Providing pure creativity in a digital world, Barcelona-based creative symposium OFFF is more than a design festival with unbridled Fs. It’s a community that invites all those who are eager to learn to participate and get inspired in a three-day journey of conferences, workshops, activities and performances. And it’s a whole lot of FFFun.

Designed with the curious in mind, 17 years ago OFFF was founded by artist, filmmaker, creative director and storyteller Héctor Ayuso as a festival of creativity. He is proud to make things; fun things, beautiful things, things that make your heart race and your mind whir. As he puts it: “I don’t make people more creative. I don’t teach them skills. I just unlock whatever they have inside. I’m not an artist. I’m an idiot.”

Today the self-professed “idiot” (he’s not) has created a community that involves more than 20,000 people worldwide and is perceived as a way of understanding art and a way of life. Featuring a host of innovative and international speakers, inspirational artist workshops, and renowned designers, thinkers, theorists, developers all looking to feed the future, it provides a meeting point for all talents around the world to collaborate – and often gain international recognition. For example, OFFF 2010’s main titles, created by The Mill, won at Cannes Lions, who also believe creativity is a force for business, for change and for good in the world:

OFFF Barcelona 2017 sees innovative international and national artists such as legendary designer Lance Wyman, GMUNK, talented duo Leta Sobierajski and Wade Jeffree, Vaughan Oliver, Imaginary Forces (with Karin Fong and Michelle Dougherty, famous Stranger Things main titles creator) and many more. This year the ‘Sensory Overload Experience’ goes off the beaten design path with its New Senses campaign created by local studio Outro. The idea is to tease and titillate all five senses.

While OFFF takes place in Barcelona annually, 2017 will see ‘OFFF on Tour’ in cities such as Mexico City, Cincinnati, London, Tel Aviv, Milan and Fortaleza. Ayuso hopes that one day it will make it to Tokyo in the FFFuture.