HOW Design Conference Miscellaneous Bits

Kevin Carroll: Encourage creativity by giving clients or colleagues an environment where they feel safe to play. Give them permission.

Marcia Hoeck, Maria Giudice, Brian Dougherty (panel):

• Define your business, give it direction, use a metaphor.
• If you have to say no to a job, be positive, refer to someone better suited.
• Don't take a partner.
• Consider carefully before hiring. Hire talent that is better than you.
• Allow your team to be real people to your clients. Introduce them and allow them to build relationships.
• Know when to let go of tasks. You can stay current in a discipline without practicing it every day.

How to Have an Interesting Business

From the HOW Design Conference session by Tony Mikes:

The age of cold-calling is over. Outward directed sales have become inward directed. You must position yourself to be the business your customer looks for at the moment he/she needs your product or service. That means you must be interesting. Unique, engaging, memorable, experiential, responsive, interactive.

1. Look for the truth of your business. Discover what makes you unique. Your brand is who you are—it's a promise.

2. Be as unique as you can be. Identify your core competency or specialty.

3. Be Small + Smart. Have a core team and become an expert at resourcing.

4. Write. Write. Write. Create content and publish. Become the expert in your niche.

5. Get your creative act in order. Learn how to sell your best ideas.

6. Do shameless self-promotion.

7. Pro bono is an opportunity.

8. Know how to conduct a first meeting with a prospect. The goal is to have a second meeting. Do your research ahead of the meeting and ask thoughtful questions. Don't talk about yourself or you'll sound like every other candidate. Have something you can hold back for the next meeting.

How to Be a Jedi Designer

From the HOW Design Conference session by John January & Tug McTighe:

Tenet 1: Choose to live as a Padawan learner. Find your Obi Wan. Be open to learning, listening, and questioning yourself.

Tenet 2: Choose to concept the Jedi way. Collaborate, especially with people who think differently from you.

Tenet 3: Concentrate on the here and now. Your best opportunities are on your desk. Don't waste them by wishing you were doing something else.

Tenet 4. Beware of the dark side. For us that is envy, pettiness, and insecurity. Overcome those pulls.

Tenet 5: Do or do not. There is no try. Embrace failure and learn something. Do the best you can, never half-assed. Forget what you can't control.

Tenet 6: Celebrate seriously. Victories are short-lived, so relish them.

Tenet 7: The (creative) Force is with you.

How to Create 5 Alarm Concepts

From the HOW Design Conference session by Von Glitschka:

Load your chamber by continuously exposing yourself to new ideas. Read, travel, learn about anything that catches your interest, especially outside your field. Leave your comfort zone. Build an archive of knowledge that you can harvest.

When creating concepts, dig deep. Don't fall in love with your first idea. Have many ideas. With a loaded chamber you can fire at will.

Use your left and right brain. Good designers can move back and forth fluidly. Some exercises for getting the process going:

• word association
• mind mapping
• charting (Put 6 pertinent words across the top and 6 more words across the side. Fill in each square. Then roll a die 6 times to select the concepts you will work with.)
• Venn diagrams (where do the main concepts overlap?)
• before–during–after (identity where your audience is before, during, and after using you client's product or service)
• force yourself into another point of view
• concept equation (blank + blank = blank)
• slang
• shape association
• letterforms
• negative space

The whole pres with examples is at: www.tinyurl.com/5AlarmConcepts

Design is becoming a commodity. To stay alive in this business you will have to be intelligent and creative. You will have to offer something more than production.

How to Give a Great Presentation

From the HOW Design Conference session by Nancy Duarte:

This session was titled "Visual Storytelling: Resonate and Activate Audiences" because designers hate PowerPoint and no one would have attended if they knew the real subject. That being said, it was one of the most useful sessions I attended at the conference.

People cannot process talking and reading at the same time. So don't put a bunch of bullet points on your slides forcing people to read them as you talk. (That is PP's default and one of the reasons PP presentations are such snooze inducers.) Even worse, don't read your slides. Use visuals to support your talk. It's OK to throw in an occasional quote and read it aloud.

Know your audience and identify where they are and where you want to move them. Present from a position of humility and service to your audience. Reveal your flaws and failures. Don't pretend to be an authority and know-it-all--big turn off. In order to deliver a powerful presentation, you must have a big idea that you believe in. Use the art of transformation to bring your audience to your point of view.

Nancy analyzed powerful speeches such as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream, and Steve Jobs' iPhone unveiling. She found the underlying structure and shared it: Start with what is. Then describe what could be. That produces the "gap." Then move back and forth across the gap illuminating the contrast between what is and what could be. Add emotional and analytical texture with surprise, humor, facts, anecdotes. Tack like a sailboat against audience resistance. Wrap up your presentation with "the new bliss."

Somewhere in your presentation craft a STAR moment: Something They'll Always Remember.

Good communication is not something you can wing by the seat of your pants. Great speakers work hard, even if they seem to have an innate gift. Make the effort if your idea is worth communicating. Watch TED videos for inspiration.

Note: One of the other speakers used Prezi.com for her presentation, and it was very cool--nonlinear and overlapping "slides."

How to Turn Good Design into Great Design

From the HOW Design Conference session by Cameron Moll:

good: necessity; great: passion
good: influence; great: inspiration
good: creative drive; great: creative pause
good: solutions; great: problems
good: give up; great: keep believing

Challenge yourself. Eustress is positive stress (opposite of distress). Follow your passion and finish what you start. Create opportunities to earn inspiration (travel, museums, music), and a method to capture it (sketchbook, camera, blog). "Creative pause" is a shift away from being fully engaged to disengaged. It allows space for subconscious mind to work.

The solution you create is only as strong as the problem you define. Ask the right questions.

Reduction vs. organization: beyond simplicity is visual hierarchy. Once information is reduced to its essential elements, it still must be organized.

Sometimes you have to blur your eyes to see more clearly. (See the big picture.)

How to Find Your Personal Style

From the HOW Design Conference session by Eleanor Grosch:

What do you like? Who are you? What are your early influences? What were you attracted to from a young age? Whose work do you admire?

Follow your instincts, and research what you find. You can work in a style that others are working (have worked) in. You can't help but bring something unique and individual to the style. Visual art has a limited vocabulary, it's all about how you express yourself.

As you gain notoriety, you will acquire imitators and detractors. Don't be threatened by imitators. Keep growing, keep your art fresh. Don't respond to detractors. That only encourages them.

Practice, practice, practice, to refine you style.

How to Bring Ideas into Reality

From the HOW Design Conference session by Scott Belsky:

Designate windows of non-reactionary time. You won't make steps towards your goals when you are constantly reacting and letting other people drive your agenda. Carve out time for your long-term goals.

Organize with a bias toward action. Focus on tasks rather than ambiguous concepts. When you come out of a meeting, each person should have a list of concrete steps to take.

Let competition energize you. No need to fear it. Everyone can succeed (not a zero sum world).

Share your ideas with a community. Great ideas die in isolation. When you share, you create accountability, feedback, and engagement.

When presenting your idea to a client, know your "sacred extremes," the 5-10% that you won't compromise on. Fight for the concepts you believe in, be willing to compromise on everything else.

Hire people with initiative. Develop them through appreciation. As a leader and mentor, know when to be silent. Talk last.

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