Attending the 2007 HOW conference

Take 3,500 graphic designers. Add 50 inspiring speakers. Place in design-savvy Atlanta and stir.

That's the recipe for the 2007 HOW Design Conference which Hayslett Group director of creative services, Michelle Clark, recently attended. Thousands of creative professionals descended upon Atlanta for nearly four days of sessions, networking and, yes, fun. Below, Michelle shares her insights and highlights from the conference.

The event opened with a proclamation by the Atlanta City Council that June 8—15 was officially declared "Atlanta Design Week" — in recognition not only of the HOW Conference but of an entire week's worth of activities organized by AIGA/Atlanta. The conference was packed with intensive workshops on a wide array of creative and technology topics. Highlights include:

Ballsy: Ways to Score Extreme Business Success: Karen Salmansohn, best-selling author and ad-biz veteran, shared how to be “ballsier” —and motivated attendees with "psyche-chology" techniques to maintain the passion to pursue career goals.

Says Michelle: It is always good to step back and examine how you can help yourself and your teammates become more “ballsy!”

A Number of People: Sometimes it feels like you're solving the same design or communication problem over and over. Speaker Chip Kidd, with a 20-year career at publishing house Alfred A. Knopf, has designed more than 800 book jackets—that's almost one a week! Even more astounding is the diversity of imagery and type treatments within that mammoth collection.

Says Michelle: The lesson here was originality, no matter how narrow the discipline. Definitely refreshing.

Collaboration: Keeping Multifaceted Projects Cohesive: Design principles of consistency are vital on large corporate teams. Shelley Armstrong, art director of the in-house design group for Microsoft's Xbox, "Every detail is important and every consumer touch point is an opportunity to reinforce the brand and the design." But making a product such as Xbox 360 or Zune look like it was designed by one hand—working across functional groups such as marketing, retail, hardware, software, usability, packaging and more—means taking collaboration to the next level.

Says Michelle: We do a lot of integrated communications at Hayslett Group, and I found this presentation inspiring and amazing. The amount of strategy, communication and quite frankly patience involved with working in a collaborative group that is not only made up of multiple people, but multiple offices around the world, was breathtaking and helps keep our day-to-day struggles in perspective.

The last bit of advice I will share is from the closing session speaker, Sheila Campbell, former vice president of ad agency Earle Palmer Brown and founder and president of Wild Blue Yonder consulting firm, whom urged—demanded, even—that designers take time to recharge their creative batteries by turning off the BlackBerry and leaving the office at 6 p.m….at least once in a while.

Good advice for all of us.

For more on the HOW conference, visit http://www.howconference.com/.

For more on HOW Magazine, visit http://www.howdesign.com/.

Some text excerpted from HOW editor Bryn Mooth's recap of event as well as from formal HOW descriptions of sessions.