A digital street art wall, a film, a panel chat, and live projects for days! (well, two days if we’re being technical)
As we all know, GDFS has been a mainstay in the Scottish design world and beyond since 2014—and we’ve been big fans and a proud supporter over the years! That’s not only because we met our newest junior designer there, but because GDFS aims to ‘encourage creative thinking‘ in Scotland, which goes quite nicely with ‘inspiring creativity in everyone,’ don’t you think? In any case, this year’s GDFS was the best one yet and we had an amazing time!
TopForm
An all day launch event for GDFS with live music, giveaways and at least 1,000 design geeks, TopForm was packed with loads of incredible talks followed by Q&As from international creative industry leaders like Angus Hyland from Pentagram, Emmanuel Rey & Maxime Plescia-Buchi from Swiss Typefaces, Stefan Sagmeister, Ieva Blaževičiūtė from VICE, Eike König from HORT, and Kelly Anna. (whew!)
But that wasn’t all! We got our pals at Blue Parrot to set up a digital street art wall to help us create a collaborative composite on the day. We handed out goodie bags stuffed with MadeBrave Moleskines, stickers, pencils, pins, big chunky designer-y books, and fine-line pens for our favourite designs!
And the finale for the day? A singalong with Sagmeister, of course!
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Nitty Gritty
Following a two day weekend workshop with many of the TopForm speakers, Nitty Gritty was basically what it says on the tin—an open and frank discussion on some of the most important, yet often overlooked and unexpected aspects of working in the creative industries. In other words, Nitty Gritty was focused on getting the inside scoop from creative industry leaders, including Beth Wilson from Warriors Studio, Tessa Simpson from O Street, Lisa Goldie from Whitespace, Andrew Stevenson from Tangent, freelancer Tiernan Crilley, and our very own Andrew Dobbie!
Good chat #gdfs pic.twitter.com/YodnmLNEmV
— Brad Smith (@BRAD___SMITH) November 25, 2019
Real chat about real life working in the Creative Industries #nittygritty @gdfscotland #gdfs 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 pic.twitter.com/a5bGuqx1aD
— Shona Ferris (@ShonaFerris) November 25, 2019
Live Project
Spanning two full days, Live Project offered students and recent graduates the chance to take on a creative, design-led challenge with mentorship and guidance from top design agencies in Scotland, including Whitespace, Agency of None, Touch, Jamhot, Thirst, Front Page, ilka, O Street, FortyTwo Studio, Tangent, and us!
Set by It’s Nice That, this year’s challenge asked ‘Where is home?’. In a world where technology is allowing people to connect like never before, the brief highlighted how this connection might affect personal identity, more than say, being from a certain place. Each person was asked to create something inspired by the thing that makes their home…well, home.
Presenting their projects to an internationally renowned panel of judges, twenty attendees were offered work placements with their mentor agencies, while the top three were given big shiny design bundle and crowned GDFS Champions for 2019! Honestly we had a great bunch this year and we couldn’t have been more impressed with the results! High fives all around, guys!
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Pssst… If you missed GDFS this year, make sure to stay up to date by signing up to their email list!
