HOW Design Conference – Day 2

This pretty much sums up the conference so far. I am having a great time and learning a lot. I wish I had come with someone as it’s pretty lonely not knowing anyone, but oh well, Pauly just called from Vancouver which was nice. I needed just to yack at someone. Thanks Pauly. Carol and I have been calling each other on our cell phones pretty much non-stop. I shudder at the thought of our next bill. We should have just paid the extra cash for her to come along.

Anyway, I’ve been taking a ton of pictures at all of the sessions I’ve been attending as well as a few of San Diego’s beautiful architecture. An interesting site I saw in the hotel was on the way to my room from the elevator. I thought it looked like the hallway from The Shining in which Jack Nicholson’s character sees the ghosts of murdered twin girls so .

The first session I went to this morning was interesting to say the least especially with my love of film. The speaker was Alexander Laurant from Industrial Light & Magic a.k.a. ILM and the topic of his talk was Designing Illusions for Film. Especially impressive was his work on ‘Minority Report’ designing the elevated super-highway that Tom Cruise’s character uses among other effects. Another film of note was his design work on ‘The Mummy’ designing both the scenery and the villain Imhotep. The crowd was huge, I estimate at least 3500 people from the size of the room. , of course.

The second session I attended was with the hilariously charismatic Joshua Davis who’s topic was Flow: Leaving Room for Chance in the Design. He awed the crowd with his super cool and self written design generating software. You can see examples of it at The Department of Notation and Once Upon a Forest.

The third and final session before escaping for a huge steak and more picture taking was with Jim Krause of Pinwwwheel.net who’s talk was titled Creative Sparks: Strategies for Fostering Creativity. I bought three of his books Idea Index, Color Index, Layout Index for work and will most likely pick up the new Creative Sparks for myself tomorrow.

It’s only 9:30 and I’m bushed. Must watch some TV and drink some Diet Cherry Coke (I bought a 12 pack) before bed. I think I’ll read a bit too.