On Friday, October 24 and Saturday October 25 I attended GAIN – AIGA Business and Design Conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. 1st of all the conference was great! I found it to be inspiring, informative and highly entertaining. There was rarely a dull moment. The speakers that were selected were all extremely captivating as well as diverse in terms of what there backgrounds are and what they do. It ranged from a retail brand strategists to a Rhodes scholar.

I think the best way for me to recap about the conference is to time line the events and give you my comments and thoughts on each event. Hopefully they will put transcripts of the conference online but until then here are my cryptic notes. A lot of things might not make sense but I’ll try to reference links where I can so you can use this more as a reference guide to the people that spoke.

FRIDAY, October 24 
7:00am Registration

• Way too early. Got a nice bag of swag from the AIGA volunteers with their cool mustard colored fleece vest embroidered with the AIGA GAIN Branding.

7:30 Continental Breakfast 
• Coffee, yea! 

9:00 Doors Open 
• Awesome motion Graphics on this huge screen (will be posted to the AIGA website)
• There was roughly 700 people taking seats

9:30 Welcome introduction 
Sean Adam’s, AIGA president and Debbie Millman, GAIN program Chair 
• Design is more than design. Creativity is an entry point. It’s what’s more. It’s what you can do with the creativity.
• Great intro!
• You have to have excellent design but its not just about beautiful design it what you do with it that makes it important and how you can change things. But you always have to have beautiful design without that you’ve failed.

9:20 Welcome and introduction
Tom Kelley, general manager, IDEO

• Tom did a great job. He segued each speaker very well. He was smart, funny and entertaining.  
• Talked about not resting on you laurels 
• Keep the pace of innovation  
• Innovation, Design, and The Red Queen effect 
• Book Reference: Alice through the looking glass, A New Brand World

9:35 Reinventing Car Retail, Again. 
Chris Bower, manager, retail strategies Saturn and Udaya Patnaik, principal Jump Associates
• Retail/Brand is like a play: Cast, costume, set, script 
• Design Principals: Relevance, Transparency, Empowerment, Simplicity, and Engaging 
• Strategy into action! 
• Saturn’s new look of their showroom and exterior signage is cool but I still have a hard time believing this car company is going to become “cool”

10:15 Interstitial film, curated by Jeff Scher
• 2-minute film titled “inflation” by Hans RIckter - 1928 
• Black and white film that was super depressing about the economy in the early 1900’s

10:20 What is information, How do People find It, and What Can We Do About It? 
Laura Granka, user experience researcher, Google
• Introduced as Rock Star Brainy-ack
• Zeitgeist 
• Incredibly boring speaker 
• Talked about how we used to search for things in the library and in encyclopedias, duh! I don’t think we need so Stanford genius to tell us what Google does. 
• I assume there is so much more behind google then the fact that their a search engine 
• Talked about eye tracking. I find that type of testing to be a waist of research. It just basically shows that people look at things base on where they appear on a web page. I think as designers we know how to get a user to look a certain things based on composition and hierichay 
• Showed a prototype of the G1 Google phone. Looks pretty lame. I hope this is not the downfall of Google because they do have the standard in search and I hate to see them fail 
• PS the google logo is lame

11:00 Short Story: AIGA Design for Democracy 
Marcia Lausen, director, studio/lab
• Design for Democracy 
• Redesigned the ballet after the 2000 election mess where people were filling out the wrong circles and the whole “hanging chad” disaster 
• Created a cool Vote logo and brand guidelines for the whole nation to use 
• I picked up some fun buttons 
• Get the vote out! 
• www.my.barackobama.com 
• www.designforobama.org 
• I’d say 98% of the group will be voting for Obama

11:15 Networking Refreshment Break 
• Met a creative Director at Interbrand, nice guy  
• Bought a book on signage and wayfinding at the bookstore 

11:45 UNO’s Filtro™: A Hispanic Ethnography Tool for Better Design 
Luis Fitch, principal and cofounder, UNO 
• Very interesting Process 
• Segments Spanish speaking consumers in many different segments and explains how to market to them
• This system can also be applied to any type of culture 
• This company is located in Minnesota which is not what where I would expect to be 

12:25 Eternal Patterns: The confluence of Image and Wisdom 
Michael Conforti, PhD, Jungian analyst and author 
• Jungian psychoanalyst? 
• Studies the workings of archetypal fields 
• Born in Brooklyn, now lives in Vermont  
• Can’t mess with archetypal images - Circle, square, hero, mother, and father  
• Worked on “Pride & Glory” making sure archetypal images we represented so characters were authentic & coherent  
• Showed clip from my cousin vinny, talked about how their characters were authentic, archetypal  
• Symbologist - good word! 
• Seasons are symbols 
• Be true to what you design

David Kuehler, director, Clay Street Project, Procter & Gamble 
• Clay street project 
• 10 - 12 week project of creative research 
• 5 threshold factors 
• Ethology - study of natural patterns in the world 
• This guy lost me 
• Over dramatic and talked about how an apple represents sexuality and how actors received apples as payments during Shakespeare 
• Loosely referenced Joseph Campbell - did not get that? 
• Did not show how this process is applied at Procter and Gamble 
• Also did a similar thing at Mattel Platypus project 
• Seemed very “Addie” and lame 
• 360º 
• Let’s “ideate” - I hate that word

1:05 Lunch 
• Made some friends and went to lunch at an Irish bar

2:35 Welcome back 
Tom Kelley
• Book reference - Made to Stick 
• Tell stories, keep them simple

2:45 Trust, Lust and Loathing: Creative Chaos in the Collaboration Nation 
Michael Jager, founder and Creative Director, Jager, DiPaola Kemp 

• 49 years old
• Calculated how much time he has left on earth 
• How many weekends he has left
• Who are we spending our time with? 
• Be fearless 
• 20 years with Burton 
• Don’t let work become hollow- it’s not decoration 
• Talked about Collaboration 
• Very cool deconstruction of the word collaboration 
• Brought drum set out on stage and sang, collaboration nation what’s your destination? 
• Donnie Deutch just did a spot, Collaboration Now! 
• Referenced Pure partners as trade show booth partners for X Box 
• Less Hulk more bruce lee was the moto then designing the X Box 360 
• I think these guys are great and they’re in Vermont 

3:30 Why the Sciences Need Art: Or, What a 19th-Century French Chef Can Teach Us About the Brain 
Jonah Lehrer, author, Proust was a Neuroscientist 
• 26-year-old speaker 
• This guy is ridiculously smart! 
• The intense feeling you have when you tast something or think about tasting something has much more to do with the senses and less that the actual food. When your mouth waters when you see something delicious. It’s not necessarily the food that tastes so good but your own spit 
• Compared Georges Auguste Escoffier and Kanye West  
• Played Stravinsky and said it has the same rhythmic patterns Kayne West is using today The Glory compared to The Rite of Spring
• These comparisons have to do with the unexpected variety of creativity and how things are kept fresh
• The Rite of spring Stravinsky - this composition started a riot the 1st time it was heard 
• Right brain finds the Ah Ha! moment 
• Noam Chomsky 
• People need to daydream to allow things to come to them 
• Go for a walk, stare out the window, take a long shower 
• Don’t put pressure on your self to be creative, it’s not going to work 

4:40 Short Story: Designing for Theater 
Gail Anderson, creative director, SpotCo.
• Art Director for Rolling Stone
• SpotCo. 9 to 5 posters’ 

4:55 20/20 (20 designers in 20 minutes!)
Rodrigo Corral, founder, Rodrigo Corral Design
Moira Cullen, design director, Coca-Cola North America
Kristina DiMatteo, art director, Print magazine
Julia Hoffman, graphic designer
Kenna Kay, creative director, TV Land/MTV Networks
Michael Ian Kaye, founder, Mother Design
Chip Kidd, graphic designer and author
Josh Liberson and Ethan Trask, co-founders, Helicopter
Vernon Lockhart, founder and principal, Art on the Loose, Inc.
Christine Mau, associate director, packaging graphics, Kimberly Clark
Bryony Gomez Palacio and Armin Vit, co-founders, UnderConsideration
Bennett Peji, principal, Bennett Peji Design
Brian Rea, illustrator, The New York Times
Petter Ringbom, partner, Flat
Lisa Strausfeld, partner, Pentagram
Cheryl Swanson, founder, Toniq
Lucille Tenazas, founder and principal, Tenazas Design
Jakob Trollbäck, president and creative director, Trollbäck + Company
Khoi Vinh, design director, NYTimes.com
Petrula Vrontikis, creative director, Vrontikis Design Office

DAY 2 SATURDAY, October 25 (I HAVE NOT COMPLETED ADDING LINKS TO THIS SECTION)

9:00 Welcome, Richard Grefe
• 18-26 year olds
• 1st globalist
• More international/collaboration
• Integrative thinking
• Creativity can illuminate habit
• Problem solving
• Project H. Hippa – water carrier in Africa
• Aspen design challenge
• Power of Creativity! 

9:15 Welcome remarks, Tom Kelley
• “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes” – Marcel Proust
• Feel she is an anthropologist
• Always strong human behaviors
• Gave example of Degaul Airport
• Train turnstyle does not allow for bag – solve human behavior
• VU JADA

9:35 Ferrocontrete Swirls Out Pinkberry Branding 
Yolanda Santosa, principal, Ferroconcrete
• Pinkberry – frozen yogurt  
• Liter light
• Plain & green tea
• Philip stark/ghost chair
• White on white
• Shop in West Hollywood
• Pinkberry Groupie
• Swirly goodness
• Groupie only event! 

10:15 Who owns culture in the corporation? An opportunity for designers to add and extract value 
Grant McCracken, PhD, cultural anthropologist; author, Culture and Consumption; research affiliate, MIT 
• Anthropologist
• Who owns culture in the corporation
• How about designers?
• Anthropology needs to be at
• Prost
• Culture above
  -   Trends
  -   Cool hunting
• Culture below
  - How a house turns into a home
• Americans turn kitchen/dining room/living room into a “great room”
• Clifford Geertz
• Quaker bought Snapple
• Missed the trend
• Lost 1st billion dollars because it was not aware of the culture
• Make design a profit center
• Litmus test on culture 
• Boy toy
• Lets re-install the design program at HBS
• “Bad girls of design”
• Culture camps
• www.cultureby.com

11:25 Understanding Web Design 
Jeffrey Zeldman, founder, executive creative director, Happy Cog Studios
• School of visual design – WEB design training
• A list apart
• CocaCola website
• Best in show! ComArts
• Monkey – adobe site
• Roger
• The webby awards – hosted by Bowie
• Minimum site blogger
• Attention to detail
• Grid
• Typography
• Balance
• Starts with the user/your passion
• A web apart
• 37 signals/basecamp
  - Jason last name?
• Ted conference
• Be the strategic partner
• WOW – world organization of web masters
• Talk to your clients like they have alzheimer’s 

12:05 Eco-Sustainability: Why Designers Have to Help! 
Chris Hacker, global creative officer, Johnson & Johnson
• COO at Johnson & Johnson
• Chief Design Director
• Global Strategic Design
• Consumer experience
• Designers need to be at senior level
• KY jelly
• CREADO
• Sustainability is key
• Everyone can do this

12:45 Short Story: B Corporations: Redesigning Business 
Bart Houlahan, founder, B Lab
• bcorporation.net
• Started AND 1
• B corporations
• Redesigning business
• OM – crystler merge?
• A new type of corporation that uses the power of business to create public benefit
• BCAB
• BHAG (BIG HAIRM ADUSION Goal)
• The change we all seek
• Green seal? Good housekeeping?
• Why is B corp different? 

2:45 What Happens Next 
Brian Collins, chief creative officer and chairman, Collins 

• Starts off with rocket to space!
• Jeffery Yun 8 appolo
• Bryce U Kennedy speech
• Problem solving
• Why?
• Office dot Boston Architecture Firm
• Beautiful!
• The green curve
• All nonsense
• Use collective thought
• This guy just wrote a $2,000 check to Obama
• Be problem makers! Or seekers!
• We choose to go to the moon!
• Metanarrative
• Re-design street signs! Do it!
• Design the WE logo
• Closed eco-system
• World economic forum
• AIGA – INDEX – CIRCLE OF BLUE 

3:25 Girl Market Revelency, Rethinking Creativity 
Heidi Dangelmaier, founder, 3iying with the girls of 3iying
• Girl centered branding
• Modern girl
• Girly? Bubble gum shit?
• This is terrible! 

Movie Clip
• Flying wok food
• Better than Pikes Place
• Fish Market

4:35 Short Story: Creating Target’s In-house Studio 
Phyllis Aragaki, creative director, Target
• Set up working structure
• To create growth in positions 

4:50 The Visual Language of Martha Stewart 
Stephen Doyle, principal and creative director, Doyle Partners and Gael Towey, chief creative officer and founding art director, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
• Martha Stewart creative director – magazine
• Inspiration wall
• Prop house has 50,000 items
• Photography is key
• 19th century documentary photography
• Charles Jones…
• Martha Stewart Logo
• Arts & crafts
• Works as pattern 

5:30pm Outliers: The Story of Success 
Malcolm Gladwell, author, The Tipping Point and Blink, introduced by Josh Liberson, founding partner, Helicopter
• History of Fleetwood Mac
• Peter Green – 1967
• 10,000 hours of action to achieve goal
• 10 years of work
• Beatles were a strip club band
• New book out in 3 weeks

So those are my schizophrenic notes. I hope you gained something. I would highly recommend going to the next conference in 2 years.

Lou Dorfsman, a design director for CBS, who’s work included the creation of the CBS Didot typeface, passed away last Wednesday. Perhaps his most famous piece of work, the Gastrotypographicalassemblage wall in the CBS cafateria, is the largest, modern typographic artifact in existence. It was discarded by CBS but is in process of being restored by the Center for Design Study. It is amazing to me that someone could choose to destroy something of such obvious worth to the history of design. Check out the radio interview of Dorfsman discussing his creation on the Centers’ website.

While not stating a political opinion one way or the other, a viral campaign video for Barack Obama that utilizes variable data has caught our attention. Produced by MoveOn.org, the video employs techniques found in print and website personalization but embeds the name of the recipient into a mock news video segment. Whatever your political affiliation, it is hard to deny the clever use of both viral and variable data marketing tools found here. 

One of the coolest things about working in Fort Point Channel is that we share the neighborhood with so many artists and art lovers. We love being part of this community, and we’re excited to be part of this year’s Fort Point Open Studios.

On October 18 and 19 between 11am and 6pm we’re opening up our space and showing off artwork from our designers. We’ll be selling holiday ornaments designed by our own Jim Gibson and Brigitte Ting, as well as paintings, prints, and photographs from James Grady, Anne Callahan, and our friends Michelle Curran and Monica DeSalvo. You can also pick up some of what we like to call korware – cards, wrapping paper, gift tags, and more – all created by our designers.

kor group is located at 374 Congress Street on the 5^th floor. We hope you can swing by to check us out, and to see all the other stuff happening at this year’s open studios. 

Yeah, I’ll say it. I don’t understand presidential polls. Who are these people running these things? Who are they polling? How large is the sample size? Are they accurate? How is this presidential race so close? However, the designer in me likes the concise nature of a color coded pie chart. A visual nugget that’s easy to digest. One problem. It’s too simple. I need something more real, more tangible.

Everymoment Now solves my problem:

If stories ‘above the fold’ are important and those ‘below the fold’ secondary, then Everymoment Now is looking ‘behind the fold’; that is laterally, through time. Moments connected with an event both above and below the fold are brought next to each other to gain insight into the now.

Basically, this website graphs each candidates’ mentions in the news, comparing who’s getting more press. You can delve deeper and see what’s being written and events surrounding spikes in press coverage. Now that’s a graph I can vote for.