One thing from Offset 2014
Wednesday 26th March 2014
Offset 2014 is over. Another year done and dusted and another year I leave with my head buzzing with enthusiasm. It really is insane how these events get the creative energy flowing.
Offset is a 3 day event with talks running each day from 10am to 7pm. That may sound like a lot to take in but time flies! That’s quite impressive really when 24 talks just whizz by with rarely a dip in quality.
This year I went with the goal to take one thing from each presentation I sat in on. If I heard something I thought was interesting I whipped out my iPhone and took a quick note (If you were sitting beside me sorry about that).
Although the talks were varied in content there were emergent themes that revealed themselves throughout the 3 days. The two over-riding feelings I picked up on were: play is an important aspect to your work and personal projects are where you get the most opportunity to grow and improve as a designer.
Below I’ve listed out the things I took note of during the conference. I’m sure if you sat in on these talks you would have picked up on something else; everyone attends a different conference really and you take away what resonates with you. That’s my view anyway.
Golden Wolf
Invest in your progress. When you have free time make sure you are working on passion projects that allow you to grow as a designer. Doing this will improve your skills and strengthen your portfolio whereas client work wont. Clients only tend to hire you for what you have done in the past not on what you can possibly do or will do someday.
Marina Willer
Embrace chaos. Exciting, beautiful and engaging work can happen if you don’t religiously stick to process and rules.
Mike Perrymikeperrystudio.com
You need to sell the shit out of your work. Your work alone won’t do this.
Detail
Balance the work you have to do with the work you want to do; try to find that sweet-spot.
Serge Seidlitz
Embrace the exploration phase of a project. Make sure to allocate time to simply explore ideas. Unexpected and interesting results can happen which often are more interesting than the final client accepted piece of work.
Jessica Walsh
Pay attention to the work you do when nobody is paying you. Embrace this work, as it’s where you will likely find most success.
Mother
Creativity thrives on constraints and restrictions. If a project has no constraints you need to set them.
Bjorn Rune Lie
Personal work is important in developing new skills. Have fun with it and try things you don’t get to do on client projects. To help separate the two try using a second space for personal work. This will help with the mental switch between client work and personal work. You need time to experiment with no deadlines.
Sarah Illengerger
Play is the most important part of the creative process.
Tom Hingston
Be playful with the language of colour. Colour can be used as an active element in storytelling.
Richard Mosse
Try to find a unique way of working that becomes your differential. For Richard it was using an obsolete military surveillance technology called Kodak Aerochrome. This technique gave his work a unique style.
Neville Brody
Graphic designers make invisible ideas tangible.
Maser
Passion is at the core of all successful creatives.
iLoveDust
Make something that’s remembered.
Jon Bugerman
If you can’t be really good be different.
Marian Bantjes
Inspiration is all around us if we look for it. Example: Marian Bantjes takes photos of interesting compositions she spots in her surroundings then uses these as layouts for her graphic design work.
Jeff Greenspan
Side projects are where you learn and build confidence.
Chris Judge
Sketchbooks are for training and play don’t be precious with them.