In May, we were invited as artists to the OFFF Festival 2016 in Barcelona. Never travel alone! All or none!

So we packed our bags and headed to Barcelona for the almighty annual OFFF festival. With a crew of six letterheads we were prepared for the adventures ahead: a typographic speed crabs-workshop, a speaker slot including a live performance and a special outdoor “Sunshine Calamari” performance.

Every year the OFFF festival gathers a diverse range of speakers from illustrators, graphic & motion designers to directors and animation studios. It is one of the biggest design festivals just by its sheer size of around 3000 people. Read our interview, which we were asked to give beforehand.

 

During a 4 hour workshop on Friday our participants had to build little robot-crabs with a typographic twist. Based on the idea of Carribean’s crabraces, the aim was to let them run against each other within an interactive live gameshow. — So: We invited two new letterfriends for the creation of the techy crab-skeleton: Torsten Tahoma & Manni Monospace developed a fabulous building kit with one computer brain and six legs. Perfect partner in crime was soldering soldier Ingo Italic. The crab’s body shell could be designed by the participants into any form and shape as long as it was able to walk.

No game, no fun! After the workshop, all crabs had to take part in the race for the fastest crab: “the cream of the crabs”. The crab club ‘Sunshine Calamari’ was hosting the race outside, – led by our goldkid Drifty Crapsrock supported by music mixed by Jussuf Long Island and assisted by Amanda Aloha Diamond Lovecrumble Cookie Jar and Alejandro Abecée –  infront of the festival hall in a self-drawn circled arena. There, we could interact perfectly with the festival guests and showing off the workshop results. All in all three races took place. Fun times!

 

 

 

 

 

On Friday evening Bärbel Bold was entering the Open Room stage to give a deep lecture about Letters Are My Friends. Infront of a packed 500 people room she talked about type, tech & tagliatelle – sharing everything that gets us excited and inspires our work. The talk was finalized with a manpowered live show performance of our crabs and Drifty Crabsrock and Alejandro Abeceé inviting for our “Sunshine Calamari” crab race!

 

A clear winner: Alexander Scholz from Holo (advertisement: get the new issue now!) and Creative Applications. Congrats!

Thank you Alejandro Abecée, Torsten Tahoma, Manni Monospace, Drifty Crabsrocks and all participants. You made an amazing Sunshine Calamari Crab Club! Also, big up to OFFF and Dale Nalson of RMIT Melbourne and his crew for funding the development earlier and making this happen! Big shoutz aswell to Marion Schroeder of BTK for the great video documentation!

 

The crabs:

 

The “Calamari Sunshine” Crab Race:

 

 

Get some insights about the crabs and the race by Drifty Crabsrock interviewed by Alejandro Abecée:

The location