Offset festival's Ways And Means magazine sets a new standard

Anyone who has ever been to a design conference will be familiar with the tote bag rummage, a just-arrived ritual that all too often ends in underwhelmed flyer reading. So it was with refreshing excitement that we happened upon Ways And Means in the bags at this year’s Offset festival in Dublin. The bespoke magazine – designed by Offset head honcho Bren Byrne – breathed new life into the design conference give-away with a variety of in-depth profiles of the speakers which provided genuinely interesting insight and context ahead of their talks.

Put together in just a few days, it was a fine-looking thing too, with a glossy stock central section given over to big images of the speakers’ work, allowing us to revel in their abilities as well as soaking up the wisdom of the likes of Tomi Ungerer, Sue Murphy and Annie Atkins. Other conferences take note – Ways And Means has set a new standard for festival freebies.