Agustin Coll: Rock Paper Pixel

In July FAD Barcelona invited me to participate in Rock Paper Pixel, a section within their yearly Fadfest, Barcelona's design festival, where local and international creativity is celebrated over two weeks of exhibitions, awards and activities. On its second year, these sessions of short talks aimed at glimpsing at the present of design and looking for the joy of the immediacy in a volatile communication environment.

Back to back with other creatives and spearheaded by communication design gurus Maria Popova and Debbie Millman, I was then granted 8 minutes to introduce my architecture/character design illustration work at the FAD's new home, the DHUB at the now unrecognisable Plaça de les Glories. A bit daunted by the size of the auditorium at the beginning I went over 6 years of work and focused on the key pieces that have shaped this experimental project to this day. It was a delight looking at some of the illustrations go scale 1:1 on the screen towering behind me –not even near that though way larger than my laptop screen…

Cross Section of the DHUB Creature

On my first visit to the DHUB last Christmas I was genuinely fascinated by this geometrical block that seems like an alien spaceship trying to remain unnoticed by taking the shape of a local animal. I then toyed with the idea of the FAD headquarters being housed inside this mighty beast while all the workers indifferently go about their business. So here's my own cross section of the DHUB creature and life as it goes on in its entrails. The drawing is worked to be blown to a huge cinema screen without it turning into a Tetris-cake of pixels. It's to be printed in an A1.