Are You Making Things Or Just Talking About Them The Question Offf 2026 Couldnt Stop Asking

Creative Boom: News Creative Industry 'Are you making things or just talking about them?': the question OFFF 2026 couldn't stop asking From the state of LinkedIn to showing your process, the conversations at this year's festival found a creative industry being bracingly honest with itself. Written By: Tom May 30 April 2026 There's a particular atmosphere that descends on Barcelona every April when the creative festival OFFF rolls into town. The Disseny Hub fills with lanyards and leather jackets, the outdoor bar does brisk business in the sunshine, and somewhere between the talks and the toasts, the creative industry takes a good, long look at itself.

This year, that look was more searching than most. Across four days of speakers and market stalls, brunches and late-night dinners, one question kept resurfacing in different forms: what's the difference between talking about creativity and actually doing it? It's not a new tension, but something about the current moment—the noise of AI, a sluggish economy, the relentless churn of social media— has made it feel more urgent. And the creatives gathered in Barcelona this April were not short of opinions. AI was present in almost every conversation, as you'd expect, but it wasn't the dominant anxiety it might have been.

What people seemed more exercised about was something older and more uncomfortable: the gap between making work and performing the idea of making work. And nobody put it more bluntly than Nils Leonard... Nils Leonard would like a word about your LinkedIn posts Nils, founder of Uncommon, had just delivered his keynote at Disseny Hub when he sat down for a conversation that quickly turned to the platform a significant number of us now use as our primary public voice. "I think LinkedIn is becoming a whirlpool, particularly for creatives," he said.

"It becomes incredibly dangerous, because people are confusing writing a think piece about something with work, and it's not the same thing. I think they're relegating themselves. I really do think it's a danger." As a counterpoint, he imagined a hypothetical studio that simply doesn't play the game at all, then said: "If I could do it again and launch another studio, I'd be completely faceless." He references an episode of HBO's The Young Pope in which Jude Law's character cites Banksy and Daft Punk as examples of influential figures who refuse to show their faces. The lesson: the most important artists are the ones you never see.

Whether that's a workable strategy for a creative studio in 2026 is another matter, but as an idea, it's certainly intriguing. Leonard also spoke with candour about Uncommon's decision to take investment and what it really meant. "I'd urge people, when they look at the deal we've done, to really look at the covenant," he said. "Most agencies, when they start, and they do a deal, they end up with other letters after their name, in a building that wasn't theirs, with clients that weren't theirs." His point: independence isn't binary, and the quality of the work since the deal should speak for itself.

Show your receipts Running through the festival like a thread was the idea that, in the age of AI, process has become the thing that actually matters. Not just as proof of concept, but as the work itself. Reuben Wu, the visual artist whose drone-lit landscapes have made him one of the most distinctive voices at the festival, now takes three cameras on every location shoot: one for the work, two for behind-the-scenes documentation. "As soon as people understand a bit more, then they'll value the end result more," he explained. Brand designer and podcast host Liz Mosley has noticed the same shift.

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The article addresses a significant trend in the creative industry that could influence brand strategy, particularly in the context of authenticity and engagement, making it relevant and impactful for professionals in the field.