Round Table
What Are You Excited About?
I’m in the middle of writing a talk. A talk that I’m supposed to give in a month, for the first time. I’m at the stage where I get super excited about something and, five minutes later, think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever come up with. This is great. I hate it. I’ll never get this off the ground. Holy shit, this is going to set the world on fire. Except it sucks.
I don’t really get nervous when I talk. By that point I’ve figured out what I want to say, and practiced it enough that I’m ready to put it in front of an audience. That part is a relief. But all the shit leading up to that? That’s messy. And messy is exciting.
— Mike Monteiro, designer
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I used to get excited about new technology. I loved being on the bleeding edge of the web. It was a neat way to make a living too — in 2009 or so I had a hand in making some of the first animated HTML5 ad units for iPhone and Android browsers. They turned out to be effective and obnoxious in roughly equal measures.
(Sorry about that, by the way.)
Nowadays I’m more excited about my projects than the technology I use to make them. I know that what I’m working on will contribute to the world I want to live in, not sell fruity drinks to people trying to read the news on their phone. That’s worth getting excited for.
— Liam Campbell, developer
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Ad blockers. As media and advertising tighten their embrace into mutual destruction, like Gandalf and Durin’s Bane falling into a pit of despair far below the mines of Moria, it’ll be fun to see who gets to clean up the blood.
— Herman Clogmaster, raconteur
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I’m new to the Web as a medium (I didn’t output my first “HELLO WORLD” until 2013), so I’m still blown away by just how much there is to do. It’s matured enough that it’s being used for meaningful purposes, but at the same time there’s still a degree of this DIY mysticism. Spend five minutes on the front page of CodePen–it’s an explosion of CSS weirdness that’s not exactly propelling the human race forward, but it exhibits how much the thrill of discovery is still racing around the Web’s server synapses.
We’re a cynical bunch so yeah, some of it’s self-indulgent and most of it’s unnecessary. But seriously here’s a dragon sneezing fire.
— Andy Davies, designer
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There is nothing better to me than editorial design. Digital or print, I don’t care so long as there is a healthy use of whitespace, well-paired typography, and the elements are brought together into an interesting layout that does not detract from the story. My library features many books filled with page compositions from newspapers and magazines. Many afternoons were spent pouring over each case study, each layout. I have Moleskins filed with sketches of page compositions in varying levels of detail. Some people like to doodle animals or people during conference calls; I knock out a blog layout or a top level category page. Every month I make a point to hit up a newsstand and buy magazines, not for their contents, but for their page layout and design. I know we’re all supposed to be coo coo for Cocoa Puffs over products, but I’d prefer to design what people are reading any day of the week.
— Greg Storey, designer
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Words! As internet technology becomes further standardized, devices proliferate, and interface conventions harden into templates, we will appreciate words as the load-bearing components of experience design. Real innovation happens not merely when you make a new thing, but when you create new meaning, and that requires language. The phrases that constitute your service become the thoughts your customers think and that is more powerful than anything. Playing with language is the most fun anyone has online. And the best invention is a good joke.
— Erika Hall, talker
