Present Joys

Day 33: tue, 29 oct 2013. Mr. Mohr made us all do 100 logo sketches then told us they weren’t good enough and assigned 100 more. Then he stood on a chair and took this photo of us making weird facial expressions.

After the portfolio review, all fourteen minni kids walked back to the hotel together. This photo was taken in the elevator going up to our rooms, shortly before I was reprimanded by my friends for screaming too loud in an elevator at nighttime.

Oh, friday! You were beautiful.

• We started the day with breakfast (I ate an English-muffin breakfast sandwich and stashed another one in Anna’s bag) and then sat in on a general session.
• Then we raced back to the hotel to catch a taxi to tour Sevnthsin, which was in a cool, industrial part of town. It looked like a really great agency which I was very glad to tour! Besides practical work environments, they had arcade games, a ping pong table, and a small replica of the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks.
• THEN practically all of us had lunch at the hotel on CCAD’s dime.
• Raced back to the convention center in time to sit through a very boring breakout session. Thankfully, Julia and I kept each other occupied with a very dry text message conversation while sitting next to each other.
• After a short refreshment break, we went back into the big auditorium. I wrote a cheeky tweet to John which showed up on the big big screen! We listened to more people talk.
• Had a nerve-wracking portfolio review where I was locked down to a table and random people came by. Got some good advice mixed in with a bunch of lame advice. Classic portfolio reviews.
• Once it was over, there were lots of hugs. Let’s never stop this, okay? Can we keep doing this always?

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.