I listened to many interesting people at the OFFF Barcelona 2023. They all were successful in their own right and had worked on really cool projects. But the most important thing I take with me from this experience, is how people treat and portray their success.
Jamhot and Rubén Alvarez for example showed so much humility and grace when it came to their success. They were open about their struggles and failures and it was obvious that their intention was to connect with the audience. Rubén Alvarez even set up his whole presentation so that the people would get to know him and what shaped him as a person. He talked about the positive and negative sides of his home country Mexico, his struggles as a kid, his studies that were unrelated to design, his attempt to break into the music industry, and his failed barber shop, just to name a few. Alvarez described how his design style evolved and how an accidental viral post on Instagram made him realize that his goal in life is to connect with people. This goal was so obvious throughout his whole talk and everyone I spoke to afterwards really enjoyed the talk for the same reasons I did.
Joshua Davis was also really honest in his talk. He outright said that he did certain things just for the money in order to keep making the art that he enjoyed and felt fulfilled by. He experimented a lot and one could tell that he really enjoyed what he was doing. This transparency was really refreshing, especially after listening to some people who were just showing the highlights of their careers. What i disliked about Davis’ talk though was the structure. He went through each year of his entire career which was a bit exhausting to listen to especially the first half where a lot of the things he showed were very similar.
Lastly, i also want to touch on how David Carson presented himself and how he portrayed his success. This was a talk we discussed for a long time afterwards because we were so negatively surprised by what we witnessed. The beginning felt like someone was showing you their screenshot folder of funny things they see on the internet and when Carson finally started to talk about his work it felt like he didn’t really want to be there and that we should be grateful for all crumbs he was giving us. Maybe I feel this way because I wasn’t familiar with him as a person but to me this was very disrespectful towards the audience. I don’t like how he treated his success and how entitled he felt to do and say whatever he wanted because people were accepting it.
Joshua Davis
Rubén Alvarez
Jamhot
