Future of Web Design, London 2007 · Apr 20, 17:48

Simon Jones and I attended the FOWD recently. Walking up to the blazing sunshine and blue skies I ‘pegged’ it to the station and made it on to the train by skin of my teeth! We arrived at the venue with 5 minutes to spare so after a quick sign-up process we got some seats the Great Hall.

First up to speak was Brendan Dawes from MagneticNorth giving an insight into ‘Finding Your Creative Vein’. I was familiar with some of his work so my expectations were met when he proceeded to draw inspiration from 50’s cowboys movies, Deal Or No Deal and origami swans left for him to discover when he fell asleep on a train, all the time managing to relate these experiences back to the world of interactive/online media. All in all a brilliant creative mind and I totally intend on checking out his book Analogue In, Digital Out and I think you should too!

Following Brendan were Ryan Singer from 37 Signals, George Oats from Flickr, and Denise Wilton from Moo. Deviating from the visually creative mind set and more into the world of web apps and usability, not as exciting to me as Brendan but still some really interesting approaches to building character around your website and engaging the user by making their experience as simple, quick, easy and entertaining as possible.

After the break came the real highlights for me. William Rosen from Leo Burnett had a slow start but smashed it with his example case studies for the Verb Big Yellow Ball campaign, BEHR paint application and XBOX 360/Cadillac campaign for Project Gotham Racing. A real eye-opener into online/offline brand experience and value exchange for consumers. Leo Burnett definitely know how to nail the process and generate fantastic ideas that take the art of marketing and brand loyalty to intergalactic levels!

The second heavyweight to hit the stage was Nat Hunter from Airside. Another company where the creativity constantly surprises and twists the process all over the place, switching media and introducing humour to every aspect of their work! Think St. Peppers Lonely Hearts crossed with the DJ/Producer Mr. Scruff and you’ll be half way there! Big highlight from Nat was the alien god Meekotoph here on our planet to help confused earthlings at music festivals such as the Big Chill, a comedy moment of epic proportions with an unexpected take on the way people can respond to machines, whether they know they are doing so or not!

Big Spaceship were up next with a fantastic insight into their ethos, office culture and the attention to detail that goes into their multi-disciplinary work for huge clients such as Nike. Joshua Hirsch – ‘Minister of Technology’ at Big Spaceship was a little one-dimensional but incredibly serious about the importance of ‘play’, ‘downtime’ or ‘R&D’ at the company where 50% of the team are made up of creatives. It seems that most of the great ideas that end up in their client projects evolve from this focus on self-development for each member of the team.

And some comments from Si…

Andy Clarke woke us all up after lunch with a fabulous “Top Gear” inspired Cool Wall of websites. He dragged Ryan Carson and Simon Collison on stage with him, and ended up declaring Microsoft cooler than Yahoo, to much boos and chortling in the audience.

His ideas on XHTML prototypes to replace static wireframes to help communicate interactivity and “get things done quicker” were great. Something we’ve been trying out recently on more interactive projects.

It was good to see Adobe again promoting Apollo, though the talk didn’t really leave me any more enlightened. Luckily I managed to chat to one of their ground staff afterwards who took me through the basics. Certainly a technology to watch out for.

In all, an excellent conference with possibly too much crammed in but I guess that’s the way single-day conferences are always going to feel. It was great to meet some interesting people, and the evening social was a success; you can’t argue with a free bar 10 minutes from the venue. I hope FOWD carries on from strength to strength in future years…

— David Rendle


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