Intro Active: Session 1

One of my goals this semester is to get more involved and take advantage of all the design lectures and events that will help to expand my horizon. Surprisingly enough, on the first week of classes an opportunity already arises. Jamie Gray, who is one of the assistant professors here at the Kansas City Art Institute is developing a lecture series for AIGA Kansas City about the state of web design in present times.

The first session focused on the current stage of online culture and social media and how designers can utilize these technologies in their own practice. Joe Grigsby, Director of Emerging Media at VML and Lisa Qualls, CEO at Fresh ID and President of Social Media Club Kansas City were the speakers for this first lecture. Both speakers did an amazing job, the were articulate, informative, and really held my attention throughout. As a young designer this lecture was extremely beneficial. Although the state of web design may change in the future the concepts they covered during the lecture are timeless, it's very much design thinking. For instance, Qualls had spoke about the necessity of relationships in human behavior that's why sites like Facebook and Twitter are so prevalent. As I mentioned, the web may change, but how can we as designers reinforce this behavior in our designs with the current technology. I was really wanting to write about a point that Griggs made on the Why's and What's, but I'm drawing a blank as to what they were right now so if anyone remembers please refresh my memory and leave me a comment. Anyways, I want to end this post with a quote from Griggs in honor of our current Typography assignment:

"The concept of design is creating a purposeful journey"

Also, if you guys didn't attend the previous session, I highly recommend going to the next one. I'm sure you'll learn a thing or two, I know I did.