Hot Air

Oliver Jeffers’s talk at OFFSET, an Irish design conference/festival. It’s usually quite industry specific, but for whatever reason (cash money), a lot of designers are interested in childrens books; perhaps because of the visual storytelling opportunities (and cash money), and the explosion in popularity of the form over the last decade or so.

It’s expensive - clearly putting on something that aspires to global significance isn’t cheap, but it seemed when I was there that the recession, like Comic Sans, is something that happens to other people - it would be great if you could buy tickets to specific events (they may well do that for the March festival). I’d certainly pop along to see Olly Moss, for example. Or at the risk of being terribly obvious, Shepard Fairey.

EDIT - just looked at the prices. You can’t book single events, only the full weekend. At €120 for students or unwaged, it’s not an inconsiderable expense, shall we say. But then, this is largely filled by the advertising industry and complimentary businesses, with companies buying blocks of tickets. It’s not really aimed at the public, or anyone not working in the industry.

In fairness to the group, they offer a staggered payment system; and like TED, they put the events online after the festival. It’s also worth noting that they probably don’t get any grants, nor would we see any of these people if OFFSET hadn’t organised it. So, the moral of the story: 

Oliver Jeffers is interesting and this is a good talk.

OFFSET is expensive, but them’s the breaks.

The word ‘creative’ is a dazzlingly unspecific noun that can be applied very widely and doesn’t describe a job or person very well.

But that’s a personal bugbear. Don’t get me started on (insert tech/marketing term) + ‘operative’.