As a San Diego graphic recorder, there is one event I love attending every year—The AIGA San Diego Y Conference. These are my people: designers, visual thinkers, illustrators. Now it its 24th year, AIGA San Diego invited 10 prolific designers to share how “Saying Yes” impacted their careers and lives.
Some of my favorites:
Patrick Shearn of Poetic Kinetics creates large scale interactive artworks and articulated the emotions of awe and wonder better than anyone I’ve heard.
Illustrator/author/artist/activist Lisa Congdon revealed how making things played a role in her personal evolution.
Anouk Wipprecht engineers dresses with robotic arms, censors, and lights. Cool to look at bu they look uncomfortable.
Temi Coker, one of this year’s Adobe Residents, creates spirited photography and design. At lunch he talked about how he didn’t know what he would do after his residence—work for someone else or start his own thing.
Kareem Collie pondered the questions of design.
Roberto de Vicq shared his restaurant designs that are self-contained worlds of entertainment for customers.
The two founders of dkgn, high school friends, talked about making the great leap to founding their own studio and eventually becoming their own client.
Laura Pol, just recently left her job at Apple, shared her commitment to doing new things that scare her. (Like talking in public.)
Doug Powell of IBM talked about the benefits of the design thinking process embedded in a business culture.
Andrea Small talked about the ambiguity, doubt, and dead-ends she faced on her journey to stay true to herself.
The Y Design Conference was held in a smaller venue this year. The setting had more quiet places to sit which inspired longer conversations between attendees during breaks.
