In November 2019, Team DAC visited Glasgow to attend Graphic Design Festival Scotland (GDFS). Over the extended weekend we were inspired, challenged, motivated and literally hit over the head with a heavy hunk of metal — more on that later. There was a great calibre of high-profile speakers at the Topform conference and a series of hands-on workshops.

The Topform conference kicked off with an impactful set from a DJ/saxaphone duo before hearing from the speakers.

Speakers
Angus Hyland, Pentagram
Swiss Typefaces, Emmanuel Rey & Maxime Plescia-Buchi
Sagmeister & Walsh, Stefan Sagmeister
Kelly Anna, Kelly Anna
HORT, Eike König
VICE, Ieva Blazeviciute
Paul Scharf, G.F. Smith

One of our highlights was Kelly Anna, talking about her journey to becoming the artist and designer she is today. She encouraged the audience to find their style and use it confidently, taking on things that challenge you. She was a master at putting on high impact exhibitions of her work, a big contributor to her success.

Another favourite was the strange and exocentric, but highly engaging and memorable, musical performance by Eike König — we were in Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall after all. He continued, covering a snapshot of Hort’s inspiring portfolio of work.

Stefan Sagmeister rounded up the day, showing his research on shape and colour. We learnt that a white circle was the most beautiful form whereas a brown rectangle is the ugliest. He quite rightly drew attention to the most common form we see in architecture — the brown rectangle!

A series of workshops were taking place over the following two days, first we heard an introduction from the workshop hosts where Wilfred Wood showed a funny video of his work.

Workshops that Team DAC attended
Wilfred Wood, sculpture and drawing
Kelly Anna, t-shirt design
Ieva Blazeviciute from VICE, visual storytelling
Foilco, foiling design and production

Wilfred Wood, sculpture and drawing
Colin and I decided to do the Wilfred Wood workshop as it sounded really practical, fun and different from our day job at Design and Code.

Wilfred Wood is a really talented, London based sculptor. He’s worked on an impressive array of well-loved and well-loathed UK celebrities.

After a morning doing pencil portraits of models sitting for our class, we moved onto using colour. The following day we started to sculpt each other; you may be able to recognise us from our plasticine heads! In the afternoon we each chose a celebrity to sculpt.

It was a brilliant workshop and we really enjoyed meeting Wilfred Wood.

Kelly Anna, t-shirt design
Madeleine chose to do Kelly Anna’s workshop because she’s a big fan of her work and, like Kelly Anna, she’s an illustrator and designer.

Over the weekend, the class worked on their own t-shirt designs. Madeleine picked ‘collaboration’ as the concept for her design, naming her finished concept ‘Unite Unite’.

Ieva Blazeviciute from VICE, visual storytelling
As part of a team project in the VICE visual storytelling workshop, Grant worked on several briefs highlighting different causes with the purpose of getting people to take notice of their campaign message.

Foilco, foiling design and production
Simon experimented with different foiling techniques in the Foilco. workshop. He worked on a number of designs and used a variety of papers, cards and foil types.

What about being hit over the head with a hunk of metal? Ah yes — that was the Design and Code Macbook Pro falling from the overhead storage on the journey back to Aberdeen. Ouch!!!

It was great to be together as a team, get inspired and talk lots about all things design. The weekend sparked new and old passions and we can’t wait to visit again in 2020.

If you want to receive the latest updates of what the DAC team are up to, follow us on Instagram @designandcode.