My Golden Ticket to the 2013 HOW Design Live Conference

By Yvonne LeJuly 8, 2013

This year the Bhava design team was fortunate to have the HOW Design Live Conference held in our very own San Francisco from Saturday, June 22nd until Wednesday, June 26th in connection with San Francisco Design Week.

For reference, HOW is a bimonthly magazine for graphic designers. Launched in 1985, it incorporates fantastic information on business, design and technology for those working in-house, solo or for a design firm or agency. HOW is well known for its annual Design Live Conference, which offers countless educational and career enhancement opportunities for designers through sessions, workshops and labs led by some of the industry’s top designers and leaders.

We took full advantage of this amazing opportunity with the HOW BIG Ticket. This golden ticket allowed me to partake in all four of the conferences within the HOW Design Conference, so I could really dive headfirst into all that HOW had to offer. One of my favorite perks of being a part of the Bhava team is having the opportunity to continue my education in the field that I love. This was the first conference that I have had the pleasure to attend and I loved every moment of it.

To cover everything that I took away from this experience would take up more than one USB stick, so instead I will simply share with you some key takeaways from my top five favorite speakers:

Speaker: Luke Mysse
Lecture: Hey, We’ve Been Here Before
Follow: @lukemysse

  • • When starting a new venture, everyone tends to experience the same stages: launch, momentum, entitlement, disillusionment and fear. We stall because we lose sight of our vision and we become scared of the possibility of failure and let this fear take us over.
  • • If we stay safe, we will avoid failure but accomplish nothing.
  • • Don’t give in to failure, always strive to do better and remember, “the world needs me to _____!”
  • • An artist is not paid for his/her labor, but their vision.

Speaker: Jim Krause
Lecture: 1) How to Stuff 10 Pounds of You-Know-What Into a 5-Day Week
2) 30 in 60: Thirty Creativity Expanding, Career Boosting and Potentially Life Changing Take-home Concepts, Practices and Projects Presented in Sixty Minutes
Follow: http://www.jimkrausedesign.com/, http://www.facebook.com/JimKrauseDesign/

There were so many great points in this session, it was hard to pick just a few, but here they are:

  • • When in doubt, just start!
  • • List EVERYTHING that needs to be done (work and personal) and make what you really don’t want to do #1.
  • • Work when you’re working and don’t when you’re not. Limit distractions! We are visual people who get distracted by shiny objects.
  • • “Be a Design Paramedic:” When you see a design that drives you nuts, take 10-15 minutes to think of ways to fix the problem.
  • • “Bite-Sized Creativity:” Short on time? Make mini-masterpieces such as paragraph-long stories or short films of windup toys on the beach.

Speaker: Jessica Hische
Lecture: The Dark Art of Pricing
Follow: @jessicahische, http://jessicahische.is/

  • • You don’t need an internship or job to learn. Ask someone you admire about job shadowing or meeting up for coffee.
  • • Take chances—ask for a mentor.

Speaker: Jessica Walsh
Lecture: Play
Follow: @jessicawalsh, http://www.sagmeisterwalsh.com/

  • • Play is a state of mind that prepares us for higher survival.
  • • “Play is the highest form of research.” – Albert Einstein.
  • • Create rules. Play by them. Creativity thrives off of constraints.

Speaker: Johnny Earle aka Johnny Cupcakes
Lecture: Reinventing Your Ideas: How the Little Things Yield Big Results
Follow: @JohnnyCupcakes, http://www.johnnycupcakes.com/

  • • Create an experience and have strong concepts.
  • • Little details go a long way!
  • • If you create something that your customers enjoy and do so in a way that makes them feel special, then you won’t have to advertise/market your brand because it will market itself.

Attending this conference was an incredible learning experience for me. Every one of these speakers continuously inspired and motivated me throughout the 38 glorious hours that I spent there. I now keep my golden ticket on my wall so I can remind myself of these lessons and so I make sure to follow what Jim Krause said and “never stop learning, exploring and growing.”

My Golden Ticket to the 2013 HOW Design Live Conference

My Golden Ticket to the 2013 HOW Design Live Conference

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