Some of the highlights from some sessions I attended during the day were:

Blake Mycoskie, otherwise know as TOMS shoe founder. He’s an entrepreneur, a really good, inspiring speaker and obviously good at what he’s done. He spoke about the history of TOMS, the challenges he faced and revealed that this summer, TOMS will be growing significantly.

Mike Kruzeniski spoke about “How Print Design is the Future of Interaction”.
What I got from this session: Regardless of the debate whether print is dead, print design is not.
You can see notes from this presentation here: http://alturl.com/azokg

One of my favorite sessions was with Sarah Nelson (@sarahbeee) “Creative and Effective Leadership in Design Environments”
She started with the statement “normal people don’t do this”, as in, normal people don’t get up in the morning and try to do creative problem solving and then try to manage others that are doing this also. She gave tips on the best ways to start projects to avoid “time bombs”.

I also attended Lynn Teo’s “Designing iPad Interfaces”
She pretty much did a slideshow of cool iPad interfaces, but as an expert pointed out what does and doesn’t work and also gave us some tips and tricks. For instance the thing that is great about the iPad is that it’s supposed to be more interactive than a website, so you can design to make the app intriguing. Give users an interface where they can learn as they use it and are discovering things along the way. What I thought was intersting is that she had commented at the beginning of the talk that the iPad content is more shallow than a typical website, but is more engaging, which I thought tied into the previous session I attended who’s claim was that print design is the future of interactive.

Of course every night there was some sort of sponsored ummm, networking opportunity. My favorite evening events were the AMODA laptop battles and the Funny or Die party that was held at the Highball Bowling Alley, which, btw was amazingly vintage, and we had to order a round of white russians (see my pics here: http://alturl.com/pr8m8).

Oh and I can’t forget to mention that the entire weekend I was checking in at places using Gowalla and one morning I checked into the ACC and found that I had won a Southwest Air round trip ticket, awesome!

All-in-all, it went way too fast and I had way too much fun and was way exhausted by the end of it, but, can’t wait to go back again!

I created some baby announcements for an online card company.

One of the events I will be attending this week is the HB Hanratty’s “Crepes and Craft Beer” party. Whee. Check out the menu I created for the event for them!

When we first started the project, they didn’t have a logo or brand and didn’t really have the time or budget to create those things, since they are a non-profit. So we decided that I’d do a few mood boards and they could choose the style of the website from the three mood boards, it worked out quite well doing it that way.

Below are the mood boards I came up with, all using photography from the monument area which is where I pulled a lot of the colors from also. Being a native Arizonan I had an advantage of having an idea for the look and feel of the monuments surroundings. The first board I created is a fresh modern look, using bright, but earthy colors, and patterns and fonts reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s style, who has many designs around this area.

The second board has a rugged, hand-drawn look, as if someone was walking through the area and sketching plants and animals they might find on the way. In the end this was the chosen design, and I did actually hand draw the plant and animal sketches and scanned them in to use for the layout.

The third board is focusing on the heritage and history of the monuments area. Using an older style font and antiquated and black and white photos, I wanted to convey the importance of preserving the history of this area.

Another website design I’ve been working on was for a mobile design and development company. They had a logo, but was not necessarily attached to a look/feel or even colors. They wanted to replace their current site with something more eye catching. We started out with a couple designs for the homepage and then built the interiors once a homepage look/feel was nailed down.

Sadly for me (but good for them), the company has gone through some changes that I’m not at liberty to talk about, but will not be moving forward with the development to their site.

I’ve been hard at work on two other website designs in the last few months that I’m not going to be publishing until the launch of the sites, but they are going to be big and beautiful. If you’re looking to hire me and you’d like a preview of those sites, email me and I can send you a sneak peek.

And I found this last one that I did Keane a few years ago in my archives, so I thought I’d throw it in here too.