If you’ve been on Dublin’s streets in the past week, you may be feeling more aesthetically stimulated than usual. It could be the stretch in the evenings, or it might be OFFSITE, the mini design festival which has been running since March 30th, aimed at taking design out of the studio and into the streets.
OFFSITE is an offshoot (so to speak) from OFFSET – the annual conference for the design and creative industries which will see 3,000 creative professionals and students congregate at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre over the next three days.
Blacknight is delighted to be involved for this first time this year, where we’ll be sponsoring the WiFi for attendees.
Among the headline speakers this year are Stephen Averill and Shaughn McGrath of AMP Visual, Ireland’s most garlanded pop-culture designers, who have overseen every U2 album cover, going back to when Steven designed the band’s first poster, and advised on their name!
Photographer Aisha Zeijpveld’s portfolio is an exciting collection of conceptual portraiture. A balance of naked reality and peculiar surrealism is prevalent throughout her works that feature muted colour-blocked backdrops and interrupted and edited subjects.
Seb Lester is a designer and artist based in the UK. An obsession with calligraphy has pushed his work in exciting directions, and over the last four years he has become one of the highest profile calligraphers in the world.
These are just some of the highlights among the inspiring speakers at OFFSET 2016. It promises to be a feast for the imagination, over three stages plus the IBM Design Thinking Workshops for limited groups – which are now sold out.
Tickets for the main event are still available – with a range of options for professionals and students. (This year there’s also ‘Recent Grad’ ticket for newly hatched creatives still finding their feet.) And if you sign up to the WiFi you’ll get details of a special offer on web hosting from Blacknight, exclusively for OFFSET participants.
Go on then! Create!
About the Author: Conn Ó Muíneacháin
