Revisiting one of europe’s biggest festivals of creativity during a global pandemic

About six years ago I stumbled upon the OFFF Festival for the very first time. I honestly can’t remember if my wife and I were planning to visit Barcelona again anyway –after our prior trip during La Mercè in 2013– or if the festival itself was the reason to return to Catalonia in the first place. Either way, the years thereafter I made sure to rush for a so-called ‘super early bird ticket’ as soon as they dropped –a year in advance– and then planned a vacation around the date of the event only much later.

Three years in a row I marvelled several of my design heroes and discovered the stunning work of a myriad of creatives previously unknown to me. Buzzing with sheer creativity the festival to me always has been an inspiring melange of motivation (»that shit is fucking amazing, now THAT’S why I want to work in the creative industry in the first place!«) and disillusionment (»that shit is fucking amazing, why is my stuff not THAT great?«), sending me back home with the strong urge to learn more and create better time after time.

In combination with the wonderful Museu del Disseny the festival takes place at, the beloved city of Barcelona all around and the beautiful beaches of Sitges nearby, I found it to be the perfect way to regenerate and recharge my creative batteries. As a consequence, my rather random first attendance at OFFF became a tradition near and dear to my heart and a holiday trip I looked forward to full of joy beforehand every year.

© OFFF / 2016

Once two of my colleagues from Wagnerwagner went along and together we wrote about our OFFF experience in-depth –in german– in a series of articles on Medium afterward.

After I had to resell my ticket for 2018 because of a friend’s badly timed wedding, the following year was the first time since my primal attendance in 2015 I didn’t buy a ticket in the first place and skipped the festival intentionally, albeit with a very heavy heart.

All the bigger the anticipation when I bought a ticket –super early bird, of course– for the 20th Anniversary past year and booked a corresponding ten-day trip with my wife shortly after. But you know how 2020 went down eventually.

InOtherWorlds

After rescheduling at first and eventually canceling the event completely last year, its organisers decided to move to the digital space for 2021 from the outset. Even though there were no other real options —hosting a huge event with people from all over the world would’ve been a reckless decision (WTF UEFA?), I was bummed out a bit.

And despite the apparent effort, the team spent on the digital infrastructure in an attempt to make the experience more of a virtual festival than just a series of live streams, the presentations themselves were exactly that in the end.

The admittedly cool entrance to the virtual conference rooms …

… hid a rather underwhelming digital main stage

This is how most of the presentations looked like basically

Sensory reformulation

To make up for it –and probably due to the saved costs thanks to the speakers not traveling– this year’s festival lasted twice as long, taking place over the course of six instead of the usual three days, resulting in a vast amount of presentations. Since the festival happened in May already and I watched as much of the program as possible back then, I am by no means able to recapitulate much of it in great detail anymore.

The good news is that there are some recordings available, so instead of trying to summarize the presentations I’ve watched, I’m going to give you a brief rundown of the ones I remember being especially impressive and/or inspiring for you to watch yourself. Unfortunately, I’m not able to link individual videos here, you have to search for them on the recordings page:

• Tendril
• Future Deluxe
• Alistair Simpson
• Studio Dumbar
• Saam Gabbay
• Omelet
• Universal Everything
• Joshua Davis
• Adam J. Kurtz

Sadly one of my favourite talks, Stefan Sagmeister speaking about art as opposed to design and his wonderful project ‘Beautiful Numbers‘, isn’t available for some reason, similarly to the closing presentation by GMUNK.

Stefan Sagmeister speaking about good design

Let’s feed the future

© GMUNK

The film ultimately focuses on the human condition nested within a cult of robotic shamans called The Vi, and examines the deep emotional connection to loss and rebirth.

GMUNK was presenting some of his astonishing work –which you are able to find online, but in addition, he was talking about a short movie called ‘DECIMA’, which is going to debut at next year’s OFFF. You are able to watch its teaser on Vimeo and I can’t wait to see the final short on the big screen when the festival is going to be held on-site again from 5-7 May 2022. [fingers crossed]

This year’s digital event was an interesting experience with a lot of amazing work on display –as usual, but ultimately there was no chance it could’ve been an adequate substitute for the original face-to-face experience in Barcelona, to be honest.

Ticket sales for next year just have started, guess who got himself an ‘early bird’ ticket already.