Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

Today I’m tak­ing off after two days jam-packed with cre­ativ­ity. While I’m anx­ious to get back to NYC, I am incred­i­bly grate­ful for this expe­ri­ence. As some­one who is almost con­stantly attached to the com­puter, it was refresh­ing and inspir­ing to take a break and get my hands dirty. I’m hop­ing to bring some of that home with me.

While I was here I heard a lot of chat­ter about how Design Ranch com­pares to other con­fer­ences. And while I haven’t been to a ton of oth­ers, I can def­i­nitely say that this is an entirely dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence. It’s much more than a con­fer­ence. In fact, con­fer­ence isn’t really even the right word.

What makes this so dif­fer­ent? Well, like most design con­fer­ences, Design Ranch show­cases some rec­og­niz­able names in the indus­try. But in this case they’re not at a podium 500 feet away; they’re eat­ing next to you in the din­ing hall and paint­ing along­side you in a work­shop. It gives you the oppor­tu­nity to have real, hon­est con­ver­sa­tions. And while both set­tings have their mer­its, learn­ing from some­one in a class­room set­ting and leav­ing with some piece of art you cre­ated is decid­edly dif­fer­ent from sit­ting in a large audi­to­rium at a lec­ture. It’s inti­mate, hands-on and unplugged.

If you are in the area (or even if you’re not — while there were a lot of Texans here, I met peo­ple who came from all over the place) I highly rec­om­mend check­ing out the next one, which will be held in 2015. I know I’m going to try to.

Thanks again Design Ranch! Come and make it!

Yes, armadillo races. Maybe it’s naïve of me, but I had no idea this was a thing. (FYI, it’s def­i­nitely a thing.) But hey, it was a new and dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence for me, so I took it all in. And I did learn a fun fact in the process: appar­ently every time armadil­los give birth, they always have quadru­plets and they are always four of the same sex. Interesting.

The rancher on the left above is Michelle Oros, an Art Director at Mason Zimbler.

This is just one of the many non-art and design activ­i­ties going on over the course of the week­end. Just tonight they’re also host­ing a silent auc­tion and out­door movie show­ing, and there’s been live music and hang­ing out around the camp­fire every night. So if you ever expe­ri­ence cre­ative over­load while you’re here, you can def­i­nitely escape to any one of these activ­i­ties for awhile.

P.S. Ranchers, if you see your­self (or your work) in any of these pic­tures and want me to add your name (with a link if you have one!) in a cap­tion, let me know.

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For more infor­ma­tion, check out the Design Ranch site.