big room and panel discussions in a smaller one. It would be nice to have more dynamic ancillary stuff going on both in the venue and around it, not to mention more socialising opportunities in creative spaces at night. The off-site Absolut DIY events are commendable, but a few more bells and whistles around the theatre and Grand Canal Dock wouldn’t go amiss – especially given the price of admission, which ranged from €50 for a student day pass to €225 for a three-day professional ticket.

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The importance of history

Tomi Ungerer

has written and illustrated books that vary from children’s fiction to political propaganda and adult erotica. At Offset he spoke about being true to your history and values and never being too old to enjoy having a story read to you. Despite his rather one-way conversation with

Steve Simpson

– it was a public interview rather than a presentation – the octogenarian got a well-deserved standing ovation.

DMM

Revel in the thinking time

For such an innovative designer,

Ian Anderson

took a slightly hackneyed approach to his presentation: an A to Z through his work for the Designers Republic, the hugely influential graphic-design agency that he set up in Sheffield in 1986. It was certainly engrossing stuff, and he covered a lot of disparate ground, but perhaps the audience would have been better served with a more detailed focus on a handful of projects rather than a gallop through about 35.

On the one hand tDR serves a range of cutting-edge clients, such as the musicians Aphex Twin and Autechre and the record label that releases their work, Warp. On the other it embraces the mainstream, including Coca-Cola, computer games (such as Wipeout) and Nickelodeon.

Anderson seems to anticipate trends, so it's easy to see why tDR is in high demand. Perhaps one of the most interesting elements of his talk was a slow and steady approach to design. He emphasised historical references – everything from the second World War to the legacy of his predecessors – and, in a revealing remark, lamented "how quickly designers rush to computers and don't revel in their thinking time first". Because designers can essentially achieve anything with a computer, clients are relentlessly demanding. But the best ideas, he says, can just as easily take shape in the mind or be scratched out with a pencil and paper. Laurence Mackin

Break-ups and break

throughs

Steve Doogan

blew 2,500 people away on the main stage on Saturday. The Irish illustrator described his creative path from bad break-up to creative breakthrough and everything in between. We learned the importance of pranks, of getting outside of your comfort zone and of not being shy.

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Crafty work

Chrissie Macdonald, the London-based illustrator and art director, showed us that with a creative mind, a few pieces of paper and some helping hands, you can achieve mind-blowing feats.

DMM