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Swissmiss, Tina Roth Eisenberg, at the first CreativeMornings in Chicago
Breakfast lecture series CreativeMornings is Tina Roth Eisenberg’s creation. A designer who focuses on her own products/apps, Eisenberg also runs the personal and popular design journal Swissmiss. Being an avid scout of all things Swissmiss—particularly her simple browser-based to-do app, Teux Deux, and new designy temporary tattoo shop, Tattly—I looked forward to CreativeMornings’ presence in Chicago.(1) It kicked off with a talk by Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners. His presentation was brief but packed with motivating bits, such as:
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And:
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The event delivered lean and local sharing of information. The qualities of brevity and a sense of place aren’t new for conferences, yet CreativeMornings demonstrates them. And when experienced at the start of a workday, they are accentuated—even more so in a place where people come to “get inspired.” While that phrase may seem trite, it’s also a human tendency, a basic one. Why judge it as a cliché? People, like Coudal, are inspired to make things and make them succeed. Nothing cheesy here. More than a lecture series, CreativeMornings is a sermon series. Author and Founder of The School of Life, Alain de Botton, said that “A sermon wants to change your life and a lecture wants to give you a bit of information. I think we need to go back to that tradition of sermon in education.”
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Workspace of Gravitytank
An inspirational sermon-of-sorts proved to be my first taste of CreativeMornings. I also left with a dry throat, after meeting numerous participants. The insights in Coudal’s presentation were complemented with the ease of making introductions: with Paul Octavious(2), whose photography I’ve been admiring; Margot Harrington of Pitch Design Union, and whom I later discovered also writes for The Fox Is Black (formerly Kitsune Noir); Chad Kouri and Alex Fuller of The Post Family, whose diverse work in graphic design, printing, and more, is tremendous.
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Jim Coudal speaking at the first CreativeMornings in Chicago.
Photograph by Chris Gallevo
It’s been awhile—years, actually—since I attended a design-related meet-up. I’d been discouraged by presentations without substance (more pontificating than signal) and presenters without style (more disconnection than engagement). Large, expensive conferences are getting reexamined and scrutinized, whereby a conference is not beholden to large audiences and scenes, and the venue’s production values are not more noteworthy than the presenters and their points of view. CreativeMornings is a refreshing counterpoint to the conference bloat. In a way, it’s responsive social design: high in signal and engagement, lean and local. CreativeMornings is my kind of design conference.
(1) When an individual pursues ideas in a consistently get-it-real way, like a film director whose work (no matter the frequency of release) is both publicly and critically acclaimed, her/his history of craft and making nurtures the promotion of the next creative effort made real.
(2) Update, 4-27-2013: Photographer Paul Octavious spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #17.
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Big thanks to: organizer Mig Reyes, videographer Craig Shimala, photographer Chris Gallevo, and Admin of Awesome Victoria Pater, for their great work on making CreativeMornings happen in Chicago.
Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008. The fifth chapter was launched in Chicago, June 2011—my write-up and photos.
Read more about the people who make the Chicago chapter of CreativeMornings possible.
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My coverage: view more photos of 1st CreativeMornings in Chicago; read more write-ups about Chicago CreativeMornings.
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Typeface of Coudal’s quotes is called Massive designed by Shawn Hazen, who also makes awesome typographic illustrations for series Creative Roles.
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2011 was Chicago CreativeMornings’ debut year. Download the entire collection of selected insights.
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