And so, I am playing blog catch up.  I attended Offset 09 last weekend – a new creative/design conference that I first blogged about back in May.  It’s a hugely ambitious undertaking, with a group of guys in Dublin selecting some of Ireland, and the world’s, best designers, artists, illustrators and photographers to come and talk about their work- or their “practice” as we say over in arty land.

The 3 day conference was in the VERY spiffy Liberty Hall (way less spiffy website- sigh) and sat within a week of design related events including exhibitions, gigs and club nights and the whole lot sat within Dublin Design Week.

The schdule was mega packed- pretty much a speaker every hour, for 50mins or so, from 9-6pm for 3 days.  To be very honest it was a bit too packed for me- I’m much more used to conferences that are interactive, allowing for walking about, changes of rooms and sizes of gatherings and most importantly: Questions and Answers post lecture to allow for group discussion. This was more of a push event- to use an internet phrase- where the information was delivered college style in a series of presentations that you absorbed info from.  It meant a lot hinged on the personality of the speaker, and it also gave a very university feel to the affair- but I may be in the minority. Most people seemed happy – totally rapt in fact – to sit and listen.

It did mean that I was only able to take in 3 or 4 sessions a day before feeling wiped out, but that is a combo of heat, dark room, tiredness on my part and me not being the total target audience as I’m not a designer/creative.  I did catch some great talks though, and the inspiring feeling they were hoping to engender definitely worked.  It gave me a lot to think and talk about which is always the ultimate result.

I know I’m an avid Twitter user, but I do wonder when conferences & major events will catch on and have an official stated #hashtag that they promote at the event and in the brochures to encourage people to live tweet.  There were a few of us doing it under #offset but not that many, and a surprisingly low amount given the number of iphones in the room – must have been the highest concentration of iphones per head of population in any one gathering, but I digress.  Embrace the tweet people!

If you head to their EXCELLENT (really- this is how all conference sites should be with the info on visiting Dublin) website (take note liberty hall) you’ll see everyone that was on offer, but I give special mention to:

Massimo Vignelli (IT/USA)

aka the master.  This absolutely blew me away. An Architect by training he thinks if you can design a house you can design anything. His clarity on design, his wit and his elegance was a thing to behold.  Now in his 70’s himself and his wife have been designing together since they were in their 20’s and he had wonderful things to say about collaboration- which to him is a shared cultural platform built on trust. Other pearls of wisdom included the difference between designers and marketeers – marketeers look through the rear view window, designers through the windshield  - the difference between makings decisions based on the past, or a future you can’t know. The marketeer in me has something to say about that, namely that only lazy marketing is based on the past, but it got a great laugh in a theatre of designers.

His best point I feel was that Design is not Art and Art is not design. They are different things with different motivations and the closer art moves to design the less it is art, and the closer design moves to art the less it is design.  He likes design to be:  semantically correct, syntactically consistent and pragmatically understandable.

He also likes it to be:  Visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all timeless. Clearly seen in the original (1972), and now redesigned (2008) NYC Subway map

Experimental Jetset (NL)

Not only wonderful design work (largely typographic), but these two were extremely endearing speakers. They went off on this brilliant tangent where they were giving a running commentary on how it felt to be speaking from a podium and the difficulties inherent with the format- totally priceless.  Some projects of note  included Pioneers of Change for Governors Island in NYC, a project for the logo-less CAPC, and a series of projects inspired by Ellsworth Kelly’s Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red – the first of which is pictured below. Entitled Kelly 1:1 it uses coloured A4 (turns out the dimensions of the original fit perfectly into multiple’s of A4) to recreate the work, and best of all there is a catalogue which is simple the same A4 papers stacked and bound. Brilliant.  Check their site to explore the other Kelly cover versions.

Kelly 1:1 for Casco (after Ellsworth Kelly - blue, green, yellow, orange, red)

James Jean (USA) – a painterly illustrator, I was more of a fan of his abstract work but the work with Prada was just great  and I really remember the campaigns for Spring/Summer 08 that it featured in.

He also designed a neat short animation which is lovely:

ShowStudio.com (UK) – This is near impossible to sum up but amazing for the Fashion lover. It’s an interactive series of studio projects, all posted online that range from downloadable designer patterns, interactive photoshoots styled by the online public, films, fashion films, and much much more. Pioneered by Nick Knight it aims to shine a light on the creative process behind fashion.  The website is a wealth of info- but a searhc function would be nice – and there is an exhibition on in Somerset House if you’re in the UK

Peter Blake (UK)

Peter Blake was interviewed by Hugh Linehan (Irish Times) and is famously famous for the Sgt Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band Album cover (below), and for making no money from it, but he’s over that now. He describes himself as a mongrel designer/artist hybrid and to illustrate the point listed current projects as ranging from That Lucky Old Sun (with Brian Wilson) to designing a carpet for The London Law Court, A Painting for St. Paul’s in London,  Ian drury film credits & a series of 5 book covers from penguin.  A Pop artist he thinks the major difference between US POP art and that in the UK is that the latter is optimistic, the former more cynical. I loved his idea of “retiring” from the business side of the art world at 65, allowing himself to be freed from the competition, the pressure, the money. I wonder if it works?

roll on Offset 2010….with maybe more time for lunch and more Q&A, and more vignelli!