Present Joys

I ran across some more really cute photos of me and my friends in Minneapolis last month. Memories!

It’s hard to believe it’s been a week since I returned from Minneapolis. Here is a cute photo we took thursday night at the AIGA photo booth. (I forced everybody to jump.) Now that I’ve had a week to process my wonderful, super-fantastic time away, here are some things I want to say about it:

It was fantastic to break out of the school routine and to enjoy rest and leisure with so many friends. It was good to meet new people, too: mingling with professional designers, talking to them, and visiting their spaces gave me a sense of pride for the graphic design community. The people I met were kind, talented, and interesting. More importantly, they were creating meaningful things that people interact with every day. This is the creative community I am a part of!

The trip I also gave me a keen sense of pride for our school. Over the few days we were in Minneapolis, my classmates and I participated in a ton of portfolio reviews. During these times, I was really impressed with my peers’ professionalism and by the quality of their work. We are real designers! Our work holds up in the real world—and happily so! It’s nearly time for us to graduate and start making a living. After this lovely trip, I think we are all the more ready to get out there and start doing big things.

Okay, I promise to stop with the #14minnikids stuff now.

Saturday was spectacular. But it’s already 2am and I need to be quick:

• We started out the morning with a general session followed by a breakout session with the creators of the University of California brand. It was delightfully awkward.
• Then we went to lunch together while our teacher chaperones were off doing their own thing (as usual). 13 of the 14 minni kids were there and we had a great time! (The restaurant put us in our own party room, which had a mirror perfect for taking a group photo.)
• After that, Graham, Adam, Anna, and I went on a little adventure around the city. While on the way to MartinPatrick3, a cool little menswear/home furnishings boutique, we walked past what seemed like a thousand different Minneapolis strip clubs. Of course, we took a few choice photos. (Get it?)
• Graham and I also found flowers for our boutonnières, though mine wilted quickly and Vicki Golden made fun of me about it.
• We finished off the conference with a long, final general session, culminating with a talk by Aaron Draplin, who was completely fantastic!
• Then, an amazing, beautiful afterparty at the Walker Art Center where there were five bizarre floors of fancy food, fancy drinks, and lots of conference-goers. CCAD students literally kicked off a fantastic dance party (thanks, Julia).
• Finally, after the AIGA/Walker afterparty had finished, I made the very questionable decision of “going dancing” with eight of the other minni kids. I should have known an event starting at 11pm could only end in disaster. We all ended up in a weird, creepy place called Sneaky Pete’s where the music was too loud. It turned out everybody was uncomfortable and wanted to leave. But what a beautiful bonding experience. And we got a great group photo outside the sign.
• Oh! This has been such a beautiful day.

What a day today was! Let me tell you about it:

• I got a lot of sleep: eight hours of sleep. Better sleep than I’ve gotten in ages.
• We met this super-cool dude Bryan Kahrs in the hotel lobby at 9am. He talked about his life and reviewed some of our portfolios.
• Then we all walked to Chipotle in search of a cheap lunch. After that, Anna, Julia, and I wandered around the city with Lutz, Burleigh, and Vicki Golden, where we found both a really cool street market and the Oscar-Meyer Weinermobile.
• Then we toured Target HQ, which is quaintly nested in downtown Minneapolis, and was great. While there, we took a peek in the Target-branded gift shop.
• After that, we headed over to the convention center to register, where we got a big bag of random things. We then proceeded to shop around the tradeshow floor for even more random things like free posters and paper samples and chapstick thingies.
• Went to the conference’s first general session, which was three hours long and featured a ton of different interesting things (including George Lois!)
• Ate hors d’oeuvres and stuff during a really busy opening reception, where I got to meet Michael Bierut! And do all kinds of other fun stuff, including: spending time with people I enjoy and drinking weird things and trying to coordinate 14 people jumping in unison at a photobooth.
• Rejected my friends’ requests to “go dancing” (whatever the heck that even means) and instead went to a late-night screening of the very nice documentary Sign Painters.
• More sleep, right now? This is so very nice.