My First Conference (Part One)

This week I’m heading to my first design conference in the form of New Adventures in my home town ((Well 25 minutes outside of the city is technically my home town, but I was born in Nottingham so close enough.)). In the past I’ve always looked in on conferences from the outside, so when I heard about naconf I figured it was time to take the leap.

As someone who works primarily in print but has a real fascination with the web I’m hoping to learn a lot and figure out where my layout skills can cross over to the screen. I’ve heard it said many a time that print designers shouldn’t switch to the web, but equally I’ve seen many high profile designers achieve great things in both formats. I’m most looking forward to hearing some of the best in the business share some valuable insights into the various topics. In particular I’m looking forward to hearing Veerle Pieters share some thoughts on triggering inspiration and how we can break through the block we all suffer from time to time. One of the things I find hardest when I’m designing for the web is inspiration. When you use the web so regularly it’s very easy to let yourself fall in to a pattern of “this goes here, that there…” and before you know it you have a very insipid run of the mill website. I’m hoping I may pick up a few techniques to help me use my experience in designing for print be the inspiration for designing for the web. (I was going to go on here highlighting all the things I’m looking forward to, but, as I began writing I realised I’d be highlighting all the talks in the schedule. It seems, unsurprisingly, that they all compliment one another nicely.)

Since it’s my first conference I know I won’t be able to soak everything up all in one go, but I’m going armed with a brand new Moleskine and I’m hoping the notes I make will compliment the slides when they are released. The whole day will be a learning experience, but the learning doesn’t just stop once I’ve left the venue. It continues in the follow up and, most importantly, in my efforts to put what’s been said into practise.

Beyond the talks, I’m looking forward to hopefully meeting a few of the people I’ve come across on the web. Be it via blogs, twitter or some other means it’d be great to meet some new faces in the industry. So if you read this, or follow me on Twitter do come and say Hi!