OUGD602 - Open House Featuring DR.ME & Nanna Guldbæk

I attended an Open House event featuring DR.ME & Nanna Guldbæk at Northern Monk Brewery. The talks were concerned with whether or not you can cash in and not sell out.

The event was hosted by Thompson partners who I was unaware of before the talk so it was good to see a new event in Leeds. After the event I looked more into Thompson partners are they are headed up by people who have the kind of passion and experience that inspires confidence to entrust them with their most valuable business possession - their brand. Although the event was about whether or not you can cash in and not sell out, it did also have an attention on beer. Not only because it was hosted at Northern Monk Brewery but also because the set of speakers both work with breweries. Hearing about the process of beer packaging is always something I'm interested in so this made the talks more approachable for me.

First speaker of the night was Nanna Guldbæk from Norwegian brewery Lervig. Nanna who is Danish is Lervig's graphic designer but she's also still a student studying industrial design. She introduced us to Lervig as a brewery and how she arrived there as a graphic designer, then she talked through the processes she undertakes when designing labels for the brewery. The most interesting aspect of the talk was when Nanna spoke about the backlash surrounding one of her designs, for the beer named Sex Robot. The design can be conceived as insensitive by some people but Nanna related this to the theme of night but telling us that she has to align her morales and beliefs to the ones of the brewery. She is representative of the brewery on a whole and not just responsible for the beer labels she's designed but the ones before her time at Lervig. This isn't selling out but she insisted that she has to focus on her own things too such as studies, to make sure she doesn't sell out.

The second talk of the night was from DR.ME who related the theme of the night to doing self initiated work and their experience of graduating from university and not wanting a 9-5 job straight away. They believe getting used to money can stifle creativity and the drive to create work you want to create. This look on it is interesting and luckily for DR.ME they are able to create work they want to such as collage for a ranged list of clients.