Post festival: the conscious antidote to commercial design events

Post festival is putting the cat amongst the pigeons in the world of design conferences. Highly principled and critical of the commercialisation of design, it aims to “deal with issues beyond the development of client contacts and stylistic approaches,” and explore how design can make a real difference.

Notably, this small start-up event in Copenhagen has just 65 passes and virtually no budget, yet features a stirling line-up including Eike Konig, Anne Meekers, Andreas Wellnitz, Kate Gibb, David Foldvari, Hanna Bergman, Supermundane, Lawrence Zeegen, Hugh Frost and Jacob Birch. The subject is something that clearly resonates with the speakers, as most are speaking for free.

“My feeling is that everybody in the visual industries has a personal message to their work and a reason for doing it,” says founder Jody Barton. “But we all have to serve capital, work and make money somehow. So for Post, we wanted to get people involved that had found a way to do both. Many of our speakers have done the commercial work for the nasty people, and got to a point where they don’t have to do it any more.

“We wanted Post to be a counterpoint to events that are just a series of success stories in a Ted talk format. It’s aspirational but it’s not honest. We’ve had enough of all that. We’re more than stylists. People in this business are human and still have humanity, but we’re expected to be quiet about all that.

“So we wanted to start that conversation, start a conscious design festival. I think the commercial visual environment has given in to fear. Fear of internet comments, fear of offending people, but we need to be less afraid — but still nice. Remember how adverts used to be funny? We’ve gone into a comfort period and something needs to change.”

Post festival takes place from 17—20 August 2016 at Space 10, Copenhagen, Denmark.