2013 HOW Live Design Conference
On July 22nd, I attended the How Live Design Conference in San Francisco. The four-day conference hosted an assortment of design professionals such as Joshua Chen, Jessica Welsch, Sagi Haviv and Mary Zalla. HOW had an interesting approach, dividing into four distinct conferences – Design Conference, Creative Freelance Conference, Dieline Packaging Design Conference and InHouse Design Conference? Purchasing the “Big Ticket” allowed access to all the conferences, which was money well spent. Big take aways from the HOW Live included new design trends and obstacles in a challenging economy.
I was amazed to see how many design professional were doing well in an economy with reduced budgets. In fact, some professionals were actually flourishing as a result of redefining their business and specializing in specific design markets – ie: restaurant design, hotel design, automobile design, etc. Another trend that was discussed during my round table discussion was Social Media. Social media is reaching a lot more people than products and services’ official websites target. Everyone agrees that social media are getting in touch and getting updates from people that they know. At the same time, they will be getting interesting information from products and services that they like.
During a round table discussion I started a conversation on cultural design awareness. Design is ever changing, making cultural awareness extremely important in the graphic design industrial. I stressed on the importance of communicating key messages and efficiently to cross-cultures. Many questions were asked regarding sensitive to cultures, cross culture barriers and design interpretation. At the end of the discussion, ideas and feedback were shared to inform designers on cultural awareness.
Overall the conference was a good venue for all design professionals. HOW allowed us to gain inspiration as well as insight to the latest trends in the design industries. I would highly recommend HOW Live to any designer looking to be inspired and learning more in their trade. I’ll see you in Boston in 2014!