I spent most of last week with 2400 designers at the HOW Design Conference in San Diego. Nearly 50 sessions on design, including typography, color, brainstorming, motion graphics, web graphics, trends, sales, freelancing and broadcast design. There was even a session about email marketing essentials. You literally could have come to San Diego without the slightest clue about the business, art and science of graphic design, and you could have left with an overview of just about everything we do.
There were some wonderful luminaries at the conference, and depending upon your taste and inclination, you could pick and chose whom you wanted to hear speak. I was in joyful sensory overload as I tried to navigate my way around sessions with Hillman Curtis (unbelievable), Alexander Laurent (everything you ever wanted to know about designing illusions for film) and graphic activism in the work of David Rees and Shepard Fairey (one word: wow).
What I found most interesting attending the HOW Conference was actually seeing all the how’s—how people work the way they do, how they come up with (or don’t come up with) ideas, how they choose different directions, how they use technology (or don’t), and how they basically, well, do what they do. It was fascinating. It was like getting a peek into a designer’s studio. Or their soul. It was like being invisible while watching the “way” in which a designer actually lives their life. Heady stuff.
I was part of a panel that Print Magazine created called Ironic Chef. The overall theme of Print’s series of sessions was called The Oxymoronic Spree, and it was just that: a wonderfully eclectic line-up of designers and thinkers (Rick Poynor, Steve Heller, Michael Dooley, Colin Berry, among others) presenting design dichotomies and offering delightful and insightful diatribes on, among other things, designing in an election year and designing “pornotopia.”
Jeremy Lehrer, senior editor at Print came up with the idea for Ironic Chef. An homage to the popular television show Iron Chef, the session was described as follows:
Four designers. Two judges. Zero budget. One design-improv competition. That’s right: It’s Iron Chef, only this time, graphic designers will compete live, on stage, with a stop watch running, to create an identity system, logo, book jacket or other design work.
My fellow contestants were daunting competitors: Alex Isley, David Lai from Hello Design and Michael Hodgson from PhD. Several weeks prior to the event we were queried about our work preferences. Alex, David and I replied, “sketching.” Michael preferred working on the computer. The only question we were asked again prior to the competition was “What is your favorite typeface?” (me: peignot) Until the moment the competition began, I pretty much had no idea what to expect. Even Armin questioned the logic of my doing this.
Once we were all seated on the stage, we were arranged at a specially rigged desk that could project either our sketches or the computer screen. We were informed that in the ninety-minute session we would be given two design assignments and that we had to create exactly what was requested. Also: we were given a number of images provided by Veer, which we were required to use in the concepts. We were then asked to create an identity and a poster for a T-square company. Next up were an election poster and a slogan for a presidential candidate. But the real challenge was this: we had only 20 minutes for each “project” and our sketches and concepts were projected on a tremendous screen to approximately 400 designers in real time as the actual ideas were created and evolving. So essentially, everyone saw everything. The good, the bad, and the downright ugly.
Designing on the spot is hard. Really hard. Needing to come up with a good idea in record time is difficult enough, but doing it with a huge audience of designers watching and judging every step of the way is, well, a bit mad. The first thing I wrote on my sketchpad after getting the first “challenge” was the word HELP. I think David and Alex wrote it also. But the game had begun and the stopwatch was rapidly marching on. I needed to come up with ideas. And fast.
After I got used to the embarrassment and my utter fear of failure (after all, we were being judged not only by the audience but by Michael Dooley and Steve Heller), and as the ideas were projected, I became fascinated by the way the designers around me were working. Alex wrote lots of ideas down. He had several ideas in a matter of minutes. He then drew up beautiful little storyboards. The idea was multi-faceted and funny. Ironic and smart. He handily won the first round. David was seated next to me, and in the second assignment he basically sat quietly and thought. Chin in hand. He doodled a little bit, but it seemed primarily to keep himself occupied. But then, in the nick of time, he had it. The idea. He had one idea. He wrote it down. He sketched it out. It was brilliant. The audience went wild.
Michael also worked differently. He was robust. He was confident. He made up his own rules (yes, he did change the name of the T-square company to a T-shirt company). He worked quickly on his computer, and suddenly it was all there: a grid! color! a gorgeously kerned headline! It was almost as if he created the idea completely in his head and then poured it all out, in one beautiful fell swoop, onto the computer screen.
I worked slowly, on paper with colored pencils, oil pastels and a variety of tools. My ideas were executed more like an art project, and for lack of a better word, they were more “painterly.”
Four designers. Four totally different ways of working, all in earnest pursuit of the same goal: beautiful, purposeful design.
It was an extraordinary experience to “see how” other people design, to see their magic and their muse, their process and their end product. I think HOW and Print are going to ask four different designers to do this again at next year’s conference. It will be interesting to be able to peer into another practitioner’s heart and mind for a few minutes once more.
So now I put this forth to the Speak Up readers, if you can: please tell us “how” you create. Fast? Slow? Is it agonizing, painless, painstaking, ruthless, with guts, with fear, with joy, with love? Do you sketch or paint or draw? Work straightaway on your computer? Work by hand AND by mouse? Are you shy about your ideas or confident? Do you work better alone or with a team? And, lastly, how do you know what to pursue, what to discard and when, oh when…to stop?
I always sketch first, millions (almost) of words, doodles, impossibilities, absurdities, etc... I don't go to the black-box (computer) until I think I've refined a sketch a few times into that one Aha! idea. I find the computer is such an easy way to get off track and get lost. By sticking to the hand drawing I feel connected to the roots of design which I think is extremely important. One of the very last items I introduce is color, which may or may not be in colored pencil, paint, marker, or whatever.
Thanks for sharing your experiences on HOW and this specific challenge, sounds exciting!
-Steve
On May.24.2004 at 07:49 AM