Something Good, Something Brilliant.
Last week I went to the aptly named Something Good in Bristol. Something Good is a unique design festival that included a day of exciting and inspiring talks from a diverse selection of creatives, an after party and a full day of creative workshops across the city.
This wasn’t just a conference this was a celebration of creativity and the magic of the creative process. It was an interesting event where there was no ‘keynotes’ or ‘delegates’ as such. Just loads of inspiration.
This was its inaugural year set at St George’s and it played a host to a day of talks from a carefully curated team of creatives all working across different disciplines and mediums. Throughout the day they shared stories of how they got to where they are today, tackle creative briefs, find inspiration and how they keep themselves stimulated outside of commercial work. The picturesque setting combined with a bit of sun helped build a great atmosphere for the day to come.
As we poured in for the morning session the branding for Something Good was consistently used to great effect around the festival. This was all designed by Bristol based creative studio Fiasco Design. I really loved the little touches it made on decorating in around the venue.
As I went in there was a short welcome speech from the organisers and the speakers began. These were my highlights from the day.
Gavin is a senior designer for Aardman by day and by night goes under the alias of JamFactory. Gavin’s talk burst with excitement and passion that was all about going forwards and doing whatever you want to do. Gavin has worked across all different areas of the creative landscape from film making to toy design. Talking through his story Mr Strange gave many different little lessons on how to find your own way and make a living to be your best self. It would be hard/impossible to sum up all of the points and lessons he made because they were all so relevant and poignant. I bought his book and can say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and is now near enough permanently with me. One thing he did say that really resounded with me was when he was talking about change. Change is hard but it’s meant to be hard. It’s so easy to get caught up in our digital world digesting and constantly wanting to be like other people but it’s what you make of yourself and for yourself that really matters.
Gavin had been one of my favourite creatives speaking at the festival with an infectious personality and it was great to actually meet him and have a gab about all aspects of life.
Brendan delivered a great speech talking through some of his work which was brimming with a great amount of humour. He explores the interaction of objects, people, technology and art using a diverse mix of materials. Brendan’s work isn’t influenced by trends and is more focused on simple themes such as discovery, curiosity and human interaction. Brendan does his own thing and creates digital installations and data visualisations for a range of clients. He shared with us his life lessons in his creative career a long with a mix of the myriad of work he has done. A project he done with Air BnB was particularly inspiring.
There’s all these medium posts loads of telling you how to think and what to do (Ironic I know this is on Medium) but I think what I took from his talk was that there’s always room to try new things don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
“It’s not where you take things from its where you take things to” — Jean-Luc Godard
Marta Veludo
Marta was born in Lisbon studied and worked in Barcelona, and currently resides in Amsterdam. Marta is well travelled and her multi disciplined work across branding, set design, art direction and illustration is very diverse. Martas work is really colourful, powerful and bold and as a designer has an aesthetic to kill for. Marta shared her tour through her world including her inspirations and personal projects that have shaped her design style through time. It was good seeing all of her work from the footwear industry and proved a creatively inspiring insight for me. She iterated the fact that balance is required in life. It’s good to make time for doing nothing sometimes because it’s impossible to remain driven and productive all the time.
Trapped in Suburbia
Trapped in Suburbia are an experimental design studio working in the Netherlands. Trapped in Suburbia is made up of a creative Dutch trio of Cuby Gerards, Karin Langeveld & Richard Fussey. Their designs encourage involvement and not only bring something heartfelt and something special but most importantly something memorable. It is this that transforms graphic design into an experience. Alongside their work and their life lessons in design they spoke about how apps have had a huge impact in shaping their creative lives. One of the most important take aways I had from this talk was seeing how much of a difference headspace had made in helping Karin stay creative and focused in her daily working life.
I especially enjoyed hearing all about their biggest dutch influences. Dutch design is universally iconic for being some of the best and most thought provoking in the world. I am going to Eindhoven to take part in Dutch Design Week at the end of the month and it was good to have more creatives to look into.
Anthony Burrill
A man who needs no introductions. Anthony Burrill is best known for his bold typographic, text-based compositions, and style of communication. Anthony took us through a tour of how he ended up where he is now and it was inspiring to see his life journey and how he came up with some of the most iconic work. Anthony talked through all of the mantras he had maintained through his creative career. It was funny to hear that one of the most iconic typographic posters he had come up with was actually from something he’d overheard from an old lady in the queue of a Sainsbury’s on Clapham high street. Anthonys talk covered a range of insights so I thought I’d just list my favourites below.
If you’re not happy with the situation you’re in think of another way of doing things. Use your fear, it makes you do stuff.
There are no rules , you need to find things out for yourself, it’s hard to encapsulate things into bite size bits of evidence.
Be Inquisitive and be driven by curiosity, you don’t know where it will lead you.
Snask
Snask are a Stockholm-based creative agency, who as well as designing and branding for brands across the world also moonlight as a rock band called Vag. They opened their talk explaining a bit about what they did and the funny story behind the band and how the name had been lost in translation. Vag means Rogue/Power in Swedish but only realised how the mistranslated name had been perceived internationally when an American girl came in and bought the t shirts and when asked if she liked the band she explained her true purpose behind buying the t-shirts. Boasting a cool studio space and an internationally recognised reputation of being one of the top 50 design studios creatives want to work for they really stole the show. I loved their rock and roll attitude and their defining 10 commandments.
Make Enemies and Gain Fans.
You can’t please everyone but by doing something bold and different you never know who you can attract.
I had an absolute blast of a time at Something Good and I’ve taken alot from time there. Everything about it was spot on, down to every little detail. Bristol is a wonderful city with a great creative community. I would love to go back and really hope this runs again next year.
Upon flying home I sat on the plane and reflected all about my experience at the festival. My biggest singular take away was that you have to go and do and learn things for yourself. You are your own biggest fan and it’s important to be creatively curious.
Sometimes the biggest inspirations in our lives come from the most unexpected of places and it’s exciting to think that you don’t know where that could lead you.
