I’m in Phoenix this week for AIGA’s Pivot conference. Very special thanks to Alissa Walker for inviting me speak alongside Frank Chimero, Mig Reyes and Yo Santosa for the Emerging Designer symposium!
As you can see, some of my slides are sprinkled into this post. The four of us spoke for twenty minutes each, punctuated with a short Q+A with Alissa between each presentation. Mig talked about the glory in defeating Jessica Hische in Layer Tennis and the importance of saying yes to everything because “you’ll never know what happens”. He had a lot of great work considering he’s 14 years old.
There was also Yo Santosa–she designs everything from the opening credits to Ugly Betty, the branding for Pinkberry, and the packaging for Hustler. So basically, she is with me every lonely Saturday night.
Frank told a few stories about being a young naive student—accompanied only by a single .gif animation of a campfire. His answer to “How to overcome failure?”? Punch yourself in the face. “There’s nothing worse than that.”
Alissa suggested I talk about, “How to Keep a Personality While Working for the Man” since I manage to work at big places without becoming a cog in the machine. I thought that was a great idea. But, it requires one very important prerequisite- you need to have a personality. Which, a lot of people don’t. Some designers have personalities only a mother could love. A lot of designers just do what they’re told. If you fall into either of these unfortunate groups I highly recommend surrounding yourself with people who are more interesting than you— learning from my surroundings in newsrooms has given me a chance to figure out what I like, what I’m good and bad at, and to steal from others and sound super smart.
Then, I hosted an early morning roundtable discussion. I expected to sit alone while eating eggs but people actually came! And, with doughnuts! (Thanks Travis and Kelsey!) It started as a group therapy discussion about overcoming fear to make mistakes and ended as a Design Clinic when one of the group members, who turned out to be a Dermatologist not a designer, checking out a serious burn on another group member’s arm.
Meanwhile, Frank and I turned the entire weekend into a food-cation.
Wednesday
Brick
Consumed: Margarita Pizza -★
Thursday
Pizza Bianco
Consumed: Margaritta Pizza ★★★★, Red Onion Pizza ★★★★
Friday
Pane Bianco (I’m not sure why we came to the southwest for Italian– I blame Marco Polo.)
Consumed: Tuna Sandwich ★★★★
Arrogant Butcher
Consumed: Swordfish ★★★, Old Fashion ★★★★, Pretzel Fundue ★★★★
Saturday
Westin
Consumed: Bagel and lox ★, Bloody Mary ★★
Thanks AIGA, Alissa Walker, and Phoenix for making this a dream-catcher weekend.
