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What We Learned at Offset London 2015
Last week our junior designer, Georgia, was lucky enough to go to Offset London, an inspiring creative conference which brings together practitioners from across a range of creative fields including Graphic Design, Photography, Animation, Illustration, Film and Art.
Georgia:
“As a creative organisation it's important that we are aware of what's going on throughout the creative sector, and attending events like Offset London allows us to keep informed. However more importantly it's inspiring to hear the ideas and stories behind the final designs.”
Georgia's main takeaways:
#1 A good idea has no boundaries
One of the creatives I was particularly inspired by was Eric Kessels, one of the co-founders of international communications agency KesselsKramer. Their ethos ‘Make it meaningful’ is very like-minded to what we believe at The House, as we put meaning and purpose at the centre of everything we do.
A well-known piece of KesselsKramer’s work was for the Hans Brinker hostel in Amsterdam:
“The brief was basically that we had to make sure he wouldn’t receive any more complaints, because that was driving him crazy. The place was a complete shithole so we figured that honesty might be the only luxury that they had. It was anti-advertising and it worked.”
KesselsKramer believe that a good idea has no boundaries – and they’ve recently demonstrated this by evolving the creative idea for Hans Brinker and applying it to their new hostel in Lisbon.
“The Hans Brinker Hostel Lisbon preserves the Hans Brinker Amsterdam’s strongest selling points: dormitories, beer, unhelpful receptionists and surly porters made by KesselsKramer. In fact, key points of differentiation are limited to the staff’s sexier accents and nicer tans, and an increased chance of sunburn.”
#2 The importance of design
Another creative who really stood out at Offset was Johnny Kelly, an Irish animator based in London. I particularly liked his project ‘Shape’. The purpose was “to get young people thinking about how the world is made around them, and where design fits in” and it was created in collaboration with Pivot Dublin and Dublin City Council in order “to promote wider acceptance and use of design as a tool for positive change.”
Being a designer it’s easy to recognise the importance of design in life. From the pen you hold to the chair you sit in, everything has been carefully designed and crafted to work the way it works, or to look the way it looks. At The House, we strongly believe that business and brands can become a force for good, and design plays an important role in telling this story.
#3 Craft really matters
Another inspiring speaker at Offset London was Seb Lester, a designer and artist who was previously a senior type designer at Monotype, the world’s oldest type foundry. Seb has created custom typefaces for H&M, Intel and British Airways, but his true passion lies with calligraphy. Using Facebook and Instagram as an outlet to show the world his work, Seb has become something of a social media sensation.
“…it has been crazy. I currently have approaching 1.2 million accounts following me on social media. That’s pretty respectable for a pop star, let alone a nerd with a lot of pens. It has created a lot of new opportunities in terms of work and made the world seem like a much smaller place. I really feel like I am getting a lot of people interested in calligraphy and lettering. My followers seem to come from every continent and every walk of life. The last time I looked there was a pet shop in Iran following me, a pole dancer in Las Vegas, and a kid in Mongolia was trying to emulate my calligraphy videos. That is a humbling, surreal and beautiful thing.”
At The House we believe that a brand’s visual identity must be well crafted and defined in order to set it apart from its competitors, and it’s clear that Seb really crafts each piece of calligraphy and pays close attention to detail.
Hans Brinker Amsterdam images: KesselsKramer
Hans Brinker Lisbon images: KesselsKramer
Offset London interview with Eric Kessels
Johnny Kelly: Shape case study
Offset London interview with Johhny Kelly
Offset London interview with Seb Lester