Us by Night | Antwerp _
A celebration of creativity
Us By Night—Antwerp’s three-day creative festival.
Us By Night brought together over 60 talks from industry leaders across three stages, transforming its riverside venue into a vibrant inspiration hub for hundreds of creatives. Each day from 4 p.m. to midnight, the festival hosted thought-provoking talks, followed by DJ sets and live performances that turned the venue into an immersive club experience.
This event redefined creative conferencing, building a strong sense of community through shared experiences. Here’s a look at some of our favourite speakers, ready to inspire you, too.
1) Isabel + Helen
Isabel and Helen gave an inspiring talk around their hands on, practical approach to incorporating movement in all their projects. The Dynamic duo talked about how they met at university and bonded over a love for experimentation in an increasingly digitally lenient creative industry; and that’s how their studio was born.
As a team they design for a plethora of industries, ranging from Hermes windows to fashion runways, and even Christmas installations. Peaking behind the curtain and being able to see clips from their studio of projects at the first stage, we learnt that they find the beauty in the utility of things, particularly fans, they are self-proclaimed fan-attics. When asked why movement? They explain that it brings back the childhood feeling of discovering something for the first time, not just for them as they create these projects, but for the end viewer.
The main takeaway from their captivating talk was that movement gives objects character/persona, and this sense of wonder can be a powerful tool in design, as a form of inspiration for the designer but also to bring joy in the outcome
2) Morning.FYI
Morning.FYI is a creative strategy studio based in London; Rohani Coombes gave an invigorating talk on the inner workings of their studio and the theology behind their mantra “be less shit” which ultimately left us feeling very inspired, and quickly became one of our favourite talks of the whole event.
Morning.FYI studio perfectly merges a much-needed level of un-seriousness with corporate might, making brands and designers relate to, and understand their strategic standpoints. Morning use cutting edge insight reporting and delve deep into culture to create cult followings for brands through long term sustained changes and success.
One of our favourite parts of this talk was Morning’s emphasis on “creativity being in crisis” due to mass consumerism and the hellscape that we call the internet. Their solution for this revolved around pushing the boundaries of our industries by delving further than ever into creativity, releasing feral work into the wild and causing good trouble. Overall, it was great to hear from a truly honest and inspirational creative strategy studio who are unapologetically playing with silly pop-culture and being the punk positive designers that they are.
3) Claire Kang
This captivating talk by Claire Kang, an LA-based Art Director and Designer currently serving as Global Art Director at Nike, took the audience on a journey through her impressive portfolio. However, two projects stood out to us in particular.
For International Yoga Day 2021, Kang led Nike’s rebrand of its yoga line, introducing Nike Sound & Flow Yoga. This project brought a fresh, new-age aesthetic to yoga, paired with a custom music album designed to enhance practice sessions. While the vinyl is now a collector’s item, the music and calming gradient visuals are still available on Spotify, offering an immersive, modern take on yoga.
Another highlight was the Nike Women Dance campaign, a tribute to female dancers. Featuring dancers from varied backgrounds on a circular stage, this campaign captured the dynamic power of dance with stunning visuals and on-brand typography, celebrating women and the unifying spirit of dance.
Us By Night was an extraordinary celebration of creativity. While we’ve shared three standout talks in this blog, our designers were inspired by the entire lineup, including talks by Bjorn Tagemose, Brian Roettinger, Julia Ippolito, Modem, Tina Touli, and countless other talented designers and artists from around the globe. Their diverse perspectives and innovative approaches left a lasting impression.
Our designers returned to the studio brimming with ideas, armed with a treasure trove of photos, information, keepsakes, and content to share with the D4R team.