My next session was with Kevin McConkey. If you take the letter ‘c’ out of his name, his last name is Monkey. He spoke about dealing with burnout. “A career in design is a gift from the gods,” says Kevin McConkey, principal and co-founder of Grip in Chicago.

He says to really get out of a burnout situation you need to change both your physical and mental state. This usually includes sleep, sex, and/or exercise.

He taught us how to Find our Inner Bullshit.

Also, when you have an angry client, stop and do these 3 things:

1. Validate their feelings; say ”I understand.”

3. Remove yourself by citing company policy. Then give the client choices of how they would like to proceed next. This frees you from blame and decision making.

Remember - graphic designers are commercial artists, not fine artists. We need to make our clients money.

And he also made a point to stress helping others and doing things that make your heart feel better at the end of the day.

My 3rd session was Staying Creative with Shelley Armstrong. She leads the MicroSoft XBox creative team. She also paints watercolors. She did not use a lot of creativity or vocal expression in her talk, but made many strong points if you kept your eyes and ears open. Some of what I took away included:

Xbox green is PMS376.

And most importantly: This is the best job in the world, enjoy it!

But the day was not over… I still had Logo Notion with Steph Geissbuhler. He spoke about logo design - being precise, functional, emotional, etc…

He gave theory to use when designing and presenting logos. He also showed real life samples of work his company did and how/why they developed the logos they did. I enjoyed the Case Studies because of the great explanations and visuals that accompanied them. They were not just a portfolio, like some presenters do.

Monday night lead us to the Yupo Paper Party. It was supposed to be a rooftop party, but it started to rain. So it was in a small bar filled with 3 large 4-poster beds. There was free food, 2 open bars and a DJ spinning.  The mood was light and everyone had a great time. We took lots of pictures - please email me if you need the link to them.

Following the party, a pub crawl began around 9:30pm. We went to 3 bars till 3am. There was heavy metal Karaoke with a live band, some How Chyx and Cabana Boy initiations (http://howchyx.com/) and lots of friends and fun. I lost count of the 60+ people who were there. It was fun to see some of the session presenters out with the gang. And for some, the party continued on until 6:45am.

The 2nd day of the HOW conference brought a combination of business (a bit) and pleasure (a lot).

We spent some daytime hours sleeping, had a yummy brunch buffet, and then napped. The 3 R-Designers made it to the hotel pool around 1pm. The city was hot and the water was cold. We hung out with friends and made new HOW friends until about 4. Then it was time to get pretty.

There was a Sunday evening Networking Event planned at the Georgia World Congress Center. We hopped on busses around 5:15 and got to a foyer full of mayhem with people passing out business cards. There was a networking game that led us on a wild goose chase meeting new people. It worked - I met lots of people. Including a woman who could sing “Georgia on My Mind” and a guy who did a cool pocket knife magic trick. And Justine - the girl with a video camera on her hat.  And one of the HOW Design winners who works in the Empire State Building. I think it’s pretty cool when your business card address actually says “Empire State Building”!

Following the networking session we heard the hand-clapping, foot-stomping sounds of The Alabama A&M gospel choir.  What an uplifting performance!  It was a great way to start things off.

Following the choir was the Keynote Speaker of the event, there to teach us all to be “ballsy”. Karen Salmansohn has chutzpah and told us when and why we should too. Someone told me when I was applying to colleges to “be my own cheerleader because no one else is going to.” Karen was kinda like that too.

Monday morning, we attended a great opening session with Chip Kidd, entitled ‘A Number of People: The Spaces In Between’.  We were supposed to guess what that title meant. I can tell you if you email me. He was funny, entertaining and inspiring. In the future, I hope to steal his jokes. You can hear his ha-ha’s here:

http://www.howconference.com/downloads/soundbytes/ChipKidd.mp3

My notes include remarks such as:

Teach yourself how to write, infuse their heads with sensations.

Keep a Wonderdrawer - items that you made that you can’t use yet but should be saved in case you can use them later.