Tuesday May 20 8:46 AM
In small doses, good design makes the world a better place. Too much good design all at once is numbing. I've seen enough good design to kill a horse. The design conference is going well. I'm being exposed to some amazing design, which is always inspiring. I've heard some horror stories about one presenter who appeared to be crazy. She spent the first twenty minutes describing the horrible abusive relationship she just left, and when people started walking out she chased them down and called them chickens. I'm glad that my seminars and workshops have been more useful.

Yesterday afternoon I took a class called "The Designer's Guide to Research" which was eye-opening. It was perfect, exactly what I wanted to get out of this conference. The husband-and-wife team explained how to do research for a design project, and how to use the results to inform the design. There are at least four research steps before getting to the actual design, then two research steps after to ensure the design had an effect.

My other class was about using Photoshop, but it was aimed beneath my skill level so I left early. The most interesting class I took was about decoding symbols in design. It was mainly a book pitch, but she went through the numbers one through five and explained their symbolic or archetypal meanings. I may actually buy the book. One is a circle, whole. Two is the MasterCard symbol, with an almond-shaped intersection. It represents division, but also multiplication. Three is a triangle, which can mean several things like man, woman, fire, earth and also the number three. Which seemed a little circular to me. Get it? Circular?

*chirp* *chirp*

After classes we went to Cambridge for dinner. There was a great bar called The Miracle of Science where we met a guy from Tank Design who was only there because it was his neighborhood bar. He didn't even know there was a design conference going on. I unfortunately misplaced my Geek Card, but Errick had his and it was worth some free drinks.

We headed to a bar called the People's Republik where we played darts with a few more locals. They were very friendly. I could see living here, as it reminds me of Uptown in Minneapolis.

I'm heading into a class on combining type and images. I'm weak on typography, so this should turn me into an expert. I hope they don't show too much more excellent design, though. It's getting hard to walk around here for all the horse corpses.