Early in my career I was an in-house designer for a publishing company. For the most part this was a great experience and taught me a great deal. The drawback however was the limited scope of the job I was doing. While at first I had a ton to learn about the educational publishing business, after a period of time I came to understand the business very well, and the amount of learning I was doing slowed greatly. While I think there is great value in becoming an expert in a particular area or discipline I felt that for me the area I wished to become an expert in, was design as a discipline, and not confined to a particular market.

After I moved on and began to work as a freelance designer I was energized by the process of learning about my client’s businesses. I have learned about the inner workings and challenges of countless businesses over the years and I am still excited every time I have the opportunity to learn more. From high-speed data recorders for science and military use, to cryogenic pumps used in semiconductor production, to the design of custom microchips and circuit boards, I have an understanding of so many businesses and innovative products and solutions that I would have never been exposed to were it not for my profession as a designer.

A recent project kick-off was for an extremely innovative company in Boston called Kiva Systems. Kiva has revolutionized the way product retailers manage their warehouses and fulfill orders. While only at the beginning of the project, I have already learned so much more than I would have ever known about how a product gets to my door when I click “Checkout” on a retailer’s website. In a demonstration I was able to witness how an order could be fulfilled in a manner of minutes after the order was submitted on the website. Unlike traditional warehouse systems where workers who receive an order have to go out and search through the warehouse to find all the products that I ordered, the Kiva System brings the products to the person who then put’s the order in a box for shipping. Through a complex system of software and robots, the shelves that contain the products that I ordered are brought to the person to put in the box. Watching the robots move the shelves around the warehouse is like watching a dance performance. You can check out videos on their site to see this amazing system in action.

Once again I am learning about a business that I had no previous knowledge of and certainly never would have known anything about were it not for my profession. You would think this would help me in Trivial Pursuit, but unfortunately you would be wrong. What it does help me with is being a better designer and maintaining my passion for what I do.

Seeing as How Magazine was nice enough to bring their annual design conference to Denver, I thought it made sense to go down for the day and take in a few sessions. I’ve always been a fan of How Magazine. They tend to have business focus in a lot of their articles and are less about just showing lot’s of nice design work. I have also been to a How Conference before and felt that I got a great deal of inspiration out of the experience. I still remember David Carson’s talk and his great sense of humor.

For this year’s conference I chose to attend sessions by Tony Mikes, Sam Harrison, and John January & Tug McTighe. Tony Mike’s session was titled, “Is Your Agency Interesting.” As an agency owner I was drawn to this session as we are always trying to better differentiate ourselves. I came to the conclusion that I think Imulus is interesting, but that we could probably communicate that more effectively than we are currently and we could also be doing a lot more interesting things. Tony was a very compelling speaker and I will definitely be checking out his Second Wind company.

Next came Sam Harrison’s session on “How to Sell Your Ideas to Bosses, Clients and Other Decision Makers.” An author of several books, I found Sam to be a very polished and interesting speaker. His ideas were well organized and I learned a lot that I can apply to how we present ideas at Imulus. The idea that he left us with, that it was “All About Energy,” really summed it up for me. If you put all your energy into preparing and presenting your idea your chances of success are much higher. If you aren’t excited about your own idea, how can you expect the person on the other side of the table to be excited.

By far the most unusual session was “Everything I Needed to Know About Advertising I Learned from Star Wars.” John and Tug were very entertaining in their cleverly constructed presentation. Utilizing lessons drawn from all the Star Wars films, they were able to show parallels where those lessons apply to the life of a creative. And while the lessons were good, the heart of the presentation was the humor and clever concept. I will always remember that there is a Death Star out there ready to kill my next great idea.

The resource center had some interesting booths and lots of quality shwag. Adobe was showing off CS5 and bunches of paper companies were hoping that designers will continue to design printed pieces for a bit longer. Threadless was nice enough to give out free drinks at the happy hour at the end of the day. Thanks for the beer!