CreativeMornings with Khoi Vinh

Last friday was one packed CreativeMornings, I am not surprised because it was clearly a perfect combination of speaker (Khoi Vinh), space (Meet at the Apartment) and breakfast sponsor (MailChimp).

Everyone seemed to have showed up even though it was a rainy morning. Hat tip to all my loyal attendees!

A big two thumbs up to the hosts Sara and Marc Schiller and their team. They once again were *incredibly* organized, gracious and generous with opening the doors to their truly fantastic space on Crosby street. Make sure to spread the word about Meet at the Apartment: You can rent it for your events and it is by far the most amazing meeting space I have ever seen. Business meetings/workshops don’t have to be in a dull environment, really!

Khoi’s talk was amusing, insightful and honest. He was talking about the fact that everything he knows about design he learned in the 90s. He took a look at how his designer’s early attitudes and assumptions about how design works have weathered the past fifteen years, for better or worse. He showed us some of his early works, that made him cringe and made us all feel better knowing, that he wasn’t just born with his beautiful amazing design sense. We all have to work hard for it, don’t we? One of his last slides sums up his major talking points:

1. Tell The Truth
2. Understand the problem
3. Don’t Skimp
4. Fads are bad
5. Let things be what they are
6. A little bit of self-delusion goes a long way

We will post a video of the talk soon. Hang tight! See pictures of the event here.

I truly enjoyed perusing everyone’s answer on the conversation-starter-tags, which asked the question: “What can you teach me?” See all the diverse answers here.

A big thank you also to brave soul Naz Hamid for virtually joining us at a very early hour San Francisco time. Naz is the force behind Weightshift. He is an amazing designer and obviously, a morning person! Here’s what it looked like from his side of the screen:

(Image by Naz Hamid)

And here’s some good news for all my swiss readers that would like to attend one of my CreativeMornings: The July event will take place in Zurich, Switzerland. Sit tight, more info coming soon!