Teddy Hwang

It’s hard to gather all of my thoughts on SXSW but I know that if I don’t attempt to do it now, I’ll procrastinate until the event is nothing but a blurry image in my faulty memory.

SXSW Interactive lived up to the hype. In five short days, I was inspired by great panels, met amazing people, had a lot of fun at the endless parties and generally learned a lot about what it takes to be a great designer. I have every intention of doing it again next year.

Inspiring Panels and One Awkward Interview

I can’t say that all the panels were great. Some weren’t applicable, others were dry in content, and there was at least one awkward interview that people couldn’t stop talking about. However, two panels really helped solidify my views and gave me great inspiration as a designer. Those panels were Respect! and Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Great Design Hurts. I won’t reiterate everything I learned from the panels but some key messages that inspired me were:

• People don’t respect what they don’t understand. As designers, we have to educate our clients, our coworkers and anybody else that’s involved in the project the process we go through. Everybody should be involved in the beginning of the project to manage expectations and to keep everyone in sync.
• We need to work closely with copy writers from the beginning of the project. There’s often a very antagonistic relationship between the designer and the copy writer because designers often have to wait for the content which slows everybody down. Don’t use Lorem ipsum and use real content even if it’s a draft.
• Reemphasize on the principals of the project. We need to continually update our clients on the status of the design process because a web design is often not the highest of priorities in their minds.
• Design is more than pixel dust and colors. Design also solves problems.
• The designer should make the design decisions. Do your research and set yourself up to be the expert.
• Design is emotional and subjective. There is no minimum requirements to have an opinion about a design. You would need to know something about Ruby to give an opinion about Ruby code.
• Good design does not correlate with less resistance. Better design implies that it is different and different is scary, especially for clients and managers. If you’re comfortable with the design, it’s probably not that great. The common quote that clients or bosses give is “exactly the same but different”.
• Clients and managers don’t want to take risks and again, they want to be comfortable.
• When a design is costly, people expect a lot of design. Paul Rand was the designer of the 20th century - his work was expensive but the final logo results were very simple.
• “You don’t create good design by being original; you create original design by being good.”
• Compromise is avoiding conflict. Great design is conflict.
• Design is making decisions and packaging them as a whole.
• “No”. It’s a great word to get great design. Consequently, are you willing to be called an asshole?

Wow, that list turned out to be a lot longer than I expected. As you can imagine from just my notes, these two panels had a lot of substance - information you can chew on and digest when you go back home.

Meeting People that are Changing the Web

You’ll meet a lot of web wizards at SXSW. I was fortunate enough to meet the Pownce team, Cal Henderson (flickr founder), Kevin Rose (Digg founder), Mark Zuckerberg (facebook founder), Gary Vaynerchuck (Wine Library TV), and many more. It’s quite intimidating to approach them at first but most of them are very down to earth and will spend what little time they have to chat with you.

Endless Parties and Some Crappy Pictures

There isn’t much to say on this end. As can be expected, the parties were a lot of fun. Check out my flickr photo set for the conference. I didn’t take too many pictures and the quality is pretty poor. I’ll do better on that front next year.

Thank You + iPhone

None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for the fine folks at Spheric that sponsored my flight and badge. Thank you! Meeting up with Adam MacDonald and David Chan of Spheric was awesome as well. They know how to have a good time and I hope we can all do it again next year. Thank you to all those that I met; I hope to keep in contact with all of you throughout the year.

Oh and I couldn’t resist. I bought a 16 gig iPhone. What a great trip.