OFFF Barcelona 2014: A Wrap Up
fluoro was on ground at the 14th edition of OFFF Barcelona, to bring you the latest from the event. Day One was full of energy and passion from both the speakers and the audience. The final days of the iconic festival further immersed the audience into the worlds of creatives from around the globe.
Illustrator and artist Vicente Morillo’s passion was obvious as he spoke about his craft and provided an in-depth deconstruction of the meaning and symbolism behind his work. Creativity to him, like for so many speakers at OFFF was “not only as a way to pay the bills, but as a way of life.” Similar in his views, Danny Yount, worked his way up from humble beginnings to playing a pivotal role in the development of contemporary Hollywood productions. It’s hard not to be immersed in the American designer’s productions for motion design and his iconic title sequences.
Designer and typographer Erik Spiekerman provided a philosophical perspective into his relationship with typography over his lengthy career. As the audience listened to the progression from his first job, which paid $1.09, to the development of unique fonts for clients such as Mozilla, it is clear his expertise in this area has greatly contributed to the history of typography. Having come from the era of Block letter printing he often still adopts traditional methods as a basis in order to orchestrate creative tasks. “We look at a problem and then deconstruct everything. We then check for redundancies and reassemble them more efficiently” he said. An icon in the industry, Spiekerman mentioned his pending retirement in a few weeks.
A bold arrival to the design world, Craig and Karl brought their unique visual language into various niches of the creative industry and never looked back. As their popularity grew, so did their opportunities to work with new materials and spaces moving from 2D into 3D realms of fashion and architecture. The focus for the design-duo is “to say more with less by finding things in the unexpected and continuing to develop themselves textually.”
OFFF Barcelona 2014 raised issues and challenging views common to the design industry. For it’s 14th edition, OFFF continued to immerse people near and far, who flocked to Barcelona for an insight into the now of contemporary design. What was clear, despite challenges, changes and new technology, it was passion that ruled above all.
fluoro will be back at OFFF Barcelona in 2015. Stay tuned.
Photography: Julian Luskin.
—
