Of all the sessions at this year’s HOW conference that you have to attend to appreciate, Ironic Chef is it. The panel of 4 celebrity designers (DJ Stout, Brian Collins, Cheryl Towler Weese, and Armin Vit) are all on stage dressed in chef costumes. They are given a design challenge that they must complete in 20 minutes.

**The First Challenge:**
The United Nations is facing a PR challenge. They need an image makeover. Create a logo, moving announcement, brand identity, and ad campaign.

**The Second Challenge:**
Create a logo, ad campaign, and slogan for Chicago’s bid for the Olympics.

With Steven Heller and Noreen Morioka as commentators, it was an entertaining session. It was also fun to see how the different designers work under pressure. Brian Collins and DJ Stout worked with paint, markers, tape, and scissors while Armin and Cheryl were working on Apple laptops. Technically, it was cool how they switched back and forth from the designers computer screens or light tables. Near the beginning there were slight technical difficulties that caused Steven Heller to proclaim “PowerPoint should be banned” to thunderous applause. Amen.

Congratulations to Armin for winning both challenges to claim the title of Ironic Chef.

Patric King, Armin Vit, Steven Heller, William Drenttel, and Steve Rhodes were all “blogsperts” (Steven Heller’s new term) in “Daily Candy: Is Blogging Good For You, Or is it Just Giving You Cavities?” If you follow this blog, these people probably don’t need too much of an introduction. This is the session that both Bennett and I had to attend for obvious reasons. I will try to give you a brief glimpse into what was discussed in this session, but I think there was so much covered that I hope to revisit this post later in more depth.

Below you will see some of the questions that were tossed around in this session. I am hoping that we will be able to provide the audio for this session in the future, but for now you can read my paraphrased notes from quotes that stood out. These aren’t quotes by any means:

**SH: What is a blog?**

WD: the software. The ability to comment is also a key ingredient to a blog.

PK: Reverse chronology

SR: It isn’t about technology, it is about content.

AV: I have trouble calling SpeakUp a blog because of the way I see other blogs being used.

**SH: Why was Design Observer started?**

WD: The original idea was not to be a community but more an opportunity to easily publish our writing.

**SH: Since there aren’t limitations how do blogs moderate themselves. Do you want more “cred” from people who comment on your site?**

WD: It is hard to talk to someone who is annonymous that you don’t know anything about.

SR: I disagree. It isn’t about your credentials, it is about the validity of your argument.

**SH: What’s the business plan? Is there a business future for your blog?**

AV: No. Other than ads, there isn’t any money other than ads. We have other things that we do to make a living. Then again, maybe in the future…

WD. The money for us is more complicated. Any financial thing we do would have to get divided up. Second of all, if no one makes money we all get treated equally.

Steven Heller did a good job of moderating than I expected. He is on record as saying “I hate design blogs,” so I was somewhat surprised that he was chosen to moderate the session. My personal opinion is that he is so tied to the traditional publishing world that he can’t help but feel threatened by blogs.

It was great to finally meet Armin and interesting to hear his explanation of how SpeakUp grew into what it is today. I was pleased that he seemed receptive to the possibility of future collaborations between BADG and SpeakUp. Stay tuned!

William Drenttel gives a good presentation, and has himself “together” for lack of a better word. Even so, I was really surprised to hear him say that he doesn’t want Design Observer to be a community. He sees it more as an outlet to easily publish his writing. I can’t help but wonder if it is really a blog if there isn’t a community interacting around the posts. By my definition, no.

Patric King, who blogs full time, had probably the most global understanding of blogging, and was able to see the similarities and differences between SpeakUp, DesignObserver, and blogging in general. It was nice to talk to him a little bit after the session, but it would have been nice to pick his brain a little longer.

Although somewhat overpowered by Drentell and Heller, Steve Rhodes’ comments were good. What impressed me was he seemed to have an optimistic view of blogging. He really seemed to understand the opportunity that blogging offers. Steve Rhodes, like any of the participants could probably have filled a session all by himself.

Hopefully I can provide you with a more accurate transcript of this session in the future. I think the session was recorded, so I will share any information as I find out.

Having just finished reading *Logo Design Workbook* by AdamsMorioka, I was really looking forward to this session. The session was about how creative teams can communicate with mostly corporate/business people. It was fascinating to hear AdamsMorioka successes and struggles with clients.

Sometimes it’s hard for us creatives to understand the corporate world. A business looks at creative as an investment. Like all investments, businesses want to receive a return on their investment. In the business world they call it ROI. ROI = Income/Inestment. To most of us, that is a completely foreign (and boring) language that we just don’t want to touch. But for us to be successful, we need to have those lines of communication with the client. How do we do that? The answer is a member of our team that can speak the language of the creatives and can communicate with the business people. That person is called the “design advocate.”

The job description of a design advocate reads like this: They protect the team. They help teach their design team. You like them and can have dinner with them. They clarify the process and objectives for the corporate world. They figure out the problems that the client has, not just pass along the clients solution. They give the creative team bullet-proof vests. Hopefully you have a design advocate on your team already. If you don’t, there is still hope. You can learn how to be a design advocate, or train someone.

Some other good advice was to make sure you understand who you are partnering with. Know who makes the decision. If you can’t figure it out, try to clarify who it is that really makes the decision, and focus on selling to that person.

My favorite part of the session was when they showed samples of proposed ideas that were rejected by Adobe. It is encouraging to see that even great companies like AdamsMorioka get their ideas shot down.

There was no inspiration in this session (at least this is what Stefan said at the beginning of this session). It is about production. Print asked him to do this, so he did. Stefan says the always does what he is asked. It was fascinating to see what the inside stories of what he has gone through as far as production techniques. What he has gained in fame he seems to have paid for over and over again with blood and sweet to get things done correctly.

He makes the point that paying bills, selling things to clients and print production are more important than many other things we focus on in design. He related how he was amazed when he started working at M & Co. He wasn’t amazed as much by the work, but how Tibor could sell things that others could not. You cannot get great design done unless you can get it approved. Tibor was the master of this and from the looks of things, Stefan is doing pretty well himself.

Many of the things he showed in his session were projects that were covered in Made You Look. I’m glad that I read the book, so I could gain as much from this session as possible. It was also interesting to wait for the reaction from some of the attendees who have never read the book. When a fascinating production was shown on screen it was fun to see and hear the crowd’s reaction. It was like knowing the punch line to a joke. Of course there were countless things that weren’t covered in his book. Problems he had with printers, unique techniques and some newer projects.

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If you really want to know what is happening online there is only one place to go: the web. Duh. If you don’t have an internet connection, then go to a conference and listen to someone talk about the web. If you listen to one person talk about the web, listen to Tiffany Shlain. It’s worth it. Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webby Awards, is more than qualified to predict the future of the web. Following up on the 9th annual Webby Awards which were June 6. Tiffany was ready to share the hottest trends happening online.

Things happen so fast on the internet that it is really hard to predict the future. Most of this session was just reporting what is hot right now. Most of you are aware of these trends already: blogs, photo blogs, moblogs, wikepedia, corporate blogging, iTunes, and Google among trends having the biggest impact online right now. That is a ton of realy exciting stuff, even if most of us already know about it.

So what’s the future? Tiffany talked about the networking of barcodes. I also learned that the biggest growing population right now is senior citizens. Tiffany also had some good insight into the future of design. To paraphrase, she says “You don’t want sticky websites. The web is naturally slippery. Links add value to your site. If you provide good links, people will come back, and that is where true value comes from.” The other interesting thing she mentioned was about cell phones. As the cell phone increasingly takes a more important role on the web, designers need to take that into consideration. We need to understand all the ways the audience interacts with a site.

Overall, it was a good session that I could have listened to for much longer. As she rushed through the last sets of slides, it was obvious that she could have talked much longer, too.

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