Tuesday’s HOW Conference: Getting Back To Basics.

Following the glut of comments we got on our last HOW post, we thought we’d keep this one a little more concise. After all, you were probably all there anyway, being the dedicated professionals we know and love.

So, Tuesday’s day at HOW kicked off with Debbie Milman, President of the AIGA and the Design Division of Sterling Brands. So in short, she’s a heavy hitter in the design biz. The title of her presentation was “Why We Brand, Why We Buy,” and that was enough to get us there early for a decent seat.

Milman started the session with a question she had been asked a while ago—“why is MySpace so popular?” She informed us that the answer to the question was one she just couldn’t answer without doing a little research. And that took her back 50,000 years, to the time when the human brain changed and we evolved beyond the “reptilian brain.”

From there, it was something of a history lesson interspersed with branding icons, and we learned that modern branding really started on January 1st, 1876 with the Trademarks Regulation Act. The first brand to emerge from that was Bass Ale. So it looks like we had our priorities straight as a species even then.

From that point, until the present day, we were given the “5 Waves Of Modern Brand Evolution.” They are:

Wave 1: 1875-1920 – Brands are a guarantee of consistency

Wave 2: 1920-1965 – Brands are a guarantee of quality

Wave 3: 1965-1985 – Brands are expressive statements

Wave 4: 1985-2000 – Brands are an experience

Wave 5: 2000-present – Limbic Brands, a guarantee of connectivity

If that all sounds high-falutin, there’s a complete explanation of this “new” lecture here, which was actually given much earlier in the year. This explains why quite a few people knew the answer to Debbie’s “what was the first brand trademarked?” question, which she said only two people in the room would know as they are the only two that had seen the presentation. Well, not quite. But that’s a small gripe.

No, the bigger gripe after all of this build-up was that the original question was never actually answered. We were waiting to see where all of this had taken Debbie, and what the answer was to the MySpace question. After all, it was popular a few years ago, now it’s reserved for garage bands and tweens.

No answer was forthcoming. No insight. The session ended with a basic “and that’s how we got to where we are today” wrap up, followed by applause and the chance for audience questions. But no one cared, with everyone getting to their feet before she could even finish the word ‘questions’ and ran off to the lobby to check email.

So Debbie, if you are reading this, could you please answer that question for us. Why was MySpace so popular, what did you tell your friend, and why did it begin the long, slow dive into obscurity?

Up next was Maria Giudice with a lecture called “Don’t Go It Alone: Using Collaboration To Solve Creative Design Problems.” As it turns out, solving problems was the theme for the rest of the day, with the two sessions in the afternoon focusing on brainstorming and concepting techniques. But more on those in a second.

Maria took us through her career as an artist and designer, from the days when she was knee-high to a pig’s eye, until present day. The revelation of collaborative design came to her when she entered one of the most prestigious design schools in New York, and realized quite quickly that the “lone rock star designer” was prized above collaboration.

Turning her back on that premise, Maria then gave us the guiding principles behind her collaboration techniques, which have stood her in good stead from her first job to her current role at Hot Studio. The tips and techniques also included a “brainstorming kit” which you should all look into creating. The presentation is available here if you’re interested, but here’s a quick rundown of the salient points:

1: Get Physical and Tactile. Basically, get people off their chairs, plaster the walls with Post-Its, write things down everywhere, and use the floors, the walls and the windows.

2: Think Out Loud. We all know this, but there are no bad ideas in a brainstorm, so shout ‘em out. Use mind mapping, word lists and think in a non-linear way.

3: Unload Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts. Here, get everyone to say or write down what they fear. What are the road blocks? What are the impossibilities? This should be cathartic.

4: Collect Hopes, Dreams and Aspirations.

5: Communicate visually. Get touchy-feely, go back to basics, use Lego and Colorforms.

6: Share the road. Do what you can to enable collaboration of ideas.

7: Prioritize and synthesize. Converge the ideas, cut them down to the core.

There was much more to the presentation, but the main takeaway is one that anyone in the creative industry could, and should, benefit from; two heads are better than one. Bill Bernbach said it, and we believe it. Done right, with a good moderator, group brainstorming can lead to solid ideas.

And that’s a handy segue into the third speaker of the day, David Sherwin of Frog Design. His enticing session, “Better Ideas Faster: How To Brainstorm More Effectively” delivered everything the title teased to, and more. Much more.

David approaches brainstorming and ideation in a way that seems almost clinical, but the results are anything but. Here, we start in a world where “quantity breeds quality” and ideas should be thrown at the board with all deliberate speed.

The stages of David’s brainstorming process went something like this:

1: Strategy. What business problem are you trying to solve?

2: Articulation. Turn those problems into questions.

3: Brainstorm using the questions above, and timeboxing (look that up, it works well). Other brainstorming techniques worth checking out include mind mapping; word listing; picture association; brute thinking; idea inversion; free-form sketching; role playing; deconstruction; future casting; 10 x 10 doodling (a grid of 100 tiny doodles done in minutes).

4: Set impossible goals to create unexpected ideas.

5: Connect existing ideas to new ones.

6: Don’t fall in love with first ideas. Act like you’re speed dating.

7: Capture big ideas with simple tools (this was a recurring point throughout HOW…basically, use a pen and paper, stop thinking on your computers).

8: Express ideas in ways that travel beyond the page (use video, collage etc).

9: Write it first, then sketch it. Again, the emphasis is on thinking.

10: Sketch your ideas like a designer, not an artist.

11: Design to your own deadlines, not the ones imposed on you.

12: Use intuition. (Intuition DOES NOT come with repetition, it comes with practice. And as David so rightly says, intuition fuels great design).

David’s presentation was by far the most thorough, thought-out and instructional of the past few days, and that was really appreciated. Where some speakers left things very open to interpretation, David was quite happy (and brave enough) to plant his flag firmly in the sand and say “do it this way, it works.” Much kudos to David for a great presentation.

The final session of the day was called “Creating Five-Alarm Concepts” by Von Glitschke, and was on a par with the previous David Sherwin session. Once again, Von dared to give specific advice and techniques. But rather than reveal them here, parrot-fashion, we’ll give you something to look forward to. Von told us the entire presentation will be available at the following address on Thursday morning, for a limited time: www.tinyurl.com/5alarmconcepts. However, we tried it earlier and downloaded the full 80Mb file. Anyway, we will leave that one hanging out there for you, a gift from us to you via the very talented Von Glitschke.

The HOW Conference wraps up Wednesday at around noon, and we’ve certainly learned a ton from it already. Hopefully the last morning is as fulfilling as the last few days.