At btconf I always meet new people. Not just old (or senior if you wish) designers like myself, but I always have conversations with young professionals as well.
BTS: Gavin Strange and the Düsseldorf 2025 Design
Gavin Strange created the whole design theme for beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf this year. He has written an amazing summary of what he did and how and we recorded this little “Behind the Scenes” video in addition.
As you can clearly see, when watching this conversation, we had a lot of fun. Before, during and now, after the event. Gavin is a wonderful person to work with and his energy, on stage and next to it, is incredible. Not only as he has so much of it (the energy, I mean), but also since it is all just positive energy.
If you enjoyed this clip, let me know via email or leave a comment on YouTube. ;)
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Full transcription of this video:
(Music)
[Marc Thiele] I just hit record, so whatever happens now is, like, on tape.
(Laughs)
[Marc] Hey Gavin, lovely to see you again after beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf two weeks ago actually.
I mean two weeks ago it was over already again, can you imagine? Everything goes so quick …
[Gavin Strange] Yeah it did, that was a whirlwind wasn’t it leading up to that. We were speaking every day leading up to it and we’ve been speaking every day afterwards anyway and we speak really regularly anyway which is lovely. But it was nice, it was such a... Yeah as we were talking I made my big old sort of blog live today so it’s been really nice recounting the story of what we did and what happened and all of that good stuff, yeah it’s great.
[Marc] Yeah that’s pretty lovely. I mean I myself start like roughly a year before to collect ideas for speakers and write for speakers and stuff and then for me it’s a bit of like a steady go in line until I’d say like eight weeks before it goes like... And then everything is getting like whoa and then it’s over again.
[Gavin] Yeah I don’t know how you do it, you’re so good at that, that you’re very calm under pressure and things just...
I mean I know things were kind of not going quite right all the time you know just life and things go wrong but you always seem to handle it very calmly and just like okay on to the next.
[Marc] I mean I honestly have to say I think that’s what I learned like pretty early on when I started organising holiday camps for children that was when some things they just have a self running so once they run they run and you can’t stop them so the only thing you can do is like take control in the matter of like how you steer them in a way in a right direction so when things go wrong you still kind of fix it it’s just like accepting that this happens and making the best out of it so that’s the rule right so I remember one year Toby actually the DJ on stage he said to me when something technically went wrong he said like how can you stay so calm must be in 2013-2014 around this time and I said to him like well a) I cannot change it right now because it’s happening I have an idea what is broken but I cannot change it right also we have to go through it at least until lunch break and also if I now freak out about it the audience will recognise this and that wouldn’t help either because there’s 500 people in the audience and they want to be entertained they wanted to be happy and they don’t certainly want to see me like in a grumpy and like upset mode right so yeah so what can you do that’s so
[Gavin] True that’s hard that is that is a skill that is a learned skill though isn’t it like you definitely have to work at that and I fully enough I saw a really interesting thing the other day someone had posted about the actual definition of stress because obviously stress is a word that we all use and probably overuse all the time I’m really stressed that’s really stressful but I didn’t actually realise the definition of stress is it’s really something that is out of your control but actually quite a lot of things that we say stressful well it is in your control and you can change it and you can you can alter it it kind of really like has made me reframe that word and kind of like oh but in a nice way in a positive way of oh if I can control it then okay how do I do it calmly how do I let myself stay calm and sort of figure it out and then when things are kind of out of your control and they’re all yeah like that that’s fine that’s fine that you feel that oh god feeling but but if you are if you can control it or at least steer it you know if you do something different then that’s
[Marc] Exactly try to make the best out of it and that’s why why you’ve written that in your blog post when I said like if stuff fails for example your life stuff yeah well the plan B would have been yeah you on stage and surely you would have done something
[Gavin] That’s a really good point yeah I remember you you you said that on when we were just sort of you know doing that doing the tech run through and it hadn’t occurred to me but it was so sweet that yeah hopefully for you it was like well if it goes wrong I know Gav I’ve known Gav a long time you won’t freak out on stage and it’ll just do something something will happen what exactly we don’t know but something will happen
[Marc] Exactly yeah so okay the idea of this little chat that we have here this little conversation is um a little bit what what you did in your blog post explain people and me for example uh what you actually did there because um it wasn’t just the opening titles that people talk about it has been the overall design so I remember I don’t know actually when it was that you got to me and said like well I’d like to do like everything the t-shirt the the badge is like the whole design and I was like oh wow that’s great yeah yeah let’s do it um
So how how did you start I mean how did he like did he come with the upper because I remember when when we first first time spoke about it you said like well I’ve got plenty of characters in my drawer somewhere so I thought you’re going to do something with freaking characters and bloody very colourful characters whatever but you didn’t and you surprised me when when you sent the first idea of what you did then in the end
[Gavin] Yeah that’s a good point yeah so I guess for people listening obviously we’re just two weeks after Marc’s beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf and I did the title design which I played live on stage but we’ll come to that in a bit but at the same time I sort of helped design the the everything that went around the festival and that that’s really because of um when you know I spoke at your Berlin event back in 22 um uh you know I and I’ve obviously like saying known you a very long time I know that you then how you you love designing all of those elements anyway so that was a natural like oh god well if I could do the titles I’d love to do everything so that felt like a natural if that’s possible I would love to be useful and do it but the the design side of it yeah that’s a really good point actually so I do I was looking at my notes earlier of early ideas and there was all sorts of ideas I planned on making it look like a cheesy 90s 1990s power ranger film where you know like everyone’s wearing these ridiculous suits I do these big moves and the the filmmaking’s quite cheesy I I still would love to do something like that but I think knowing now that you know I’m a um I have a full-time job I work at a studio in Bristol in the UK called Aardman you know that is a 37 and a half hours a week you know it’s a full-time job I have two children so I think now I’m good at being realistic in my time and knowing that this would have to be in the evenings once the children are in bed or in the early mornings before the kids have woken up I had to be achievable in what I could do and loads of ideas would have been really fun to make but I I think I knew that I could like good old graphic design I think because my title is I’m a director and a designer but my my I originally started doing graphic design that’s kind of how I came into things so I think I thought if I rely on a skill I know I can do that’s one element I don’t have to worry about and now saying out loud I decided to override that comfortable element by saying hey can I play those sides was live even though I’ve never done that before in my life um so yeah so I think it was the the origins to designing it in the way that I did which is like very 2000s style sort of graphic very graphic heavy very typography heavy very um visual over stimulation kind of came from a place of a I love those that style I know you both appreciate that aesthetic but also I think I can pull this off because it’s all well and good having a great idea but if I fail at the execution and I stitch you up by not being able to finish it then that’s good for no one so yeah it’s almost like it came from a place of of um of the things I love but also economy what’s really yeah
[Marc] But that’s very clever I mean some some people might might overdo like and not not overdue but like um what’s the english word like they would not be realistic in terms of what time consumption that all takes right I mean uh from the idea I think as soon as you have an idea as you’re also right in the blog post once you have got the kind of template set the adaption of the rest is easier right but like to get to the idea and be realistic is that all achievable in the time I have got um that that’s it’s very very uh uh for me at least always the worst point because I’m bad with like planning my time already for a day not to talk about like a project like this um and uh you said something there uh as well uh having family and a job I mean people already really really wonder I remember the talk when was that must have been six seven years ago when you were talking about time in Amsterdam oh yeah how you schedule your your day in terms of like your clock that you built for yourself where you have like this is work this is family this is off time for projects and stuff like so when do you sleep then I mean like do you do you get away with like a little sleep only per day or is it for like you can you can do that for two weeks three weeks and then you need a break
[Gavin] Yeah that’s a really good question actually for the for the viewers yeah I did a talk in Amsterdam yeah about six or seven years ago and in that talk at the time I used I think of the time circle which really is a circle split into 24 segments and I color in what I’m doing and and what is so useful that is when you then fill in I don’t know say you do eight hours work in your day and then you do okay uh six hours sleep you know uh you then start like get a visual very easy visual representation of where your day and time could be spent um I do I do that less so now because I think I’m quite good at my routine and I’m quite good currently my children are eight and four and our routine is is quite set you know ish um but but I do I mean I operate I guess not on loads of sleep so when I was you know at the height of of our project I was probably coming in here in my space at like 9 p.m and then working till sort of midnight and that was quite good I could get three hours and then sort of up you know if if if I don’t get up early then I’m up about quarter to seven so I’m kind of getting like six hours sleep but A) my daughter is waking up in the middle of the night um a lot well every night actually so it’s broken sleep and when it was really kind of like I really wanted to make good progress about two weeks before the um uh beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf happened I was getting up at at sort of 4 45 to do five to seven a.m before and I really yeah I really liked doing it I did do that I used to do that when my kids were young because I wasn’t working in the evenings because um because often when there were babies my wife would be feeding them on the sofa so it was our time to be together as a new family it’s a totally different dynamic isn’t it when they’re babies when they’re really little but now I do bedtime I kind of get my hours back at night so I don’t I don’t often get up early but because the you know those two weeks and you and what was so lovely we were always talking on WhatsApp because you were in the thick of getting the event ready you know it was like that come on right here’s the big push I’ve got to make 13 pieces of music and and 13 moving moving graphics and all of that so but what was interesting there is quite quickly I realised I’m not as young as I was I’m 43 this year and that recovery time I couldn’t do every morning five to seven I just couldn’t I think with the day job and family I just couldn’t sustain it so I was kind of doing sort of every other day I’m still doing the 9 pm onwards and sometimes if my wife did bedtime I could I could start early so sometimes I’m being here and do sort of 7 38 which was great you know getting a good four hours in here but yeah it was also quite nice still being like well I can’t break myself because again we’re going to be together at the event like you can’t push so hard and then totally screw it and be useless and not be able to sort of perform on stage and give a talk so yeah I think I think as I’ve got older and done this longer I’m just better at reading my own signals of where to push and when to just
[Marc] Yeah same same for me I have to say same for me I have to say I like for me it was easy but like pre-pandemic I would say as a point time point. That I would be able to like start at 11 and easily work through like three o’clock and then get up at six or seven again to get the kids to school not a problem but nowadays ah no not working anymore I’m like not really good and do this anymore so latest this this year latest was like 2am but maybe like I did four or five sessions when stuff was like printer deadlines and printing deadlines and stuff so that you can really get the stuff out in the morning to the printers but apart from that I am much better prepared just for the sake of my health it’s really.
[Gavin] Yeah I think that’s it so we when you were like finishing at 2am were you doing that every night or would you do a late night and then like the next night you you would go to bed a bit earlier.
[Marc] Yeah no no it was like I think it was like three or four nights in a row and then took it easier again yeah so I had everything done by Wednesday before the event most likely yeah okay and then I had to like some small things communication people want to change names on their badges and all this kind of stuff because don’t forget I do everything on my own there’s no other support team so I’m like support by email for tickets blah blah blah blah blah so all this
[Gavin] I honestly don’t know how you do that I really do not know how you can be across so many things I mean that is what makes your events great as well and obviously I’ve I’ve said this many a time but I’m in awe of that you can that you can do that I think that is your personality and what was so great is I read that interview that you did recently with a magazine where you kind of describe yourself as a host and that makes total sense so it’s total sense actually why you’re you’re happy to okay yeah sure I can I’ll change your name on your lanyard you know oh I’ll also reply to that email from a speaker oh you know actually it is in your nature of who you are as a human so I think that’s really interesting that that you have built the event in the way that works for you as well
[Marc] True. Totally true. Yeah, I needed a bit of time to recognise that for myself because people were asking how do you do this and how do you do that and I went like I actually don’t know it’s just happening it’s not planned yeah yeah yeah but it’s what I like and hopefully um I can do that for a while still because I really enjoy connecting people and bringing them together and like having the opportunity to do what we did um again when I say a playground that’s actually part of the concept the beyond tellerrand idea it’s not just the talks it’s the whole concept of it uh if I ask someone for a t-shirt designer so like I don’t have a lot of money so that’s what I can pay and then people are like what should I design give me the logo it’s like no no logo I just design something and I trust people that and oftentimes it really is I think except from one time uh in all those years it was like their first draft it’s like yeah that looks great fantastic and they were like really I was like yeah
[Gavin] Oh that is I think that set that speaks to when people are kind of doing things as passion projects as well and and often it’s a different train of thought isn’t it it’s it’s it’s a personal connection and they know you and they know the event and it just kind of naturally comes I think that’s why I sort of felt like not only again for sort of economics of time with with the titles I felt like no my instinct is it’s right and that’s okay let’s move on let’s move on there’s a lot to do and and that’s that’s quite freeing I think is also you can then come back and so you know I did kind of come back to the main beyond tellerrand sort of black and green and white design and you know adding the white in there to make it to make it slightly different came came afterwards but I’m always trying to not let myself get too hung up you know okay move on to the next thing move on to the next thing yeah yeah and sort of momentum helps massively
[Marc] Absolutely and uh that’s the same for me uh the kind of a reason for why why I I go with my decision and my gut feeling for things like the designs for the t-shirt or the opening titles and anything um that’s uh part of the reason is because I learned to understand that okay there will be 500 people in the room and certainly not everybody is is is going to like that so the taste is totally different you know but you know what I don’t care it’s still great and people won’t say like oh I hate it it’s just like oh well it’s not my cup of tea I think that’s the worst I’ve ever heard like on at beyond tellerrand because it’s like I think the the voice and tone I said in the beginning and upfront in my emails and all the kind of stuff people understand this is this is something where we meet and we are friendly and we are nice we want to hang out we want to all have the best time in our lives so please right and so therefore they they are very receptive and very welcoming and I think that that was something that you experienced with the opening titles as well as your talk as well as the other speakers did this um as far as I heard of them so honestly a big shout out to to everybody coming to this event and being welcoming as they are because they they are they are the people I can be as welcoming as I want to if 500 people in the audience are like assholes you know it wouldn’t work.
[Gavin] I think what was really interesting in the testament to the culture is and I was fascinated by this actually people after every break after every lunch time would just naturally filter in and take their seats you didn’t have to really like drag people in like people people were there to to listen to speakers and to be a part of a community and they did exactly that it was lovely it was really welcoming and and obviously when you know I’ve like I mentioned my blog you know we’ve hung out at events all over the world and I’ve always known the way that you talk about Dusseldorf is because it’s it’s your home like it it has a special sort of you know draw for you and that was that I know soon as on day one I got it I totally understood it it was this lovely pervasive feeling you know it wasn’t anything anyone in particular said it was just that feeling oh it’s nice and mellow it’s not lovely
[Marc] Funny enough I was able to adapt this to the other cities but you’re right like my my own feeling surely this homecoming this love is where where I lived a long time and now I live close by yeah yeah it’s great I mean and people like you and all the others because they they add to it and it’s great really to see how it every time it works out kind of and it’s like yeah really really lovely to see how it all falls into place in a way and I just thought like whoa it worked out again I don’t know how but well it did it’s funny
[Gavin] Yeah I mean it’s 15 years of work isn’t it that’s it.
[Marc] Oh yeah yeah at least 15 years like 15 years I do beyond tellerrand, but I did like wait 10 more years with the flash event that I did and of course of course yeah 25 years of running events so I started by the age I started by the age of eight.
[Gavin] You were just a very switched on eight-year-old yes.
[Marc] OK. Let’s get into details of what you did so we said you did the design obviously you can see a bit of this I tried to get some of the assets into the frame around us here from your actually from your slide from your graphics but what did you do? You were playing with typefaces color you sent me a mood board with like some graphics where you said like this is the kind of aesthetics I want to work with this is where the direction.
So where did you start when you started with this?
[Gavin] Yeah the aesthetics and the mood boards really were that 2000s era sort of graphic design but also digital design you know I sort of my first job really was a digital web designer so I was really exposed to web 1.0 and so for me the design styles of two advanced.com and design is kinky and k10k and then studios like the designers republic or 123clan so it was very much sort of vector heavy type heavy everything heavy design in particular sort of place you know playstation one and the wipeout graphics as well as well as skateboard brands like alien workshop and habitat it was it was a lot I think it was a real explosion of vector art combined with bitmap art really and then a smattering of sort of hard pixels as well and in particular everything on the web in that at that time was our eight point pixel type and it was basically illegible you could not read anything and that was the body copy and then if you did have title typeface it was Helvetica black that was kern so tight together you couldn’t read that either and I love it I love I kind of it felt expressive and it felt I mean kind of I guess if we jump back we were probably thinking oh everything looks the same but now with a bit of distance it had personality in it it had character.
[Gavin] You had to work hard to read a website I mean there is a downside here and actually with Leonie’s talk at your event like the accessibility was an absolute nightmare it would not have been accessible it would have all been images in tables there is not an accessible thing about that but from a from a sort of a creative point of view I was always drawn to that so I knew that that was an aesthetic I wanted to tap into and then knowing that really you know you’ve got your 12 speakers I wanted them to have their own look definitely it’s all within the ballpark of that 2000s web 1.0 aesthetic but but then again for economics I figured well let’s just give every speaker a nice bold bright base color and I’ll use black as the the text of the type and the images and illustrations etc etc and so that that made it hopefully punchy as a as a as a look you know I picked a color palette that that had 12 equally bright colours in it and then beyond tellerrand itself you know the the whole the sort of event needed a like a main master look I kept calling it master in all my files like a master aesthetic there was black and then sort of neon green and that was really a bit of a nod to it was probably a bit early in the 2000s but sort of like you know basic computers with with sort of you know the bios screens and and a little bit of a meagre cracktros as well from from the 90s but sort of just a quite eye-bleeding bright aesthetic so yeah so then remember that quite well yeah it was I think that’s it like it’s all sort of the 90s bleed into the 2000s and but very sort of computer tech influence before before sort of anti-aliasing really I think hard edges and pixels and polygons there’s just something about that and again that maybe speaks to our age and what we what we thought but yeah that was the general design aesthetic for for everything as a whole
[Marc] Yeah and the I see the color palette like the 12 colours remind me pretty much of what the Commodore c64 was like capable of 16 colours in general I think the the 12 plus two greys white and black that’s the 16 colours and they look pretty similar to what you had there
[Gavin] Yeah it really is isn’t it yeah just really bold bright colours that would that would that would pop on stage and then you know what’s really nice about your event is like when you do the a1 posters for every speaker as well it was really nice it was a nice way to work I’ve done title sequences before but this was a really nice way that the actually the sort of design application around the building and around the event kind of came first and really helped steer how everything would look which which was lovely but it wasn’t until actually knowing that people had come into the venue they’d seen the posters for the speakers they had seen the design aesthetic all around and then actually when they sit down and watch the titles for the first time it’s not disconnected so actually no if anything it kind of empowers it it’s like oh it’s coming to life rather than a totally different thing and then they’re spending the first sort of 20 seconds being like oh well what’s this what’s this design what’s that got to do with anything so that was a really lovely byproduct though I think we have buy-in from from the attending
[Marc] Exactly that’s wonderful yeah and that’s what I usually try um usually it’s the other way around like two days before the event I get the opening titles or if not I at least ask for like uh the kind of theme for each of the speakers of the titles and then I out of that I generate the posters and usually they look like movie posters sometimes right so I call the movie posters so I had like really like this beyond tellerrand presents blah blah blah and then the image in between so I typeset them um so that again people have a connection without sometimes knowing because they see the posters when coming in they sit down see the opening titles and there is the connection sometimes maybe not even recognisable for them no but they have seen the posters when coming in so yeah that’s exactly the idea of it
[Gavin] Yeah yeah that was really nice it was really nice the lanyards as well the lanyards connecting with the design on screen and and everything else like that that again that master sort of aesthetic across everything yeah and then really helpful.
[Marc] You did stickers as well you look at this yeah yeah shout.
[Gavin] Our friends at Sticker App yes yeah I’m absolutely those lovely humans and and asked if um they’d be up for collabing with you and me and they said yes which was lush and so who doesn’t yeah who doesn’t like stickers especially sticker pack that has 13 stickers inside it like 12 12 speaker lotus sort of icon monograms and then a special shiny I like the fact you’ve kept yours in a sealed case I’ve uh where’s my yeah I’ve got mine I’m not I’m not opening it I want I want a sealed set
[Marc] Yery good yeah so you just enter the whole logos uh like a like all kind of it’s not a logo it’s a monogram more than a logo right like where you have got the the the uh the first letters of the first and last name and you you made some kind of gaming logo on it you see all of them here right
[Gavin] Yeah I mean that’s that’s a direct wipe out Wipeout 2097 reference that all of the all of those the different um I think it was the different ships or the different racing companies in that game had yeah thick chunky junky graphics and again that era was very much reminiscent of that very designers republic and I thought I think that’s it I’m always looking for any passion project that is an excuse to play out some sort of graphical um uh dream that I’ve had and you know I’ve always wanted to make logos like that and so this this was perfect and a set of 12 is like oh that’s a great that’s a great amount to do so yeah so ended up doing those kind of um did those before I’d really done the speaker designs because I ended up using the little logos and in various formats even sometimes the the ones I didn’t use and finish I would take some of the elements and incorporate those into the speaker’s actual design slides okay yeah then getting to use them on the tote bags that you had for every attendee and then the sticker collaboration was it was just like we were building this sort of asset sort of kit of
[Marc] Library or whatever yeah that lovely and did you so how can I imagine like the logos was it a hard task to do or was it you like having loud music on your ears and go like wow and once you got the first one done you go like oh that’s the direction and just flashing them yeah
[Gavin] Yeah I think I think I did I think because I’m so comfortable in Adobe Illustrator I’ve used it my whole career and I’ve it’s just very pleasing to just deal in in curves just to get especially because that era is like oh let’s see if I can make that s not flow into that c and it’s it’s it’s quite it was quite therapeutic actually so that didn’t feel tough it was just sort of like okay well again you know the parameters I think as soon as you have some parameters to lock you in it’s easy to get that momentum and I had parameters because I had their first name their first initial and their last initial and that’s it you know go with it you know I know I’m using single color a big chunky stroke and then kind of go from there really so yeah if that was that felt quite natural or some some evenings I was kind of getting sort of four or five of them done in one go it just was like yeah let’s do this to do that so so that that then that in itself is good motivation is it when you do make good progress oh it feels good you feels good to carry on
[Marc] Absolutely I mean I’ve seen I was part of the progress and therefore it was like so and I’ve seen all the little details you did right like the kind of like ascii characters like me me on the the inner part of the the packaging for example and then …
[Gavin] I didn’t know if everyone would know that so so lovely Dave you have in the audience came over on the last day I didn’t tell you this and um it I think I’d done all performances and it was almost on the last slides and it was the sort of the home side where it’s that ascii graphic but upside down and he came over and obviously this is Dave with his big lovely english accent it’s like what what is that I’ve been looking at it all conference is it it’s like a monster of some kind I can’t work out what it is and I was like it’s mark it’s it’s mark upside down in ascii and he was like oh yeah so I really like that I presumed it was it was dead it was dead obvious but that’s really cool that people did that’s that’s also part of that design style as well yeah not really meant to understand what everything is
[Marc] Exactly and that’s what I really like in general again I take this I never speak about like the speaker posters I never speak about certain other things I do I love people explore and experience that by themselves to find out because then they they reward themselves by finding out right and they were like well have you seen that look at this little detail on the badge but you know and they talk about this kind of stuff and that’s so cool to see and that really was some stuff that were really worked I would have to say it’s.
[Gavin] Just it’s nice putting those details like there’s another little tiny graphic that’s like a silhouette and it’s you it’s you on a on a podium and I ran that in Adobe Illustrator through live trace because again that was kind of an aesthetic everything was sort of live trace this is where we were how am I going to get an image into flash well you could take it into adobe and and do a live trace and export the frames and then bring those frames into a movie clip you know even the sort of process I was trying to emulate the good old days of flash and that and that kind of look as well so just little little details if anything it sort of was making me happy and thought well that let’s just let’s just pop it in there I’m sure I’m not alone in in people trying to reminisce about that that time um fantastic so it made it it
[Marc] Yeah and so what actually was the hardest task for you it was it more like the the starting point where you where you went like okay this is what I want to do and to get to the point where you had this kind of flow and you had the kind of template or the base set and then from there on you started or was it really the audio visual kind of thing that you had to do for the titles was that kind of where you where you were like well that’s the monster in my bag I know I have to do the graphics and the visuals but like this is the monster waiting to be done or was it for you like.
[Gavin] Yeah yeah I think I think that’s right I think the design side I felt really comfortable I think the hard part was really just time you know I really wanted to make sure I would do a good job um but I felt again because I think I was channeling an influence that I know and love I was using a program I know and love um I guess then the it was using unity which I don’t use really and but but I’d done a lot of sort of to jump back a sec so the titles the title sequence was performed live performed on this thing a Teenage Engineering OPZ, um a small sequencer um and synthesiser and what’s special about this is it sends midi signals and those midi signals can be taken into the unity game engine and then I can use that game engine to say oh a kick drum has happened I’m going to take that kick drum data I’m going to um look at this graphic this neon pink graphic you’ve put in the engine and I’m going to scale it up proportionally and that scale up directly related to the value of that kick and so if I’ve got a really loud meaty kick drum that’s sort of taking place over like you know sort of a 30 second note it’s long it will scale it up that long and then shrink back so it’s kind of like working on values rather than oh I’m hearing a sound it’s more sort of data driven so the whole sequence was was OPZ music unique piece of music for each speaker triggering the different designs on screen um and each element each sort of slide design you know the speaker’s first name and surname and picture and all that data was split up into layers and then the different elements of drum snare hi-hats bass all of those samples all of those bits would do different things sometimes like move them scale them turn them off turn them on so that was like the fundamental principle basically small sequencer yeah turning moving styling changing graphics on the fly as I would play and perform this thing in real
[Marc] Time for anyone interesting and interested in watching them I will definitely put the video below this video so you can really just explore it and and see it because it’s it’s actually fantastic it was greater on site live but it is still great to to watch back nowadays um and then uh something happened along the way that I that I that I really liked as well I think you said like well this this machine could.
Theoretically also DMX control light, right? I was like oh whoa whoa wait a minute I know that the frame that we have got with the light bulbs that this is controllable I don’t know how and so I was speaking to the tech guy Dominic his name is uh at the venue and he’s like well we could control a dmx but the problem is we need a specific controller to actually get it like get the dmx signal into the light that they had the light mixer um we don’t have that that’s x amount of money and we need someone to actually program it because I can’t do it so I said like well that might be a little too too pricey for what we want to do like with the lights but he said like well but I could like manually control them and I was like would you and he’s like yeah absolutely so and then we not only did you perform live and had these colours that we just mentioned a while ago the color palette but he managed to get the light bulbs outside of the uh it’s like a little frame you’re gonna see it in a photo I linked to a photo or like include a photo it’s a little frame with like some like spikes outside and that that was all colorised and he even animated some of the lights like when he I know he was doing this kind of stuff I didn’t.
[Gavin] No. I did not know he was animating it so yeah that was amazing that he Dominic said he would he would do that and so that I think that really helped bring it together because it wasn’t I didn’t know that on stage at the time I knew it would change but it wasn’t until I saw someone else’s video of it I was actually with Brendan Dawes another speaker and I saw that on um I think like Paula Zuccotti’s slide the lights were not only purple to match her purple design they were pulsing and I was looking at it I said to Brendan I was like what did this happen every time he was like yeah it looked great I just didn’t know it was so cool and what was really nice the animation style changed per speaker as well so sometimes it’s pulsing sometimes it flashes and yeah I think that I think that really helped like sort of it made it into a performance didn’t it it really made it into a performance and and for me personally that was just so thrilling that was a really cool thing to to have together and and I think it’s another thing worth noting on that performance so so like so for the viewers when on the first time I played it and so we played it four times and you know when you have titles you’ll play them in the morning and then after lunch both days so four times and so the very first time I played it I I played it safe and what I did was manually there there was a song for each speaker on each of these buttons and I manually would sort of let four bars of music play and then I would manually trigger the next speaker that was just a way for me to sort of play it safe check it works well I knew it worked because we did our test run through but just sort of from a performance point if you just like just make it happen but then that worked and it looked good and the audience seemed to enjoy it I knew knew that there was another way to do things in that I could automatically well program the OPZ this thing to jump to the next speaker after four bars and then that meant my hands were free to then go into performance mode and what’s so special about this yeah it’s freestyle basically it gives you 16 buttons that the the left half affects the drum tracks and the right half affects like the synth and the and the you know the bass and the chords and the lead whatever and you can basically stack them you if you have if you add all the digits you could press every single button if you wanted to but what it does is it will like on the drum side it will like take a drum uh like a snare here and then quadruple it so it will sort of give you a drum fill or the bass drum it will sort of like extend that note out or or sort of syncopate it and sort of like say you’ve got a four to the floor like kick kick kick kick and then you just press this button for a little bit it’s like kick you know and and what’s great then so the all of the animations that are plugged into unity because they’re value-based that sort of like extra performance bit not only re-triggers the kick drum it makes it more intense so suddenly that photograph of the speaker that grows because of the kick because it’s a more intense all of a sudden it’s kind of doing this so every performance aesthetically was was always the same but it would still at least kind of play back a little bit different and and that was just I really enjoyed that by day.
[Marc] Me too. I liked it yeah I was like yeah I’m …
[Gavin] … feeling it I’m vibing it nothing’s gonna go wrong you could …
[Marc] … you could see that on your body language like that because we recorded with like two cameras and then the slides obviously and you could see like the one that is like focusing on you where you went like like a DJ went like yeah you let go obviously you did starting to enjoy yourself on stage I
[Gavin] I do realise that on there like because they’re only quite small buttons but I was doing that like DJ thing of like you press it and then you move your hand a little bit I totally understand why they’re doing that now because you kind of like want you don’t just want to like gently take it off in case you’re still pressing the the effect so it was like so I was doing this and oh it was great I really I really enjoyed it it was silly and I think because it was immediate you know and then that falls into another point that we had this GoPro camera you know that’s why I built this I built this this rig really to to just hold just to look good but also it let me you know stick the you know I knew which button had which speaker on but then um i’ve kind of then had this little bit here that is a there is a GoPro mount because I really wanted to make sure that the viewers knew that that this was live so bottom left on every slide had the the live feed of this GoPro camera overlaying with a bunch of different effects and all those effects were done using OBS filters you know real-time creators um because again I wanted to ram it home that like no this is really happening live these are my hands like moving this this thing and again the more sort of animated I became with more each performance that I was more confident in I was I was moving around more and and that was a nice lesson to learn as well that john davy one of our old friends who used to run the brilliant flash on the beach and reasons to be creative and bright and in England um he he was like you know next performance you can move around more you can be more obvious and it was like oh great it’s lovely that I had the chance to change that you know yeah that that wouldn’t happen traditionally so that was a really nice thing that I could sort of change and then on the final performance I increased the tempo by 20 bpm as well it got a little bit mental and chaotic but I liked the fact that I could do that I just can I turn the dial and off we go
[Marc] Yeah that was great so your favourite one of the four performances you did what do you think
[Gavin] I think it was performance three I think it was the the the Tuesday morning I think I had a really great day in the Monday I knew the tech worked had some lovely conversations with people um that night on the Monday I’d practiced more and had a play and I was just really excited to do it again and and I think as well it because sometimes you know again I’m I sort of planning what buttons to press but not really I’m not really forcing myself it just the combination seemed to happen quite quite well on that and it seemed to match with with sort of people enjoying it like I could hear the crowd which is really nice so yeah I think day two performance one just see everything was great but I loved them all I really did yeah.
[Marc] But that’s the one on YouTube right the performance three yeah more or less yeah that’s gonna link to that so I’m gonna include this video then and in that blog post where this also goes up here so yeah.
[Gavin] Yeah and that was really interesting like even on instagram I kind of posted like here’s the first performance and was explaining to instagram like what what we did how how it all worked and then it was really nice a few days you know I shared you know behind the scenes of the of the of the hardware behind the scenes of the design and then you know then a few days later go oh but this this was this there was multiple variations of this performance I think as well genuinely really inspired by like what fellow speaker Brendan doers does obviously he built the incredible Eno-System for the amazing documentary “ENO” and I think I’m I’m really intrigued and interested in in randomisation and and generative creation not generative ai not that stuff but as in you build the parameters yourself and see where it goes you build your system right yeah exactly so.
[Marc] Yeah that’s uh that’s cool wow I mean and I really do like what I said before that you not only do all this but you don’t keep it as a secret you explain what you did there and you you and and also the long blog post you did today that does really transport the passion and the the fun you had along the way uh you know it’s not just technical it’s just like oh that then I did this and then triggered by that this happened blah blah blah blah and then I really liked reading it and it’s it’s great that you do this because that uh picks up people uh you know like this is where you take them into the boat and say like well listen and anyone anyone can do it I didn’t know about this I didn’t know about that very much I’m not a good musician but still I was able to get 13 beats off the ground and uh and and made them into this like little device and and I played life on stage and not being in a proper musician right so what what else can happen.
[Gavin] Yeah yeah that’s a good point I hadn’t really thought about that I think I think because i’ve become I really enjoy giving talks it’s such a great privilege and i’ve really enjoyed over the years sort of trying to bring in visuals and audio and but but it all supports kind of I guess the sort of core thesis of my talks which is I have a day job that I love and I love being incredibly professional and doing things properly but then I really enjoy just the experimentation and not needing to be good at something to enjoy it and to try it and then so by me playing music on stage halfway through a talk it’s a perfect example of I’m not a professional I don’t technically know what I’m doing but I really enjoy it yes it’s it’s furthered me on it’s made me feel a little bit more confident and actually it’s not the end of the world the audience don’t really care and it it’s absolutely fine and nothing’s gone wrong so keep doing it so actually yeah and that’s why I like writing the behind the scenes posts really I i love I love sharing behind the scenes because I love reading other people’s behind the scenes and I think just a bit of an in not imposter syndrome but you know I … I’m not a professional musician.
[Marc] You actually inspired someone to then right after the event go and like design posters right, see that Sascha Frommer.
[Gavin] Right yeah I remember seeing that that was really that was like the next day wasn’t it they they yeah exactly some that’s lush.
[Marc] That’s so nice right and that’s what I mean through yeah through being open about it and through like transporting what it did there people are encouraged to like start stuff and that’s great that’s fantastic I think.
[Gavin] Yeah I mean that’s the spirit of what you’ve done with beyond tellerrand, doesn’t it? Share people share their stories share their work share their ideas and hopefully that ferments and lets people make their own interesting stuff.
[Marc] And that’s a great word to end this yeah and honestly it’s a great invitation and I i honestly gave I said that so many times but thank you so much for what you did I think that played a big big part of what beyond tellerrand and this love was this year I think it was like adding to the overall theme that I never planned but it it came through like a lot of talks this kind of like put stuff out there just start doing nobody will judge you right so you just put out and you if you like it someone else will like it as well and what what sharon also said is like uh don’t be perfect be present right
[Gavin] Yeah that was great that was such a nice that was such a nice talk yeah and a perfect ender as well yeah don’t be perfect but present yeah that’s that’s really nice but thank you thank you to you mate for the trust for the encouragement for the positivity for allowing me to to try something that I hadn’t done you know publicly before you know just noodling in my own time is one thing yeah god bless you for letting me try it on stage and thank you for the kind people of Düsseldorf for allowing it to happen yeah.
[Marc] It was fantastic honestly great stuff and, uh, I hope we can repeat this maybe not in that scale for you another work but.
[Gavin] Let’s do it let’s go bigger let’s go bigger
[Marc] Yeah if you want to … well I’m up for it okay mate thank you so much for everything and thanks for the little conversation and for wrapping up all this like uh fantastic to chat to you thank you.
[Gavin] Thank you bye everyone