So, I spent the last couple of days learning about 'the future' at the Future of Web Design conference in wonderful New York City. It was great fun. There were lots of interesting topics and inspiring people. Here is a brief run down:
Day 1
There were talks on a wide range of topics including designing for mobile, flash design, AJAX, finding inspiration and CSS3. My personal highlights were Ryan Singer's (37signals) talk on web usability, Ryan Sims' (Virb) and Keith Robinson's tag team approach to redesigning a site like IMDb. Also Jeffrey Kalmikoff skinnyCorp had an excellently presented chat about community-centred design.The evening finished off with a Media Temple hosted party in the heart of NYC offering free booze and three floors of DJs. I chatted to, amongst others, Tyson an awesome designer at Virb and Keegan from The Big Noob.
Day 2
The day was made up of two workshops. In the morning Ryan Singer talked through his approach to usability for web apps. The main theme was focus on keeping the design as close to reality as possible. For instance, no lorem ipsum, keep the content real.In the afternoon, I went to Lea Alcantara's branding workshop. This touched on many things I was already aware of from the web design sphere, but it was interesting to hear it from a branding perspective. A highlight was having to interview her as an Italian chef.
All-in-all it was an inspiring couple of days. I look forward to future events arranged by Carson Systems, along with getting back to a good round of Photoshop back in the UK.