The Gazette’s Art Director at the Annual Design Conference
Collide, previously known as HPX Digital, is a design and digital conference spanning over four days that allows students and professionals to network and explore one another’s’ ideas. As a graphic designer studying my final year at NSCAD University, it was a great exposure for me to see what is out there. Like many others, I find it difficult sometimes to say that I know exactly what kind of design I want to pursue. Collide exposed me to digital programmers, to data visitation, to illustrative and to graphic designers from all around the world.
Many explained their process, how they came to be where they are and how their projects have grown and how they have grown with them. UK designer Naomi Atkinson’s lecture Understanding Your Core tied the themes of everyone’s lectures together pretty well. Using a British expression, Naomi said job titles are just “naff”. They’re labels for comfort, to fit a corporate structure. Every designer over the past week enunciated the importance of pursuing your own personal projects. Never stop pursuing your own personal projects, because what you put out there is what people will recognize and hire you for.
A designer needs to be a time saver, an opportunist and a communicator. The more you put yourself out there, the more opportunities will come to you.
James White, a local well-known graphic designer from Dartmouth never overlooks silly ideas and keeps pushing them. As a designer you need to be open, but know that sometimes it is okay to say no.
I loved seeing projects from designers from all sorts of backgrounds. Painting is what got me into graphic design, and designer Jason White demonstrated just how far painting can get you in his talk It All Starts with Art.
A definite highlight of my four days at Collide was the conference’s main attraction, Austrian-born and New York-based graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister. He has been nominated for eight Grammies and won two for cover art. He’s worked with HBO and Lou Reid and the list goes on and on…
His lecture was called Design and Happiness, based on his international exhibition last year. He presented statistics on happiness through design and gave tips on how to make the most of exhibition space. He said that if you don’t ask for anything you don’t get anything. You need to drive your ideas to the fullest. If you do things for pleasure and without reason sometimes, like driving around town with no particular destination, listening to music that you don’t know very well – that is pure happiness. Uselessness is gorgeous.
The more unexpected things you do, the happier you will be because you are not used to it yet. He ended the presentation on a happy note, when he got the crowd to stand up and sing a song.
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