#circles2014

Last week I live-streamed the #Circles2014 conference. Let’s just pause for a second and think about how cool that is. Conferences are amazing and although I firmly believe that they are worth every penny things do very quickly add up. Luckily, more and more conferences are offering live streams for a fraction of the price. Yea, due to the time difference I had to get up really early, especially to catch my pal Becky Murphy talking, but it was all worth it. Besides a few little hiccups in the stream it was great to virtually attend. The above quote by Doug Bowman pretty much sums it up.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to catch all the talks, but the ones I did watch were amazing. I believe they all go online eventually, so I strongly urge you to keep an eye open for that. I think the best part of #circles2014 (besides the fact that I could watch it from bed, in my pjs) was the variety of speakers. I think certain design talks, no matter how interesting, can get a little repetitive after a while. Circles however did an amazing job at getting an awesome variety of speakers on stage and no two talks felt the same. I’d love to tell you which my favourite talks were, however since they really were so different, it’s kind of impossible to decide on.

Super duper quick summary of the stuff that really stuck with me: Kathleen Shannon talked about fear and telling you were to stick it (on the shelf, near the succulent, in case you were wondering); Becky Murphy reminded you to just get started, even if it’s far from perfect, and to measure progress, not comparison; Doug Bowman read my tweet out loud on stage (yeah that happened, it was weird and kind of cool) and talked about how twitter is amazing (it really is); Josh Higgins reminded us to never test a design you can not live with and other things he learnt while working on the Obama campaign; Jessica Hische had some great insight into the physical analog tools she uses and some of her progress when lettering; The Heads of State had a great reminder that you don’t really need to reinvent what’s already out there, but instead can look back on history for some new and fresh perspective; while Sean McCabe reminded us that the most important skill to have is how to learn, since that is the only thing that you will really always need; and that at the end of the day inspiration comes from rest (Kyle Steed) and being a full person (Danielle Evans aka the talented Marmalade Bleue)

Wanting to practice some of my calligraphy skills I started writing out a bunch of my favourite quotes from the two days. I’ll let you indulge in all these quotes (believe it or not, these are just my favourites, I still have so many more) and make sure you keep an eye open for all the talks online.

Feel free to Pin any of the quotes, they are made for sharing <3