1. Creative Tips for Creative Writing
2. How to Design for Your Worst Client
3. Five Ways to Bulletproof Your Copy
4. Starting Your Own Business…
5. 5 Disciplines of Successful Design

HOW’s editor, Bryn Mooth, recently contacted me to give me some updated information about the upcoming HOW Conference in Austin next month. I attended last year in Boston and it was a really great experience. I highly recommend it if it works within your budget and schedule. Here’s some news and updates directly from the source:

HOWconference.com updated with more event info
Just this week, we retooled the HOWconference.com homepage to help designers make the most of their conference experience, with updates on extra activities like workshops and the popular Austin Studio Tours, additional ammunition for convincing their managers to send them to HOW and info on how they can build their own custom conference program.

Create your own conference
With about 50 sessions (not to mention workshops and evening activities) to choose from, designers have lamented in the past that they have a hard time selecting sessions when they register. So we’re offering new tools to help them customize their own conference experience and pick the presentations of most interest to them. We’ve highlighted sessions targeted specifically toward agency designers, freelancers, web/interactive designers, in-house creatives and studio owners. Learn more right here.

New: survive & thrive panel
The economy is on everyone’s mind—and the biggest issue is uncertainty. When will we rebound? What happens next? We’ve asked a panel of design industry folks to address these very questions at a brand-new special session in Austin from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. on Friday, June 26. Jeni Herberger, Jeff Fisher, Steve Gordon, Jr., Daniel Schutzsmith, Andy Epstein and Megan Slabinski together cover every aspect of the industry, from in-house to agency to freelance. They’ll talk about what other designers are seeing and experiencing and then look at where the design industry is headed. The rest of the session will be devoted to Q&A.

Online registration
You can register online right here.

Yesterday I attended the 99% Conference at the Times Center. Curated and organized by Bēhance and Cool Hunting, the conference focused not on generating ideas but on making them a reality. (The name comes from the famous quote by Thomas Edison, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration!”)

Here’s a quick recap of the things I enjoyed. (swissmiss has some recaps up as well right here.)

• Cheryl Dorsey, of Echoing Green, an organization that invests in socially-based start-ups, talked about their idea of Social Entrepreneurial Intelligence. This model encompasses traits that are consistently found in successful social entrepeneurs. She didn’t have time to get through all of them, but a few of the ways this successful group is described include focused and the ability to execute with alacrity, solutions-oriented, resource magnet, asset-based thinking, and a deep and unshakable obligation to a cause.
• Ji Lee talked about how his personal and professional projects compliment each other, and noted that contrary to popular belief, sharing your ideas with a larger community, before they are developed, is rewarding.
• Jason Randall was fascinating. An expert in a ridiculous amount of disciplines (check out the link for a brief bio), I wish he could have spoken for longer. He was a little manic, but I would love to really understand how someone like him gets so much accomplished, when I’m the type of person always complaining that there aren’t enough hours in the day.
• Jill Greenberg talked more about her work than actually making ideas happen. But I wasn’t extremely familiar with everything she does before her talk, so it was cool to get a more extensive look at her projects.
• Michael Beirut was the last speaker of the day, and shared 5 secrets from 86 notebooks. Many of you might be familiar with the notebooks he’s collected ideas in for over 20 years, since they’ve been publicized in quite a few places lately. So Michael shared 5 lessons gleaned from the collection and showed projects to illustrate each one. The last secret, Love is the answer, was illustrated with his ongoing mural project for the Library Initiative.

One of the common themes I noticed were that all of these inspiring people were just extremely hard workers. In order to get to where they are now, each one of them has spent countless hours working to accomplish their goals. Not one of them experienced overnight success. They all also seemed to emphasize surrounding yourself with people who motivate and push you. And perhaps most simply, advised to just write everything down and check off to-do’s.

Overall they put together an amazing group of speakers, and I left feeling inspired, motivated, and ready to make things happen. I’ll definitely be there next year.

Part of their work involves “igniting movements” for worthy causes, and one I was particularly drawn to was Love 146, a non-profit dedicated to ending child sex trafficking and exploitation.

Brains on Fire also has a great blog about marketing, branding and design, which you can check out right here.

More exciting news for today! The genius that is Bēhance has just added another amazing program to their portfolio of great ideas—the 99% Conference. (I realize I gush over Bēhance quite a bit, but it’s completely warranted.)

For the 99% conference, Bēhance is partnering with Cool Hunting to present a program that focuses “less on inspiration, and more on how idea generation and organization come together to make ideas happen”. And with speakers including Michael Beirut, Seth Godin, Jeff Kalmikoff and Jake Nickell of Threadless and Ji Lee of Google; I’m completely sold.

99% will take place April 16th and 17th at the Times Center in New York City. And if you register before February 16th, you’ll receive 25% off the fee.

There are two options to choose from in terms of membership—a free introductory version and a paid premium plan, which is still really affordable at $12/month or $99/year. A few screenshots from the program are below, but you can take a more in-depth tour right here.

I came across this book while browsing in Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago, but wasn’t able to find any information about it online. So I was excited to learn that the official website is now up and running. Conceived from the minds of SVA MFA Program Co-chairs Steven Heller and Lita Talarico, The Design Entrepreneur profiles well-known professionals who turn their work into marketable products. I love reading about anything that discusses the intersection of business and design, so it’s definitely going on my must buy list. Purchase your copy from Amazon right here.

via Form Fifty Five