Annual Design Conferences to Attend
Design conferences are a great resource for the up and coming designer or veteran of the design world. It is a place that allows knowledge to be shared about design that you may not have been able to learn in other ways.
For the past few years I have been attending the Art Directors Club of New Jersey’s Thinking Creatively Design Conference held at Kean University. As much as it was a requirement to attend while a student at Kean I thoroughly enjoyed the different famous designers I would not have been able to hear lecture. Since this is a smaller conference, not internationally known the groups were smaller allowing for personal time with the design speaker. As there is usually more than one talk going on at once, not every person attending will be in the same place.
Since this conference is held in Union, NJ it is a quick train ride to NYC since the train station is right on campus. This allows for many of New York’s best designers to easily attend. Many have also been from afar, as was during my first conference. Illustrator Daniel Reeve of New Zealand was the keynote speaker of my first conference. He is best known for the design of the Lord of the Rings maps used in the movies. So Thinking Creatively is not some dinky college conference. Even last year Ronald J. Cala and his classmate at Tyler School of Design Jessica Hische who are both great rising illustrators, who had their own lectures at the conference. For those who are local to New Jersey I would certainly suggest this conference without having to book a flight to attend.
AIGA’s annual design conference is always a great national option for a major design conference. Each year the venue changes to different states, so of course that allows you to meet with different design professionals in different locations.
This year AIGA is hosting their event in Phoenix, Arizona. It is known as the “Pivot” conference by discussing shifts in changes of design thinking, practices, education, technology, society and business. AIGA is such a large organization that it is no surprise that they draw many of design’s top designers. Even the conference in 2010 allowed designer Ronald J. Cala to be the sole designer to create all of the graphics for the conference. For good causes comes donated design.
If Arizona is not exactly your area perhaps HOW magazine’s annual design conference in Chicago this year will be better. HOW has many creative design sessions including how to build a successful design career. Something everyone of course wants to do. With more than 30 expert speakers and over 35 different lecture sessions you are sure to come away with more design knowledge than you arrived with. A great addition to the usual sit and listen lectures that HOW has incorporated is Studio Tours around Chicago. I love taking tours of studios to help see how other design professionals use their primary design environment to inspire their creativity. This is a great new benefit that I have never heard of at any other design conference and would certainly recommend it if your are attending this conference already. It gives you the great chance to view great design companies such as Threadless T-Shirts, major branding company IDEA and the small creative group Upshift.
Just as networking nights, design conferences are here to help inspire, inform and introduce you to design professionals that you have yet to know.
