Despite an ugly night of non-stop rain, Jeffrey Zeldman’s Small Talk event for AIGA New York went off without a hitch this evening. In fact, it went great; Jeffrey’s always entertaining, and he gave a spirited, insightful and often hilarious talk on the nature of selling great work to clients. The subject was a perfect match for the mixed audience of Web designers and print designers, and I think everyone got a little something out of it, regardless of how they earn their design dollars.
Just how many of each kind of designer attended, it’s hard to say. During one question, Jeffrey asked for a show of hands, and it looked like most of the room was populated by designers who work primarily online. Still, this is a salient question for AIGA that I’m keen to get an answer on. As I mentioned last week when I was promoting this event, we’ll be surveying the attendees for their opinions starting tonight, so if you attended, check your email.
As promised, we’ll be giving away some prizes to randomly selected survey respondents: two copies of Jeffrey’s “Designing with Web Standards (Second Edition),” each of which have been signed and dated by Jeffrey to commemorate tonight’s talk, and a free season pass to all four of next spring’s Small Talks.
Speaking of future Small Talks, we have three more coming up before the end of the fall 2006 season: Marc Joseph in November, Peter Arkle and Amy Goldwasser in December, and Emmanuelle Linard in January. All of these events take place in the beautiful venue generously provided for us by Bumble and bumble, and all of them are not-to-be-missed if you enjoy listening to incredibly sharp people talk about design.
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Hi Khoi,
Thanks for the Zeldman last night — I agree, it went off wonderfully. I’m a web designer, and attended with a print designer friend. The talk raised some interesting issues, discussed afterwards at length as we took further shelter from the endless rain, about the most productive ways for print designers to approach online design. Like many savvy print designers, she knows there’s a new standards-based order taking shape in web design and, on my recommendation, she has purchased Zeldman’s book and a few others by people like Dan Cederholm. But finding an accessible entry point to the world of code is difficult — on a larger scale, finding an accessible entry point to the world of web design seems to be an obstacle for many print designers. Thankfully, events like Zeldman’s help in every regard. They lead to discussion, understanding, and the rare feeling that print and web designers can, do and will work together coherently. It was heartening to be able to attend such an event… and that it was organized in the first place by the AIGA. Thanks again.
Kate Lane
GraphicDesignBar
Kate: Thanks for attending last night! Yeah, I was hoping that Jeffrey’s talk would have that kind of effect. I heard a little feedback along the lines of, “I thought he was going to talk about Web standards.” But I think that the talk was perfect becuase it underscored how a practicing Web designer faces some of the same challenges as a practicing print designer. In a way, this was the perfect thing for AIGA NY’s Small Talks series: it allows design notables to talk about unexpected design issues.