Forward Festival Hamburg 2024

What do Mieke Haase and Jean-Remy von Matt have in common? After two days at Forward Festival, we know: Their enthusiasm for Pippi Longstocking.

Von Matt quotes her as saying: “I’ve never done that before—I’m sure I can do it.” AI-artist Mieke Haase based her avatar on her with red hair and freckles and advises all creative people to use their talents courageously.

Jo Marie Farwick von Überground also talks about having the courage to do chice (reference to the german word for “shit”). With a lot of humor, she talks about the sometimes not so easy situations in everyday creative life and about a lot of teamwork: “I’m only as good as the people behind me and around me—no one is a genius on his own.”

Many more speakers talked about collaboration and working together as a team. For example, Deutsche & Japaner, a creative studio based in Munich and Berlin, who presented their current project for Reebok and others under their claim “Teamwork is Dreamwork.” This interdisciplinary collaborative team showed what the future of graphic design work could look like.

But also big names like Jung von Matt with more classic set-ups showed how they go forward: Max Lederer, Chief Innovation Officer, questioned the authenticity of all images opening his presentation on working with artificial intelligence with the question if there is any real image. In addition to his call for a debate on the natural impacts of generative AI, he predicted a change in the relationship between customer and brand. His vision for the future is the democratisation of brands.

The illustrative world of Cachetejack, Nuria Bellver and Raquel Fanjul is the result of living democracy with a good dose of humor and irony. Their tips for overcoming blockages, with practical examples of application that got a lot of laughs, and their work examples immersed us in the positive diversity and different perspectives of our world.

With more than 30 speakers on two stages, design workshops, and talks on the topics of graphics, brand, illustration, typography, AI, UX/UI, video, these two days of Forward Festival gave us a lot of inspiration and motivation to make a difference as creatives, also with regard to this year’s motto: Don’t move right—move forward.

All of these impressive speakers have shown that the creatives are going to shape the future world, even more so with UX/UI an AI. Just like Pippi Longstocking said: “I make the world as I like.”

Text and images by Theresa Birnkammer, PACOON.