Magic as a Service has a history with Us By Night.

It's fair to say we don't love all design festivals. They can be stuffy, or too ‘cool’, or too light on substance. UBN is funny, it’s the kind of place you could take your kids, or your colleagues, or your party friends. What’s nice is there’s a little bit of everything.

International Magic first attended in 2016, talked in 2019, and since then it’s been all too quiet. Happily now the festival is back after an extended five year hiatus, and since I joined in 2024 it was my first time experiencing UBN. Above everything else, it was a nice reminder that behind every professional portfolio is someone who just wants to have a weekend off and hang out. Working at a remote studio is great, but it’s easy to forget how nice it is to spend some time doing nothing at all with likeminded people.

The festival itself feels like a bit of an anachronism (in the nicest way). Occupying a large swathe of the exhibition centre directly on the river, it appears as much like a warehouse rave as anything else, the entrance situated on the side of a cobbled walkway surrounded by large industrial cranes. The opening night is kinetic, a lot of very tired people who travelled a long way, propped up by excitement and a few drinks. No one is talking about work, and it’s great.

Design festivals always seem to fuck up one of two things: the design part, or the festival part. On first glance UBN is very much a festival; lights, DJs, a 50 foot disco-ball, the whole production. It's not the kind of environment you’d think would be conducive to “serious” design talks, but it works. It’s a choose-your-own adventure, and a bit of an equaliser. It’s all personal preference but there aren’t many places you could see someone give a talk and then find them dancing on top of a car 10 minutes later.

We saw a fair amount of the city too, including this amazing tapestry in Het Steen and a rainy walk through the trails at Het Rot. Antwerp itself is a beautiful place (even when raining) and has that very particular sort of Belgian sunset that you don't seem to get anywhere else.

For me, UBN was a tonic. A nice reminder that there’s more to the design community than Github and Twitter. It was a chance to enjoy the social side of what can be a very obsessive and personal way of working. So if you're going next year, meet us under the massive disco ball.

Us By Night returns for 2025