A festival for creativity, design and communication with a lot of great international speakers.
This year I visited the 5th Forward Festival 2019, a festival full of great speakers talking about creativity, design and communication, in Munich. The first talk was held by the Austrian design agency Ortnerschinko. I am happy to announce that they will teach in our Bachelor’s program "Information Design" next semester. It was a great start for the forward festival, which is known to bring a lot of inspiring people on stage.
Some other personal highlights for me were the talks from Max Siedentopf, designer at the studio kesselskramer and Raj Davsi, a 3D animation designer from The Mill, who did the festival’s image video. The main speaker of the festival was once again the Austrian designer Stefan Sagmeister. He delivered a powerful talk about beauty. Right now the exhibition with the same title is shown in Frankfurt/Main.
The festival was framed by a poster exhibition and a small fair. Gökce Topuzoglu, a Turkish designer based in Switzerland presented her project P.A.L – Protecting Animal Lives. It is all about protecting endangered animals and fair fashion. Her illustrations show 40 animals, who are threatened by extinction. As single illustration or in patterns you can find them on vegan fabrics tailored to shirts and blouses as well trousers and dresses.
“Be stylish without being harmful to the environment.” Look book P.A.L 2019
Always crowded was the printing area. Two students from our Institute, Lu Xia (Incoming student form Wuhan, China) and Irene Martinez Soler (master student from Valencia, Spain) were working there and showing visitors the hand jet printer: A mobile hand-held ink-jet printing system for surfaces like e.g. wood, metal, fabrics and paper.
The fourth time in a row the graphic design of the festival was done by the branding, design and film company ZWUPP. It was founded by some graduates of our bachelor’s program Information Design and we would like to congratulate to their great work.
I will finish my short review on this year´s Forward Festival with a statement of the festival organizer and publisher of the Forward Magazin Othmar Handl: “What I mean by all that is that you should follow your heart and your dreams and do what makes you happy. Being a creative is not easy.” I wish them all the best for the next stops of the Forward Festival in Zürich and Hamburg! Looking forward to getting updated about the graphic design scene at the festival next year again.
