Great to visit Paris Packaging Week 2025 recently.
There was so much inspiration with beautiful work and the process to creating it showcased, along with interesting topics discussed, such as sustainability in packaging design, exploring new materials such as paper bottles for drinks, adapting to change – such as a world where AI is impacting everything and what it’s role is in the design industry, the key to building strong brands, current packaging design trends, thinking big and thinking differently with brand strategy and innovation, and how to work effectively to be most creative and productive, whilst maintaining a healthy work to life balance and staying creatively inspired.
It was great to attend the new design event, BOUNCE, run by the IDI (Irish Design Network). The event ran over January 9th – 10th 2025, at Trinity College Dublin. This two-day event, crafted by the design community for the community, offered fresh, critical perspectives on the design process, giving designers a unique opportunity to explore, engage, and be inspired.
Since the previously run Dublin-based design festival Offset ceased – creatives have missed design conferences like this, as an opportunity to network and stay inspired with the latest projects happening in all areas of design worldwide, so this was a great step towards a positive resurgence of design inspiration and events in Dublin.
Great to attend the recent Dublin design event Luvin Letters In Design – for Typography & Lettering lovers, which ran over the 4th and 5th October in the Complex Arts Centre, Dublin 1.
There was an inspiring line up of speakers and some live mural painting with artists Theosone (Berlin), Milen Balbuzanov (Bulgaria), Horhay Design (Spain) and Calligrafreaks (Berlin).
Here’s to more of these design events returning to the Dublin design scene!
Dublin’s annual creative design event, hosted in Grand Canal dock, was full of talented speakers and designers eager to soak up inspiration and pick up some design tips and goodies. This year had a high focus on illustration, which was great to see. I am currently enrolled in a one-year illustration course, to develop my illustration style and bring more illustration in to my graphic design work, so it was great to hear about illustrators who are doing well in the industry. Here are a few of the talented designers and illustrators that caught my eye this year:
Marion Deuchars
Marion Deuchars is a Scottish award-winning illlustrator and hand letterer. She is well-known for her children’s book designs, an area of graphic design I would love to get in to in the future, so I found her talk inspiring. She also works with brand and advertising agencies. Her illustration style is playful and appeals to children and adults alike. See more of her work here.
The Project Twins
Great to see young Irish designers speaking at such a big event. This duo hail from Cork and have accomplished a lot already in their careers. The printmakers have spent time in a residency in the Facebook offices, which sounds like it was a lot of creative fun and have been featured in a huge amount of shows and exhibitions. Their work is simple but quirky; their bright and playful illustrations clearly deliver each project message with accuracy and bring a smile to your face. Purchase a print for your home or studio here.
And last, but certainly not least, advertising agency Chemistry
I love Chemistry’s ideas. Their work is the type of work I look at and wish I had done it myself! For the sad death of the All Blacks rugby player Jonah Lomu, they designed this beautiful image below of the New Zealand fern with one of it’s leaves fallen, which very simply and eloquently reflected the tragedy of New Zealand and the All Blacks loss of such an important player and Kiwi legend.
Another strong campaign they spoke about was the ‘I want to get Cancer’ campaign. I must admit this was quite a controversial one. When I first saw it on a bus stop and then on a TV advert, I had mixed feelings. I understood the point but still didn’t like to see those words as they seemed like a negative affirmation at first glance and because of it’s in your face nature, it could pose insensitive to someone with a family member dealing with or having lost someone to cancer. However, the talk really brought more insight to this campaign. They asked half of the audience to stand up and said that by 2020, it is predicted that 1 in 2 of us will get cancer. The figure was quite striking and by separating the audience like that, it really hit home. They said they needed a message that really got attention and drove awareness with people that this isn’t something we should be turning a blind eye to, that we need to be more proactive rather than reactive with fighting it. Some of the team working on this campaign had actually fought cancer themselves, so they were actually in a strong position to speak up about it, after having gone through it personally. They spoke about how the campaign had been really effective and brought in a lot more calls and awareness, therefore it hit the objective of the brief very well and brought the desired outcome.
I also loved their LIDL Christmas advert, which was touching and well created with the story based around families and coming together to be there for eachother.
View it below:
Another striking image they created for an article on the history of the events at Chernobyl, using charred Russian Dolls was also very effective. I think they have the ability to deliver a message effectively in a way that touches on your heart strings and makes you think about the issue.
So that sums up my Offset 2017 highlights – there were many more talented designers speaking but I could only pick a few! Now to put that inspiration to good use…
I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to visit Mix Some Noise 2016 on a recent trip to Singapore.
Noise Singapore is an initiative of the National Arts Council to make noise about the young creative talent in Singapore, using many different platforms throughout the city to showcase the level of creativity. It’s aim is to support, inspire and encourage local young creatives in developing their relationship with the arts.
Have a look at some of the inspiring international art on display:
This year’s CEAD exhibition brought a huge and diverse range of art out on display. I was delighted to be featured among all this talent. Here are a few highlights below:
Exploring Portraiture
Eyes are said to be a window to the soul. For this exhibition, I wanted to explore this further in the work through portraiture, to show how someone is painted in portraiture can depict an openness and innocence within a person or a contrasting darkness by painting in a more distorted manner and also a more voyeuristic view of painting someone who seems unaware, such as the male portrait below.
Artists I looked at who had explored similar themes and/or painting styles were Jenny Saville, Marcella Dumas, Frida Kahlo and Francis Bacon.
A Piece of Me, Naomi Kelly
This piece is about the body with a focus on breast cancer – the process of chemotherapy, mastectomy, cancer cells and how it all affects the body all shown in a visual way. Naomi uses utensils from around the home in her art as a lot of women can be in the domestic home environment. I thought this piece was very well thought out and implemented and it connects the viewer to the sensation and intrusion to their body that women go through when dealing with breast cancer. I thought Naomi tackled this sensitive subject manner in a visually-interesting and powerful way.
The Watchful Eye of CCTV
Camera City, Stuart Pearson I found the subject matter of photographer Stuart Pearson quite interesting, a very popular topic at present – the level in which we are all, as a society, being monitored in our daily lives. Stuart explores how humans interact with the built environment and designed public spaces. He explores how security cameras are incorporated into our built environment where we are recorded hundreds of times per day, often without even realising, with facial recognition software utilised that can identify and even track us individually and our movements over time and concerns over it’s use on social media such as Facebook.
Through his work, he raise the question of if we still have a right to the freedom of privacy and anonymity in public places and online. There are a lot of uses of this level of tracking in terms of reducing crime, targeting specific audiences through monitoring online consumer activity and increased awareness of current happenings such as traffic incident coverage but there definitely does beg the question of – how much is too much – and are we ok with the current level of it? I found his work quite thought-provoking.
Further Art on Show
There really was so much quality work on display that it would be difficult to run through them all but have a browse below and feast your eyes on some more of the talented artist’s work.
Check out some of things that stood out at this design event, held in the Dean Dublin:
Motherland
Motherland’s passion is researching and creating films that tell a story, create interest and evoke feelings within the viewer. ‘Becoming Men’ is a short video they shared where the narrator talks about own his experiences of growing up and how children jumping in the rivers and canals of Dublin is nothing new but is steeped in the history of childhood growing up in inner-city Dublin:
Shape
Explaining Design to Children– Studio AAD were tasked with coming up with a video that explain why design is important and what it actually is to children. They were please to discover the children understood it after a Q&A session with the children after watching the final video.
Just Six Degrees
This new website launched by Michael McDermott plays on the idea that we are all within 6 degrees or 6 people away from each other – for example; how the phrase ‘small world’ is often used when discovering a close connection between two people that you know separately. The concept of the website is to get different designers and creatives to recommend 1-3 other people that are currently inspiring them, they then do a feature on these people and ask them to recommend 1-3 people who are inspiring them. And so the process continues. A great way to discover unique and possibly not well-known talent that’s currently out there.
Using 3D technology, Irish company Love and Robots create personalised and bespoke jewellery where the customer can be involved in the design process via their website, selecting from a range of options including colour, material and shape with even being able to twist a piece to create the exact shape you would like using their software. Each piece is custom-made and feels like a collaborative project between the customer and Love and Robots. The look and feel is quite edgy and contemporary and would appeal to graphic designers, architects, fashion designers in particular due to their geometric shapes.
Each year, the Offset creative festival seems to be getting better. With more and more linked events created around it, it’s an inspiring festival that stands out on every creative’s calendar.
This year, among the range of great talent speaking, some highlights were:
This creative duo are very lovable and seem to work so well together. They are so inspired with their creative projects, they live eat and breathe the work when they are in the midst of each project. They create a massive selection of characters, all shapes and sizes, for children’s and adult projects including cartoons, branding and advertisements. You can’t help but fall in love with their enthusiastic fun personalities when presenting and all their playful creations. I like the interior graphics that they did for Sheffield Children’s Hospital, click below to see more of it…
This Rotterdam-based branding company inspired the audience with some great projects. One that particularly stood out was the Alzheimer Netherland identity work. It was really interesting to see them show the process of a range of initial concepts that were discarded and their thought process with deciding this and then the chosen direction. The final identity is very cleverly created, whilst remaining very respectful to the Alzheimer community. It really demonstrated well the disease of alzheimers and how it can affect the memory and brain, with the sharpness and focus fading in and out, visually representing the condition accurately with great creative execution. View more about this campaign below…
It’s inspiring to see a Irish fashion designer Úna Burke do so well at such a young age. The London-based designer’s work is intricate and detailed and her passion for what she does is immediately apparent. She has designed leather pieces for the Hunger Games, along with costume accessories for famous models and performers and worked with many of the greats. Her sculptural work is unique and highly creative, with a feeling of being from a previous era combined with a modern twist.
Seb Lester’s traditional hand-crafted calligraphy is a work of art, an art-form that is rare to see in modern times. It’s relaxing to watch the gentle swishes as his ink hits the paper and dances around from one point to another across the page to leave behind beautiful messages and artworks.
He talked about going back to his roots of what inspired him to follow a creative career path and advised any creatives in need of stimulation to do this. A quote he mentioned was ‘If you don’t ask, then you don’t get’ in relation to how he expressed interest in NASA in an interview online and he then got approached to design a logo for NASA space station which he would never have expected to become a reality! It’s a good motto to have when hesitating in anything in connection to following your dreams. His talk received a standing ovation at the end – a great roundup to 2016′ Offset event.
View a sample of Seb’s work and a video of him in action below…
