Following the success of the amazing lectures at Typo London late in 2011 some of The Potting Shed crew have just returned from yet another cultural bombardment.

This time Dublin was the destination, the event was the 4th annual Offset talks. A three day conference with a glittering array of grahic design illuminati.

We believe passionately as a company in stretching our perspectives and horizons beyond our beautiful little island and bringing back what we learn and see to inform our work both on-island and for our clients in other jurisdictions.

So it was with this in mind that we jumped at the chance to hear from the likes of Stefan Sagemeister, Michael Beirut and Paula Scher and when you add that into the mix with the chance for a long weekend in the fair city of Dublin it was a no brainer.

The 24 speakers were a mix of graphic designers, illustrators, animators and installation designers some from a very corporate cultre and some (like French artists/designers/utter nut-bars Antoine et Manuel and Miami happy freaks Friends With You) who seemed to exist on a planet, albeit a beautifully designed planet, purely of their own creation.

As with the Typo London talks there is too much to say in one blog so we will be outlining some of the best of the best (in our humble opinions) in a few entries over the next couple of weeks. Mostly just showing some of their incredible work rather than ham-fistedly reiterrating their speech’s.

The work exhibited by all was of course immensly humbling but it was the analytical focus and delivery of Stefan Sagmeister, the far reaching advertising inspiration of  Andrew Essex and the pure hilarious genius of  Erik Kessels of KesselsKramer that stood out above all else and it is of these three gods of design and advertising we will blog about in the coming days. We would add the incredible Michael Bierut to the list but we wrote about the Pentagram partner after Typo London so we’ll just leave it at that for now.

Other notable mentions for their sheer talent alone are the British Illustrators Von and Olly Moss, and type designer/web designer/ illustratorand general all round creative whirlwind Jessica Hische, who’s catalogue of work at such a young age is simply terrifying.

Sadly we had to leave for the airport halfway through the last day and missed out on the last few talks on the sunday which included one of Shed Creative Director Al’s design heroes Kyle Cooper, head of Prologue and designer of hundreds of the greatest film title sequences ever to grace the silver screen, including the titles for Seven. However with much more information we fear our brains may well have turned to mush with so much cultural input.

Rest assure Offset will be an anuual fixture on the Potting Shed calendar. If it hadn’t been for the bloody fog on the return flight it may well have been the perfect trip!