Starting with Tuesday morning, my brain went into over drive. We got the most succinct run down of the history of branding by Debbie Millman. The premise that successful brands today represent the promise of a new community or family. In short, there are more people living solo today than ever before which goes against the human nature of needing family or a tribe. Through social media, humans have found a new way to connect and create family. Brands that deliver the promise of this connection will ultimately be the successful ones. I felt a little depressed with this, but somehow it explained why I don’t have the drive to jump into social media on a personal level with the exception of wanting to police my daughter’s Face Book page… I get it, but it makes me sad. It makes me want to do all I can as a designer to help people make more human connections in person.
We rolled into a fabulous talk given by Sam Harrison on how to sell your ideas. We’ve all been there and all left a pitch thinking, “they don’t get it.” – Sam gave us a few tricks to help smooth the process out. I wonder if he has ever pitched to a group that insists on 100% consensus? We picked up his book idea selling to sleep on and hopefully absorb it through osmosis.
At that point we jumped over to a quick session on specializing your firm. This is worth an entire blog as I continue to be unsure of our direction here.
And to top it all off we danced our butts off to the tunes of The Jakarta Band. It was a white party, but we didn’t get the memo until we were already in Denver so had to come up short with white outfits. Wonder if my legs would have sufficed? More community. More connection.
The last sad but sweet day created more internal questions and more resolve.
Sum it up- HOW was amazing and I highly recommend it to any designer no matter how big or small.
