This year, the OFFF’s workshops were open to the public, free of charge. I think it was a really good initiative from the organization to make it available for those who wouldn’t be able to afford it. OFFF is from far the most affordable design event ever, and it also keeps the high level of quality. This new initiative of free workshops improve even more the access to good design for the public.

Iso50’s workshop was based on the use of Photoshop and Illustrator, going deep on how he use both tools to develop his works. Giving tips of how to have fast and practical solutions for making illustrations and for details which you would spent loads of time on it. It was very detailed, but it was more useful for people getting deep into the illustration field.

Stardusts workshop was focused on the work they did for an Irish beer brand, which featured a race winner horse that was tired of his life and decided to escape from it and get lost together with the yeti, the dodo bird and the Loch Ness monster. They showed the whole process from skinning, animating and composing it.

Erik Natzke’s workshop was purely based on coding, so who was there to learn from the art part of his work maybe felt a little bit frustrated, but the people who were there to code had a full meal, including desert and a cherry over the sorbet. We also had a little bit of it later on his closing speech at the main stage on the first day of OFFF. Remembering that you can also check it on his website.

The final act for this OFFF NYC 2007 shouldn’t have a better person than Takagi Masakatsu. It was a 1h concert, full of colors and a beautiful music, that brought peace for the audience. I first had the opportunity to see Takagi, earlier this year in Barcelona, thanks OFFF his was back again. Even tho many people don’t feel inspired by the graphics, or others don’t feel inspired by the music, Takagi managed to make a perfect combination that makes everyone satisfied. Recently featured at Apple’s PRO page, Masakatsu is surely doing a great job recently. He is an amazing artist.

Here is a glance of Takagi’s work. Seeing it alive is another experience, so if he is coming to your town, be sure to check it out, you won’t regret.

“O pardon, since a crookèd figure may
Attest in little place a million,
And let us, ciphers to this great account,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls”

That’s the Shakespeare Henry V’s Prologue. And that is part of the text that Kyle cooper used to name his two companies. For a person that had the glorious Paul Rand as a teacher, we surely must pay attention to his wise words. Kyle was one of the most innovative person in the motion graphics. He introduced the coolest way of doing the movie’s prologue. That “Seven” intro will be always on our minds. Telling us about his pursuit to do something better, Cooper showed us his works from the beginning until the latest (unreleased yet) project, which he told us that Prologue now is actually interacting with the beginning of the movies stories. Again, in the end, Mr. Cooper was also influenced by the question that surrounded OFFF: Should we work for money or for helping people’s communication? On Kyle’s view, if you do something with your best forces, it’s noble. So, lots of people have different visions on the subject. I think this subject will remain on our heads for a long long time.

Rob and Chris are a long time friends, and they used this chemistry to bring us the OFFF Titles of this year. Also is good to mention that Rob will be moving to NYC in a near future, so this video also reflects their clinic view of the Big Apple.

OFFF NYC Titles

Also we have to mention that they were so excited about it, that they started taking pictures with an authentic polaroid for their records. Although, there was a minor problem, the mics were to low and was quite hard to listen to them, specially Chris, but that didn’t matter that much. Their portfolio could speak for them. Gathering the best of their work, Rob and Chris delivered a good variation of motion graphic pieces and also underlined the good use of sound design for their pieces (I personally fully agree with that). They both mostly use Heqc for the sounds. Even they did a great job on the OFFF titles, you can see the difference between their personal works, something you can feel, on the colors and pace of the videos. Let’s see how the change from London to NY will influence their work on the following years.

Now, a 2 hour of massive motion graphic exposure. Beginning with Justin Cone, the guy behind Motionographer, he introduce this panel also together with Simon Robson, which explain his vision about what design should be, not only something to make money, but to do something noble, that helps communication between people. Justin quote Spiderman “With great power comes great responsibility”.

Justin also glady replied our little interview:
NTMY: Present yourself and the kind of work you are doing lately.
Justin Cone: My name is Justin Cone. I’m currently finishing up an MFA in motion graphics at the Savannah College of Art and Design, with plans to move to New York in the spring. I’m currently working on a experimental collaborative project as well as doing a bunch of coursework. I’m also running Motionographer.com in my spare time.

NTMY: What are you going to present at the main stage?
JC: I’m presenting a panel called Under the Influence: How Design Alters Consciousness. I and the other panel members will discuss ways that motion graphics can be used to sell not products but ideas. From visual essays to installation art, each panel member will present their own unique perspective on motion graphics and hopefully challenge some of our preexisting notions about this incredible field of design.

NTMY: Have you ever been at OFFF before? How was your experience?
JC: I went to OFFF BCN, and I had an amazing team. The speakers, the parties, the vibe—it was all great. I love that OFFF is about the act of creation, it’s about loving the creative process itself. That is what makes it so special.

NTMY: What do you expect from this OFFF and which presentation do you wanna see during OFFF?
JC: I expect that we’ll all have a great time and become truly inspired by the great work we’ll see. I also expect that we’ll get very drunk. I’m super excited about seeing Kyle Cooper, Paula Scher, Motion Theory, Gmunk and Rob Chiu.

NTMY: How often do you use design communities websites? Are they helpful or just more of the same?
JC: I run a design community website called Motionographer, so you use them a shitload. Sometimes, however, I think they can be problematic. It’s important for us to turn away from usual sources of inspiration and have conversations outside of our comfort zones. That’s when we discover new things in ourselves that enrich everything we do.

The second man on the game was Orion, from Buck. Orion gave us a presentation of the latest works coming from their studio, in a way that people should present their work when coming to OFFF, giving us the background of it, not just showing the work we could see on the internet. Although he had a short space to do it, I think we could appreciate the most of their latest creation, the “C Tree”. Orion explained the whole background of it, the experimentations and the approach with the client. Very good showcase.

Psyop has inspired us thru these years with amazing works for MTV, Fanta, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and specially lately, with Coca-Cola. They didn’t showcase the fantasy world of Coca Cola, but gave us a good explanation about their work for Fanta. Also they told us the process of their works and their partnership with Blacklist.

I already had the pleasure to work with Tronic, doing some sound design for a few projects, some time ago. The latest works Tronic has been doing are really outstanding, all in a really high resolution, with architecture and art inserted on their motion pieces. They also showed us their work with installations and interactive pieces.

After all presentations, the panel was open to the audience. Several questions were made, but the one that was really tricky was about the good use of design and its purpose for mankind, instead of just doing it for money. In a matter of fact, that question was bouncing in almost every presentation in NY. Apparently everybody is concerned about that.

Andreas Müller from Nanika also replied our little interview. Read the following:

NTMY: Present yourself and the kind of work you are doing lately.
Andreas Müller: My name is Andreas Müller. Together with Florian Schmitt of Hi-ReS! I run a company called Nanika (www.nanikawa.com). We do interactive work for non web spaces, i.e retail and the like.

NTMY: What are you going to present at the main stage?
AM: We are going to do a presentation on “Avida Dollars or The Art of Selling (Out)”

This is the blurb:

Art vs. Commerce is a tedious subject, because ultimately the time talking about it as mutually exclusive opposites, is better spent doing either one of the 2.
Adrian Shaughnessy wrote recently:
“Digital may be about to become the new design orthodoxy, but it is ironic that, at the same time, digital groups are demonstrating that it is also possible to create art-based projects that make the answer to the question, ‘Can art be design?’, an unqualified ‘yes’. Well, at least a maybe.”
So is there a middle way, can you maintain artistic integrity (whatever that is) when by definition you create work to sell product? For a client? To a budget?
There are plenty of clients, who see beyond their immediate sales targets and know how to build their brand with a more artistic approach. But does it actually work?
Looking at successes and failures from the past 8 years, Hi-ReS! Creative Director Florian Schmitt and Nanika Founder Andreas Müller try to find some answers to this question. Or at least some more questions worth asking.

NTMY: Have you ever been at OFFF before? How was your experience?
AM: I’ve been twice before, it’s always been absolutely amazing.

NTMY: What do you expect from this OFFF and which presentation do you wanna see during OFFF?
AM: There are loads of really interesting people presenting, but someone I’ve wanted to see for a long time is Tagaki Masakatsu, so I’m really looking forward to that.

NTMY: How often do you use design communities websites? Are they helpful or just more of the same?
AM: Now very often anymore, lack of time is the primary factor. On the other hand I do read a lot of RSS feeds, some of them design related in one way or another.
Take care and see you in NY.

———-

From far, Hi-Res! is one of the most respected interactive studios out there. Since their very first works, they amazed us all with their approach and creativity, showing completely different ways of doing websites. They are totally focused on art and design, letting the corporate boredom out of their doors. Using their words: “Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it”. They have a view about what is sponsored art: A Blank Canvas. So when they have it, they do their thing and make everyone happy. Among the several cool works they showed us, you can see great art pieces like the Nokia Flagship stores installation, The Fountain and Beck’s website, and the amazing MTV Brand Guide. Hi-Res! joined forces with Andreas Müller (Nanika) to improve even more their interactive/installation area. Also creating crazy pieces for non-profit purposes.

Also, don’t forget to buy Hi-ReS! latest release: THEIR BOOK!
I know I will!

Jonathan Harris was one of the few people that replied to our tiny interview via email. Check it out:

NTMY: Present yourself and the kind of work you are doing lately.
J. Harris: I design systems to explore and explain aspects of the human world. My work ends up incorporating elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling.

NTMY: What are you going to present at the main stage?
JH: I will show a range of projects, and talk about the ideas that tie them together.

NTMY: Have you ever been at OFFF before? How was your experience?
JH: I spoke at OFFF Barcelona in 2006, where I presented my We Feel Fine project for the first time. I found the gathering to be wonderfully enthusiastic, welcoming, and lots of fun.

NTMY: What do you expect from this OFFF and which presentation do you wanna see during OFFF?
JH: I am excited to see how the vibe of OFFF NY compares to that of Barcelona.

NTMY: How often do you use design communities websites? Are they helpful or just more of the same?
JH: I don’t use them at all. I try to stay away from the web when I’m not making work. It can be distracting. Too much noise.

——————————-
Harris presentation was very solid. He presented his latest creations based on data collected on the internet, like Universe, Time Capsule and We Feel Fine. All of them searching for human emotions on the internet, trying to find a little bit of humanity on all this zeros and ones. After the first day, Jonathan was searching about OFFF NYC and found on a blog, telling that OFFF was a very cool event, too bad that the people in NY were depressive.

Since I started on this area, Vasava was already a big name on the market, because of their brilliant works for Diesel, which were very spread around the globe as reference and influence. On this OFFF edition, we were able to see the variety of works that Vasava has done during all these years, including works like “Diesel Fifty book. 5 Steps to creativity” and also see that Vasava has a gallery/store in Barcelona, Vallery. During their presentation they focused on teamwork, effort, inspiration and evolution.

Previously, we said that Mike Cina and Michael Young made a very short presentation and let us down and hungry for the Mikes works. Gladly, Mr. Young got in touch with us to explain what actually happened.

Before everyone raise the spears and forks, let’s see the facts:
WWFT was actually invited to create an installation to run during the 3 days of OFFF, so they worked hard on it during the latest weeks, just for this event. Sadly, on the last minute, due some blurry reasons given by BMCC, the venue couldn’t support their presentation on a special place. So, they had to redo their presentation and manage to fit in a 30 minute show on the main stage. As the crowd wasn’t warned by that before, there was a little bit of misunderstanding and confusion about why they made just a short intro on it. Now everything is clear.

We will try to get a web version of their presentation to put here, so you can have a small taste of the audiovisual experience what we had at that day.

Thanks again M. Young, for clear everything for us. We appreciate it.

First, this is the British Troika, not the American Troika , as I thought the first time I read it when OFFF was divulging the list of speakers for NYC. Gladly both are completely different. This British trio, have a wide range of skills and likes to play along art, design and communication, creating several intriguing installations , some for non-profit purposes, others for big names. 2 of the cool works they showed us were the SMS guerrilla, which they did for Warner Music, and Sonic Marshmallows, which consisted in huge acoustic sculptures they putted in a park, where people were able to hear the environment in a completely new way. Both are featured on their site. The bad point of this presentation was the volume and clearness of the microphones, which made very hard to comprehend them.