Last night we had the opportunity to listen to Sean Adams and the Salt Lake AIGA event. Sean is a partner at AdamsMorioka and has been recognized by every major competition and publication. Sean is the national president and past national board member of AIGA, and past president of AIGA Los Angeles. He teaches at Art Center College of Design. Sean is a frequent lecturer and competition judge internationally. Adams is the co-author of Logo Design Workbook, Color Design Workbook, and Masters of Design. AdamsMorioka’s clients include ABC, Adobe, Gap, Frank Gehry Partners, Mohawk Fine Papers, Nickelodeon, Sundance, Target, USC, and The Walt Disney Company.

Since he is the national president of the AIGA he gave a quick summary of where he thinks we are going as a design community. The main message I received from regarding that is being unified as designers. If you degrade another designer because of his choice in style or medium, you are really hurting the design profession as a whole. When one designer succeeds, we all succeed. He also touched on the point that there is enough work for everyone, we can all be successful. Basically, stop trash talking other designers or firms because they do something a little different from you.

He then talked about his main message which was about fear. What fears do we have and how can we overcome them? He did a really great job of bringing examples of his work into his theme of overcoming fear and presenting it in a way that can help us all. Here are a few highlights on this subject.

• Bad clients can make you miss better opportunities.
Some clients are too demanding and take up so much time that better opportunities and clients can pass you by. Also, your design work can greatly suffer because you are only doing what the client “thinks” is best and not what you “know” to be best. Don’t be afraid of change and letting go of a client.

• Protect the work, it’s all we’ve got
He was referring to your design work. Don’t be afraid of protect the work you do. Stand up for what you believe in. You are the one that has the skills as a designer. He likened it to going to the doctor and the doctor informs you that you have cancer. He suggests that you take immediate action but then you tell the doctor you would rather have a breast enlargement. I’m sure we all have clients that would tell us something compared to that but we need to set the expectation upfront and let them know that we value our work.

• There is no magical way of doing things
As designers, we all have our own way of doing things. Even though a famous design might do something different, it doesn’t mean it’s the only way of doing it. Have faith in your ideas and your own judgment. Be good at being you.

There are very few well know designers that are down to earth and really have a desire for everyone to succeed and Sean Adams is one of them. He was a great presenter and really inspires you to be better. If you ever have the opportunity to listen to him, you should definitely jump at the chance.

Here is some work from AdamsMorioka

Sundance Film Festival 06

Mohawk Paper - Via - The Big Handbook

This post comes a little late but I still wanted to mention it. On September 23rd, Ben Webster of The Mandate Press spoke at the SLC AIGA Shift.Option.Talk discussion series. It was a really good turn out for something like this. I was really impressed. This was the first one that I have gone to so I didn’t know what to expect. These events are really good for networking and getting to know other creative professionals. I had some good conversations and learned some things about letterpress.

Ben Webster owns a custom letterpress shop in Salt Lake City, the Mandate Press. He did a great job discussing the letterpress process, the pros and cons of using letterpress, and its strengths and weaknesses. He also touched upon some of the misconceptions of letterpress and what you can and can’t do. He has done some great work, one of my favorite is the Utah Train poster, since I am a huge fan of trains. Although, as most letterpress projects are out of my price range, so is this poster. One great thing that he mentioned is there 250 business cards/calling cards special that you can get for under $100. See there home page for more info.

Well done AIGA, this was a great experience and I’d like to keep coming to these discussion and will defiently spread the word. Plus, they are free.

Here is a little more info on the Shift.Option.Talk series.

Shift.Option.Talk is a series of informal, roundtable conversations with local designers in our community. Featuring a different location and host-designer every event, its the best way to relax, meet other creative-minded designers and just shoot the breeze.

Visit slc.aiga.org for more info.

I know this is a little late but I wanted to post on some of the items from the AIGA design conference. I tried posting while I was there, but time was limited and when I got back, the work was piled up. I’m now just getting caught up.

So, was it worth going to? Overall I’d say “Yes”, but there were some areas of disappointment.

Some of the more worth-while presenters were Stanley Hainsworth, the VP Global Creative at Starbucks. Since I work as an in-house designer, I tried to go to speakers who would really give me insight and help on being a great designer in that situation. He was successful in accomplishing that. He gave a lot of background about Starbucks and how there design department works and what they do to be successful.

Here are some of the highlights

Everything has to have a purpose, no decorations unless it backs something up.

It’s not only the brand but the experience that is created. That is what you need to achieve.

He talked a lot of their creative brief and how they have trained everyone to fill out a complete and to-the-point brief so projects can be completed quicker and in line of what the other department wanted.

As an in-house designer, you need to look more into your business needs and what you want to accomplish. Don’t get bored with the product. Be excited about it and look for ways to improve upon it. Everyone is a brand steward.

There was a question asked, “How do yo stay creative within the guidelines?” He brought up a little about their brand guidelines and within that they have 5 keywords that their whole brand is built around. So, instead of having specific colors they have to conform too, they are able to push the limits more as long as it comes back to the keywords they have. (Unfortunately, I don’t have those 5 keywords.)

Stanley, by far, was the best presenter that I went to at the conference. Another great presenter was Bobby C. Martin, Jr. the Design Director at Jazz at Lincoln Center. I’ll mention the highlights of his in a later post.