This year’s beyond tellerrand edition in Düsseldorf took place from 5th and 6th of May 2025. Here’s my recap from day one:
“Every Thing We Touch” by Paula Zucchotti
By photographing every object a person touches in a single day, Paula creates visual inventories that tell stories beyond the surface. The result is an interesting mixture of anthropology and art.
One example was a toddler, who had the most objects (around 200) because kids learn by constantly touching and exploring everything around them. Another example was a Chinese puppeteer and musician who had fewer objects, but each one had strong cultural meaning. There was also the daily timeline of a tattoo artist with the central portion hidden (as the objects are ordered in chronological order, this is where work-related tools typically appear). Without those cues, the audience couldn’t guess the profession, showing how much our tools silently define us.
The project also makes you think about our society and the tech we live with. Comparing a modern photograph to one from even 20 years ago, today, a smartphone or laptop replaces dozens of individual items: a calendar, map, camera, notebook, flashlight, calculator. Our lives are becoming increasingly compressed into fewer physical things. So what will a daily object portrait look like in 5 or 10 years? Will it be all screens and wireless devices? Or will we resort back to the tangible, analog tools for their texture and presence?
Paula’s work seems to me to be more a mirror than a mere documentation. It makes us ask: What do the things I touch each day say about me? About my values, my routines, my culture?
A great first talk for opening the conference!
“There Is No Spoon” by Léonie Watson
Léonie’s talk landed hard for me. She opened with that scene from The Matrix, the one with the boy bending the spoon.
Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth… there is no spoon.
And just like that, Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn’t really thinking. It’s not conscious or reasoning. It’s just giving back what seems most probable. It’s not a spoon. It’s not real intelligence. It only looks like it is.
A great example of that: She asked ChatGPT for a simple accessible submit button. What came back was an unnecessary aria-label, and the type was button instead of submit. Plainly wrong. These aren’t small quirks, these details make a difference. A button isn’t always a good button.
What Léonie really hammered home is that we can’t blindly trust these tools. It’s not enough to shrug and say “well, that’s just how it is.” Companies building this stuff need to be held accountable.
She brought up real-time audio descriptions, including a live breakdown of that same spoon-bending scene. Powerful! AI can play a role there. And even more so with static images. Léonie shared how she uses AI to describe (old) photos from her past. She doesn’t always want to keep asking friends for help as it can feel like she’s imposing. But with AI, she gets to explore those memories on her own terms.
“The Art & Business of Lettering Design” by Martina Flor
Martina took us through her journey from freelance designer to internationally recognized lettering artist, and it was genuinely cool to see how much she’s built over the years. What really stood out to me was the impact of her workshops and how she actively encourages others to start lettering too.
One practical and cool moment was seeing how she approaches a lettering design. She starts with really rough sketches, just loose lines to get ideas flowing. Then, using pass-through paper, she layers on details bit by bit during the ideation phase. It’s only after that, once the concept is solid, that she refines it and turns it into a clean digital vector. Although her rough sketches are 100 times more beautiful and perfect than anything I could ever create, it was still inspiring (and honestly a bit comforting) to see that even someone at her level begins with messy lines and gradual refinement.
If I had one small critique, it’s that this kind of talk where someone shares their personal story and milestones can sometimes feel a bit one-directional. That said, it’s absolutely valuable to hear the story. Overall, I left the talk feeling inspired.
“Curious Findings” by Jason Pamental
Jason’s talk was all about curiosity: where it comes from, and how we can nurture it in our work. He circled around the definition of the word from different angles, quoting everyone from Aristotle to his own colleagues in the typography world.
If I had one small critique, it’s that the structure of the talk felt a bit loose. The delivery was enjoyable, and Jason clearly cares deeply about the topic, but at times it was hard to follow where things were headed.
The most powerful message for me was this idea:
Curiosity has no gate.
There’s no ceiling on learning, no point where you’ve maxed out. You can always become better at something, always keep digging and expanding. That really stuck with me. It is easy to forget that when we get caught up in daily routine.
“Certain Irregularities” by Brendan Dawes
Brendan gave a super fun and engaging talk. It was about generative design and using data in creative ways. That’s something he repeated a few times: people over technology. The internet, he said, isn’t just machines talking to each other, it’s people connecting. And that’s how he approaches his work too.
One line I keep thinking about:
I still don’t think in digital you can scribble.
There’s something about working with your hands, with messy beginnings, that digital tools still struggle to capture.
He showed a bunch of his projects, and one that stood out to me was this “happiness machine” he built. A button that, when pressed, prints out a happy statement from someone on the internet. Technology used in a small, human, joyful way.
Another one I really liked was a data visualization project for a security company. He took a boring Excel sheet with numbers for each office and turned it into a beautiful visual structure. The rigid frame represented the office or branch, and these flowing, colorful lines coming out of it were like the creativity and work happening within that safe space. Using data as a material, not just for charts. Pretty neat.
His talk reminded me that technology is just the enabler. The real focus is the people using it.
“Less Thinkering More Tinkering” by Gavin Strange
Holy cow, where do I even begin? Gavin’s talk was 1000% energy: loud, wild, and completely contagious. Even a while after the talk, my brain was still buzzing. He didn’t just talk about creativity, he embodied it. It felt more like a live show than a talk.
Gavin designed the entire visual identity of the conference. The T-shirts, the slides, even custom logos for every single speaker using their initials. And while it wasn’t part of the talk itself, I have to mention the intro video. This year, instead of a static reel, it was an interactive, live DJ’d version. Gavin stood at a panel with knobs and buttons, remixing the video live each time it played. Each version was a little different. It was insane. Never seen anything like it before. Read the behind the scenes of the title sequence.
In the actual talk, he shared his creative journey, how he followed his curiosity and energy all the way to his dream job at Aardman Animations, the studio behind Wallace & Gromit. Hearing that path, with all its twists, was pretty motivating.
The main takeaway for me: make more stuff. Do the things that make your heart race. Don’t overthink it. Just tinker.
