We Are the Next Generation Talks op BUMP Festival 2025
BUMP Festival is back! BUMP is a creative one-day conference with engaging talks where design, technology and user experience come together to excite, inspire and connect you. BUMP is organised by Howest's Digital Design & Development (Devine) course.
We are once again filling a time slot as well with 3 WE ARE THE NEXT GENERATION talks! Short talks by promising, young designers graduating from respected international design schools.
Programma
9:00: Doors open
10:00: Welcome speech
10:15: Opening Titles by Visuals Internationals
- Visuals Internationals is a non-international animation and live-action studio that’s been defying market logic by managing to exist since 2016. They mix techniques as freely as they mix projects from commercials and stage productions to TV series, theme songs, cooking contests, and the occasional Bump Talk. Fresh off their internationally awarded animated documentary mixed media TV series Bad Bad Belgium, they’re already knee-deep in something entirely different.
11:00: Data Experiences by Stefanie Posavec
- Stefanie Posavec is an artist and author who works with data and design in a playful and accessible way. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, including at MoMA and the Centre Pompidou. She designed graphics for Greta Thunberg's The Climate Book and won awards with her book I am a book. I am a portal to the universe. She is known for her hand-crafted, personal approach to data visualization.
12:00: Creative Technology by Charlie Gerard
Charlie is a senior research engineer at CrowdStrike and author of Practical Machine Learning in JavaScript. She is a creative technologist who builds experimental prototypes around human-computer interaction with Web technology. Think hacking a car through the browser or controlling a game with brainwaves.
In her talk, she explores how to use multimodal AI and motion to control websites or devices. She shares her experiments with motion control and LLMs in JavaScript.
12:45: Lunch Break
14:30: Web Art by Yehwan Song
- Yehwan Song is a web artist from Korea who specializes in creating quirky and non-user-friendly websites. She creates online and physical works that deliberately deviate from standard designs, as a critique of the uniformity of the web and the lack of consideration for diverse users. Her work explores how convenience, speed and usability sometimes come at the expense of empathy and inclusiveness. By seeking discomfort and confusion, she aims to show how technology often falls short for those outside the norm.
15:30: Illustration by Paddy Donnelly
Paddy Donnelly is an award-winning Irish children's book author and illustrator now living in Belgium. He has created more than 25 picture books, including The Golden Hare, Fox & Son Tailers and The Vanishing Lake. His stories are heavily influenced by his childhood on the wild Irish coast, full of myths about magical creatures and stormy seas.
In his talk, Paddy talks about how he taught himself how to write and illustrate, and how he transitioned from web design to children's books. He shares his creative process, his connection to Irish nature and how he built his dream career on his own. Many of his books have since been translated into multiple languages and won awards, including the 2024 Children's Book of the Year award.
16:15: Coffee Break
16:45: WE ARE THE NEXT GENERATION powered by Designregio Kortrijk
During BUMP, we organize with Designregio Kortrijk the "WE ARE THE NEXT GENERATION" talks, where promising young designers, graduates of renowned international schools, give a lecture or workshop about their research.
Mika Schalks is an independent Dutch graphic designer, working in the artistic field stop motion animation. His designs are often drawn by hand, and have a distinct playful and colourful visual identity. Whether the end product be a physical film prop or printed publication, his work is rooted in analogue techniques and has a tangible feel to it recalling a child-like imagination. Presently, Mika works as a prop maker and graphic designer for the Dutch stop motion studio Holy Motion in Arnhem and as a graphic designer for the illustration and literature periodical Wobby.Club in Tilburg.
Femke Hoppenbrouwer is a social designer & multidisciplinary artist who looks into the unseen in society. Her practice combines field-based research, community collaboration and artistic experimentation in order to challenge social stigmas and fixed ways of thinking. Through manipulating small details that embody larger topics, Femke’s playful translations subvert stereotypes and introduce alternative narratives.
She holds her Master in Social Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven and combines her expertise in visual design, art direction and social engagement to build bridges between the field of design and social practices
Tabitha Swanson is a Berlin-based creative technologist, artist, researcher, and community organizer. She is the founder of SEEK/FIND, a technology and purpose-driven community initiative and podcast.
17:45: Buck
Simon Buijs is Head of Design at BUCK Europe and has fifteen years of experience as a designer and art director. He works at the intersection of illustration, animation, film and games, for clients such as Adobe, Amnesty and Spotify. He is also involved in a Dutch publishing house focused on inclusive storytelling and has been teaching at art schools for many years.
Bernd is a senior designer at BUCK Amsterdam. He moves effortlessly between graphic design and illustration, with no set style. Driven by curiosity, he is always looking for new ways to bring ideas to life visually, both in design and animation.
18:45: Afterparty
Practical
- When? 20.06.2025
- Where? DEPART - Nelson Mandelaplein 18, 8500 Kortrijk
Lise Van Tendeloo
Every year, Lise invites promising international designers to Kortrijk for exciting residency projects. She is also responsible for the research and experimentation part of the organisation.
