Monday By Noon » FOWD

• Recapping the Future of Web Design NYC 2008

Jonathan Christopher — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:16:42 +0000

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was working my plans to include stops to upcoming conferences. The first of which was the Future of Web Design NYC and the second being the first Sidebar Workshop. While I couldn’t make it to Washington D.C. for Sidebar, I thankfully was able to make the short trip to New York for FOWD.

Unlike last year, I was able to make FOWD 2008 a two day event. While New York isn’t too far from Albany, making the round trip last year was quite a long day. On the day of the workshops, I met up with Colin Devroe and Chris Fehnel to hang out, and snag some awesome Thai for lunch and check out the Apple Store. We made a day of it, snagged a beer or two, and waited for conference day.

Conference day

FOWD had another spectacular lineup this year. The keynotes found a wide range of topics, and the variation was excellent.

Ryan Singer

Ryan Singer of 37signals again spoke on Web application design. He’s a great presenter, and his keynote “The Future of Web App Interface Design” didn’t disappoint. Ryan has the ability to bring interface design back to reality; reminding you that there’s no need to be clever, just straightforward.

Hillman Curtis

Hillman Curtis took the stage next for “Ten Minutes of Design Inspiration” during which he played one of his films. He has a fantastic talent for filmmaking and I’m glad to have seen him present live and in person.

Dan Mall

Presenting “The Experience Layer: Using Flash, JavaScript, and other Technologies to Engage Users” was Dan Mall of Happy Cog Studios. He took the time to explain the real difference between structure, style, behavior, and experience. His keynote was well thought out and better explained the semantics surrounding each layer of separation. I have no doubts that Dan’s presentation made quite a few people reexamine their view of designing with Web standards in mind.

Paul Boag

On the topic of client education was Paul Boag of Headscape Ltd. His personality really came through during his keynote and he was more than spot on with his advice. He has thoughtfully made his keynote available in full through the help of Carsonified and Viddler. If you’ve got a spare 35 minutes or so, use it to watch Paul’s keynote, he did a fantastic job and there’s some terribly valuable insight to gain.

Karl Swedberg

Karl Swedberg of Fusionary Media was next to take the stage. He took the time to lightly cover the topic of JavaScript libraries. We all love JavaScript libraries, and Karl presented his talk on “How to Take Advantage of jQuery and Other JavaScript Libraries for your Design.”

Mike Kus

Unfortunately for me, FOWD 2008 was the first time I’ve heard of Mike Kus and the first time I had seen his work. He took the time to hand illustrate each of his slides and his keynote was fantastic. His talk was titled “Whatever Happened to the Art in Design” and I’m very glad to have seen it.

Patrick Haney

Patrick Haney, who is not a sausage, took the time to cover “Web Design Fundamentals: Learning from the Past to Better the Future.” Patrick went back to basics with his keynote, reminding us all how important it is to keep design fundamentals in mind throughout every project. Although it was great to see him in person, I unfortunately was unable to speak with him personally. Hopefully that opportunity comes up sooner than later.

Nicholas Felton

Nicholas Felton, widely known for Feltron, presented on “Charting Daily Data” which was intriguing to say the least. I’ve always been a fan of his annual reports, and getting an insider view of how the reports progressed over time was fantastic. He also took the time to give an overview of his project, Daytum, a website targeted at enabling people to track their own daily data.

Derek Powazek

“The Future of Community and Crowd-sourced Design” was the keynote presented by Derek Powazek. Derek is a very personable speaker, and he seems like one of those people you can meet for the first time and feel like you’ve known for years. He cleared up the true meaning of crowd-sourced design and discussed where things appear to be headed.

Nick La

One of my favorite keynotes was “Finding Inspiration from your Environment” by Nick La of n.design studio and designer of the famous Web Designer Wall. His illustrations are nothing short of breathtaking, and he took the time to divulge his secrets as to finding inspiration. He gave a sneak peak of two upcoming pieces, and made everyone in the room jealous of his pure talent.

Closing Discussion

The final segment of the conference day was a discussion titled “Designers and Developers, Why Can’t we all Just get Along?” which aimed to tackle the up and coming divide between the two professions. The panel consisted of Joe Stump (digg), Liz Danzico (bobulate), Chris Lea (Media Temple), and Ryan Sims (Virb). Unfortunately, I was only able to stay for a few minutes due to travel constraints. If anyone was in attendance and could provide some insight in the comments that would be fantastic, I’m eager to hear how it went.

And that’s that

I had a great time at FOWD this year, Carsonified really knows what they’re doing and they make the experience really great. I can’t thank Colin and Chris enough for putting up with me over the two days; I really appreciate it.

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• Future of Web Design NYC 2007 Recap

Jonathan Christopher — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:27:31 +0000

This past week, a few of my co-workers and I took a trip down to New York City to check out the Future of Web Design conference at the Javits Center. Living a few miles north, and having lots to do the next day, my co-workers and I decided to make it a one day event. We hit the road at 4am, caught a train by 6:15am, and made it to Grand Central by quarter to 8am.

Registration Materials

We were pretty early to the Javits center, and the staff hadn’t started registration quite yet. We hung around for a bit, and eventually found ourselves some seats (2nd row goodness). As the conference center began to fill up, we started to notice the sun had taken an offensive to the projection screen, effectively masking the entire display. With some quick thinking, the organizers did the best they could by placing a plasma at the front of the crowd.

While not the best situation, it definitely helped the first few rows. Luckily, the entire conference was being taped, and Carsonified has generously decided to offer the missing visuals via Viddler. After averting this small disaster, the conference was a go.

Joshua Davis

Josh Davis

Joshua Davis really got things going right off the bat. I’ve never seen him speak before, but from what I’ve read, he always puts on a great presentation. His talk was titled “Finding Inspiration” and he spoke for some time about how he finds inspiration for the work he does. He put on display some of his techniques and it was a fantastic way to start the day.

Brian Fling

Brian Fling was up next with his presentation “Taking Your Site Mobile”. Brian spoke about how the future of Web design could have a lot to do with the mobile Web. He shed some light on the research he’s done on the medium and explained some effective ways of making your websites mobile.

Ryan Singer

Ryan talked a lot about the design strategies which have been so successful for 37 Signals. His talk was titled “Web Application Usability” and he offered some really great tips and tricks to raising the bar of UI design for your Web apps.

Cindi Li

Illustration has been behind some fantastic website designs as of late. Cindi Li took the time to present “Beautifying the Web with Illustration”, showing the various ways the incorporation of illustration can really enhance your overall site design.

Andy Clarke, Josh Williams, Jeffrey Zeldman

This famous trio based their discussion on “The Future of Web Design”. They spoke about the bubbling trend of design firms focusing more and more effort on their own products. What better way to control an end product than to keep it as your own? Some crowd-offered questions also added value to the talk by incorporating some thoughts on preparatory education for the Web field.

Jonathan Snook

Mr. Snook brought his expertise in the realm of AJAX to the table. His talk, “AJAX & Design” outlined effective use of AJAX to make your Web applications that much more useful and intuitive. He offered some tips and tricks along the way that undoubtedly got some people thinking about a new way to do things.

Jina Bolton

“CSS3 and What Could Be” was the title of Jina Bolton’s talk. She took the time to outline some of the more exciting features of CSS3, including working with advanced layout, multiple background images, and more. She took the time to give some insight on how using these new offerings can really help both with issues such as bandwidth, as well as a way to create more semantic markup.

Elliot Jay Stocks

Elliot Jay Stocks had a really great presentation entitled “Destroying The Web 2.0 Look”. He provided the crowd with an itemized list of elements to get “the look” and definitively proclaimed “You’re only allowed to use a logo reflection if your company name has the word ‘reflect’ in it”. Fantastic.

Mathew Patterson

Mathew Patterson reminded everyone that HTML email is never going anywhere. His presentation, “Good Practices in Newsletter/Email Design”, revolved around the fact that HTML email is practically unavoidable, but we should really take the time and effort to make the best of it.

David Martin

I really enjoyed David Martin’s presentation, mostly because he shares many of my thoughts when it comes to Flash. His talk was titled “Flashturbation”, and he spoke of the problem with Flash when it comes to animating everything in sight. I truly believe that Flash has its place on the Web, and designers/developers are making better use of it as time goes on. David put some of his companys award winning sites on the chopping block due to blatant Flashturbation, and explained that Flash can be used in a much more effective manner.

Jeffrey Kalmikoff

Jeffrey spoke about the effect site designs can have when it comes to community involvement in his talk titled “Community-Centered Design”. He explained that when you’re working on aspects of a heavily trafficked community website, sometimes your changes don’t go over well. Sometimes design can become truly community-based due to the feedback you receive.

Lea Alcantara

Brand design was the topic of conversation in Lea Alcantara’s “Building a Brand through Design”. She covered topics as broad as overall brand design process, but also went into applicable details regarding brand delivery.

Keith Robinson & Ryan Sims

To finish things off, Keith Robinson & Ryan Sims walked the crowd through their process when it came to their redesign of the very popular IMDb.com. It was really great to see both the similarities and differences of process comparing theirs to what I’m more familiar with. I find it interesting when you’re provided that ‘fly on the wall’ perspective.

Closing

FOWD crowd

The Future of Web Design 2007 was the first ‘official’ Web conference I’ve had the ability to attend, but I really enjoyed it quite a bit. New York City in and of itself is an exciting place to be, but pairing that with the ability to listen to such intelligent people speak all day is really icing on the cake.

My only disappointment was my inability to meet a few more people face to face. I know that there were a number of people in attendance that I would have really liked to meet, but squeezing everything into a single day interfered quite a bit. I’m really glad I was able to make it to FOWD, and I hope it was the first of many conferences I’ll be able to attend.

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