Travel videos

I have been filming a lot when I travel, especially since I bought my GoPro camera back in March.

I’d like to share these videos here.

France: Carnon

Malta: BMX track in Pembroke

Peru

Bolivia

Argentina

Brazil

Gates Foundation – G20 Summit animation

Here’s an amazing example of animation by Gentleman Scholar for the Gates Foundation

OFFF 2011, Barcelona

I Just got back from OFFF in Barcelona all inspired! So I’ve decided to write about my favourites at the festival.

I didn’t manage to attend all the talks, so I might have missed  a few good ones but here’s my personal list of greatness! // Stefan Sagmeister, Aaron Koblin, Vincent Morisset, Beeker Northam @ Dentsu London, Nick Campbell & Lernert and Sander //

Inspiring Words 

During Beeker Northam’s talk I was constantly agreeing with whatever she was saying and I became a bit frustrated with myself and my 4 years working in the ‘advertising industry’ in London. If Dentsu London work the way Beeker says they work, then they’ve got it! I moved to London to learn from these big Ad agencies that I was reading about for a long time (coming from a tiny island, BIG companies are always very attractive), and having worked with a few as a freelance designer, I couldn’t understand the way agencies work with their clients.

Beeker talked about the 4 distinct mediums covered in traditional advertising (TV, Print, Radio and Outdoor – I’m not sure I got these 100% right but it makes the point). These 4 mediums are not distinct anymore, far from it, they are now part of a crazy mix of things and tangled in each other. I say now, but I believe this has been the case for quite a few years. This means that any advertising agency needs to tackle each client differently within this crazy mix. It is really, as Beeker says, an amazing time to be working in the industry! bring on CHANGE!

UPDATE: found a talk that Beeker did at CAT New York – Enjoy Here! and her OFFF presentation slides Here!

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Nick Campbell, who’s blog I’ve been following for a few years now, updated his presentation on how to be creative and get paid. I like the way Nick talks, and probably it appeals to me because he’s one of us (designers, animators, people who like to create in general!). Nick’s talk boiled down to doing whatever YOU want to do, which is really hard most of the times. But he stressed on the point that being 90% happy with what you’re doing isn’t good enough.. it has to be 100%, and I totally agree with this! “90% is a bitch” because the unknown is always harder, but it always pays off to take the leap. Nick himself is the perfect example; he was working for digital kitchen, a company that does amazing work in the film/animation field, and he left such an amazing company to pursue whatever he wanted to be 100% happy with doing.

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Stefan Sagmeister, needs no introduction, especially judging by the amount of people queuing to see him and the extreme silence while he is talking. I’m not going to say much about Stefan, because I really don’t think I need to. He’s inspring in everything he does and says. I was very happy to see a 10 minute preview of his ‘in production’ documentary about happiness. If you want to see what he talked about, have a look at the TED presentation he did a few weeks ago. (and also all his other TED talks)

7 rules for making more happiness

Inspiring Works

I knew Vincent Morisset was going to talk about the Arcade Fire ‘the suburbs’ album cover art, but I was amazed to find out about all his other projects. Having never looked at his website before, I was very surprised to find out that a lot of the Arcade Fire online work is his. Morisset’s thinking is logical! If a video is being made to be watched online, then why not use the medium better (i.e. make it interactive). His work on music videos like Neon Bible and Black Mirror is great. More people, in the music industry, should be thinking like Morisset. I was impressed by the work on ‘the suburbs’ where he used most of the work done for the album cover (which usually doesn’t get used) to create a visual experience by synchronizing album artwork to the lyrics of each song. His way of thinking is great, and his ideas push the web in the right direction.

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When talking about pushing the web in the right direction, I have to mention Aaron Koblin of course. His portfolio is filled with amazing interactive work that looks beautiful whilst being extremely functional. There were a few lucky developers who did a workshop with Aaron, and they also came up with really great work. Interactive work is really hard to explain, however the good thing about it is that you can try it out yourselves.. so here’s the link to all his work…  http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work.html (enjoy!)

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Lernert and Sander‘s talk was early in the morning on Saturday, and I’m really glad I made it on time! (it’s hard not to stay out late when in Barcelona!). I’ve been a fan of their work for a while now and they seem to enjoy every minute of it. They have a very distinct minimalistic visual style, and their ideas are also really good. I was particularly impressed by their “How to Explain it to  my parents” series. The fact that they thought of using a shorter chair for the artist, to make him/her feel like a kid again is just genius!

OFFF to sleep

This being my 2nd OFFF experience, I must say that they always have a great line-up of artists and speakers. I can’t understand the ‘OFFF titles’ being presented right at the end though. Wouldn’t it be better to promote the festival with the titles themselves? (gaining a bit of PR there since it’s usually great companies working on these titles which get lost in the end (2010 titles have 3 likes on the vimeo page).

This year’s venue was nice but not practical for such an event, in my opinion. Last year’s was great because of the 1 massive hall! However the whole festival was great so .. good work Hector + Team!