CRE824: The Morning After
It's been about 12 hours since well known designer Joshua Davis stepped off the podium at CRE824, and I still have a hangover—a design hangover. Despite the big name speakers and high powered resumes, this conference left me encouraged in some small ways but with a sense of despair overall. My expectations were probably too high. I had hoped to be inspired by the depth and passion of these design divas. What I saw was quite different.
Let's start with the good stuff first. Did you know that the "hottest" designers don't know everything about the software they are using? Or that they started just like you and I with little to no knowledge and taught themselves? Yep, that truth came through again and again as speakers recounted their personal history. Shaun Inman, the grand pooh bah of CSS is self taught. Joshua Davis is much the same on the software he uses. So, there's hope for me yet! Start small they said, put something out there and build on it. Don't try to learn everything the software does before you start the first project. Seems obvious, but I needed to hear it again.
Several start up business insights were shared by the folks at Emma, Digg Nation and Mint. Here's the big idea: take something complicated for people; make doing that thing really easy and simple; and use the web to sell it. Scratch your own itch. Start with a cheap prototype, give it away and ask for feedback as to whether the idea really works for people. And when your design/technology breaks down with your customers, that's when the human connection must kick in.
On the design side, I was encouraged to see the breadth of mundane sources folks draw their inspiration from. Joshua Davis used a color palette for a heavy metal band's website straight off the DVD cover of Snow White. Another fellow created a crazy (that's the nicest word I can think of) flash animation cartoon to capture his story and emotions after his girlfriend left him. From all this, the word experimentation kept creeping up as the doorway to inspiration and creative design. We don't give ourselves enough time to experiment without a client or project in mind. Doing free form experimentation with any media or concept is critical to developing something fresh. I'm going to make this a New Year's resolution: 10 minutes of unadulterated experimentation a day…whether it be with colors or Legos or type or whatever.
On the production side, I was hoping to learn something from all these design teams to shave a few hours of my development time. After walking around and observing the 10 teams trying to create a website in 24 hours around the theme "The World in 50 years," I came away with the impression that it takes a bunch of time to do the things designers do. The nice work you see on the web isn't whipped out by expert designers/producers with fingers on fire, it's made by normal people with buckets of blood, sweat, tears and time. I'm glad I'm not alone.
Now for the stuff that left me lacking. Most of the work I saw was devoid of any real content. Most designers seemed more concerned with style than connection to the heart. And I saw absolutely nothing in two days that made me think that design has any depth beyond discovering the next weirdest thing. My cry throughout the conference was "Where is design that matters?". I couldn't find it. It seemed to be just a bunch of fluff. Help. I'm looking forward to the Design that Touches the Heart show in the spring of '06. Maybe you can help us come up with something meaningful.
I've got one more rant from the conference. Why do designer's try so hard to be different? Are we afraid of being unoriginal? In trying so hard to be different, everyone looks and acts the same. Same hipster outfits, same hair gone astray, same attempts to wear the funkiest clothes. Yikes. When you put us all together, it's rather embarrassing. Maybe we could just be ourselves.
I'm glad I went to CRE824. I met some nice folks. Next year I'll just watch it live over the Internet for free.
Let's start with the good stuff first. Did you know that the "hottest" designers don't know everything about the software they are using? Or that they started just like you and I with little to no knowledge and taught themselves? Yep, that truth came through again and again as speakers recounted their personal history. Shaun Inman, the grand pooh bah of CSS is self taught. Joshua Davis is much the same on the software he uses. So, there's hope for me yet! Start small they said, put something out there and build on it. Don't try to learn everything the software does before you start the first project. Seems obvious, but I needed to hear it again.
Several start up business insights were shared by the folks at Emma, Digg Nation and Mint. Here's the big idea: take something complicated for people; make doing that thing really easy and simple; and use the web to sell it. Scratch your own itch. Start with a cheap prototype, give it away and ask for feedback as to whether the idea really works for people. And when your design/technology breaks down with your customers, that's when the human connection must kick in.
On the design side, I was encouraged to see the breadth of mundane sources folks draw their inspiration from. Joshua Davis used a color palette for a heavy metal band's website straight off the DVD cover of Snow White. Another fellow created a crazy (that's the nicest word I can think of) flash animation cartoon to capture his story and emotions after his girlfriend left him. From all this, the word experimentation kept creeping up as the doorway to inspiration and creative design. We don't give ourselves enough time to experiment without a client or project in mind. Doing free form experimentation with any media or concept is critical to developing something fresh. I'm going to make this a New Year's resolution: 10 minutes of unadulterated experimentation a day…whether it be with colors or Legos or type or whatever.
On the production side, I was hoping to learn something from all these design teams to shave a few hours of my development time. After walking around and observing the 10 teams trying to create a website in 24 hours around the theme "The World in 50 years," I came away with the impression that it takes a bunch of time to do the things designers do. The nice work you see on the web isn't whipped out by expert designers/producers with fingers on fire, it's made by normal people with buckets of blood, sweat, tears and time. I'm glad I'm not alone.
Now for the stuff that left me lacking. Most of the work I saw was devoid of any real content. Most designers seemed more concerned with style than connection to the heart. And I saw absolutely nothing in two days that made me think that design has any depth beyond discovering the next weirdest thing. My cry throughout the conference was "Where is design that matters?". I couldn't find it. It seemed to be just a bunch of fluff. Help. I'm looking forward to the Design that Touches the Heart show in the spring of '06. Maybe you can help us come up with something meaningful.
I've got one more rant from the conference. Why do designer's try so hard to be different? Are we afraid of being unoriginal? In trying so hard to be different, everyone looks and acts the same. Same hipster outfits, same hair gone astray, same attempts to wear the funkiest clothes. Yikes. When you put us all together, it's rather embarrassing. Maybe we could just be ourselves.
I'm glad I went to CRE824. I met some nice folks. Next year I'll just watch it live over the Internet for free.
posted by fivemcclungs at 8:46 AM
1 Comments:
nice write up man, i need to get out my legos. :)
Post a Comment
<< Home