Festival Day 3

The pulse of the festival on day 3 was completely different. I got there super early to see a talk about how Cinema has the power to drive cultural change with Steve Golin, Jason Solomons, Lawrence Bender, Sir John Hegarty, and Claudia Gonzalez and the line was already ridiculously long. The talk was very exciting though and totally worth the wait. It served to remind me how interested I was in movies and commercials specifically and how I want more than anything to create iconic work that gets remembered and talked about like the people on stage. I was also exposed to the release of a new campaign about equal rights for women that was very moving and exciting. I got some attention on twitter after posting a clip of it which is always fun. Against our professors suggestions, I stayed in the Lumiere Theater all day. The line up was just so good there was nothing I felt I could miss. The next talk was truly inspirational. Entitled Sex, Lies, and Advertising, Madonna Badger told her hear wrenching personal story about her life and the loss of her family and then turned the speech into a motivational speech about her current work and the movement she's apart of, #WomenNotObjects, and showed us some awesome ads he had made. It was truly amazing to hear about this brave woman who had accomplished so much and for a good cause by committing to live her life for a purpose despite her tragic experiences. I was very moved by everything she had to say. I also saw a presentation about VR which has been the topic of many people's conversations this week. It's crazy to think about all the possibilities the future of VR could hold. It really is the new frontier of entertainment. The highlight of my day was probably the talk hosted by Adobe where one of my idols, Stefan Sagmeister, ended up being the speaker. He talked about visual beauty which is a topic I feel very strongly about. He listed four reasons why beauty was the most important thing: 1. Beauty = part of being human, 2. beauty changes our mood, 3. when we lose our mind, we can still recognize beauty, and 4. beauty improves functionality. He gave lots of interesting examples to prove his points and talked about how the recognition was inherent to human nature, even in Alzheimers patients who could repeatedly place pictures in the same order from most to least beautiful without any memory. He showed the crowd two images, one was from an original Mondrian painting and one was a reworking of one, and the whole crowd picked the original as most beautiful without even knowing which was which. This is because good design is about beauty and its recognizable even to the untrained eye. This talk was important to me because I believe very firmly in this philosophy and often in school or in the art world, people question its relevance which frustrates me. That evening, Lacey and I went to the awards show for Promo and Activation, Print and Publishing, Radio, Direct, and Glass which was super exciting and interesting. My favorite campaign was the Burger King Peace Offering. Afterwards, we went up to the girls lounge for food and drinks. The women there are truly amazing and so kind and helpful. I'm hoping to establish some connections and go to them if I ever need advice. After that, our new friend Nick from London helped us get into the opening Gala on the beach which was a ton of fun. Carly Rae Jepson was randomly preforming (her songs are just as dumb live) but it was sort of like a rave and very fun to be a part of.