And that really gives you an idea of how great SWXWi really is. It is the most exciting and comprehensive event I’ve personally attended. What impressed me highly, was the sheer diversity of the schedule and quality of content. A previous conference I attended last year kept referring to web design from 2001 as being ‘back in the day’ and the term Web 3.0 was dropped on several occassions. Yawn.

SXSWi wasn’t like that at all — it was refreshing to attend an event with such an open attitude from both the speakers and the audience. Not once did I feel it was trying to be too cool for school, or self referring.

So I’ve come away from SXSWi utterly inspired and excited at the future for digital media and for the future of TAK!

I’d like to notably thank the SXSWM team who I went over with. Everyone was really friendly and let each other do their own thing whilst at the same time re-group and share experiences and thoughts. Digital Central and Stef Lewandowski who organised the trip should be commended for their enthusiasm and commitment to getting 7 differently skilled individuals together to document their findings. I’d like to thank Stef in particular as he had the foresight to create the SXSWM central reserve for us to use during our time at SXSWi which proved invaluable whilst over there. Really great stuff.

Each of us will certainly bring back something unique from SXSWi and this will ultimately raise our own and Birmingham’s offering.

As it turned out, the Q&A with Sara Lacy was a bit of a circus, so I missed out on the hot gossip of SXSWi. If you're wondering what I'm referring too then simply check the link and see what all the fuss is about and watch the video linked above. From what I can gather, she was at times taking centre stage and the audience started to turn on her. Fair enough but from what I can tell, Zuckerberg wasn't the most forthcoming of interviewees and so naturally she became the personality. What do I care though, I wasn't there. Instead, I went to a debate entitled “Logos: Why They're Irrelevant and Can Actually Hurt Your Business” a debate which also became a hot potato.

The general premise of the talk was that the role of the Logo / Logotype brandmark has had it's day. No longer can the Logo carry a company along and you hear very little of the classic 'corporate redesign' jobs which were so common up until a few years ago. The big question was, has the Logo lost it's value in favor of other things like services, navigation and the url?

They stated the Logo's importance in comparison to well designed services, communication, content and usability isn't really that important at all. They questioned whether a good name and url was more important than a good logo mark. The panel raised the question if Logos of the past represented a good sign of trust, then in today's digital climate, is the URL taking that role? After all, many visitors arrive at sites via search engines — a logo free, URL rich process.

Apparently, on average your website will receive 1 new visitor per month for 1.5 seconds. What can you do to make them stay? My opinion then (and now) is that the Logo and site look and feel has a massive influence on that moment. The audience thought this too and the audience began to grill the panel. The panel argued that elements like descriptive navigation are just as important, and I agree completely. Navigation should instantly communicate what is on offer and can really explain a site fast whilst supporting a visual language. I think Zoppa is a great example of everything done right within that first 1.5 seconds.

However, I believe the Logo has an important place in today's service driven digital world and still represents a mark of trust and recognition. For example, in today's online mash-up environments where content merges into a giant data soup. Logo's confirming the content source can at a glance represent source credibility. Many mash-up sites don't offer this simple feature.

The panel and I also agreed that too often clients can get hung up on the Logo at an early stage in the development process when maybe their focus should be on knowing exactly what it is their product's services are. I've met many clients who don't really know what their site should say & do, but they know they want their logo rendered in blue. Perhaps the Logo should develop naturally alongside a website build. Services and content could then help define and shape the Logo rather than the other way round. I will try this approach in the future.

The panel then proceeded to show the infamous Web 2.0 Logo Chart. In my opinion it's a disposable logo graveyard with so many forgettable marks. The panel agreed and asked why couldn't the logotypes in this chart be just simply 12pt Arial. This disregard of the Logo caused quite a stir and personally, as much as I dislike most of the logos in that chart I understand they exist to at the very least resonate with a potential audience. My point here is, if a group of products delivered the same service in the same way, what would then influence the users choice? The logo will always be relevant.

As the talk gathered motion I began to reflect on a project close to my heart, StickerNation. I began to think how StickerNation demonstrated with it's vast image archive how important it is for people to express themselves and bond with an identity. The site featured thousands of personal brand marks created for no other reason than to simply achieve a point of recognition and respect.

Overall it was an interesting talk and myself, the audience and the panel agreed and dis-agreed with many points. Coming away, my conclusion is that brand values and services can't be solved within a single logo. The Logo is be a symbol recognition and a device to help support and resonate with the services on offer. To disregard the Logo completely would be to commit brand suicide.

I'm glad I missed that Facebook Q&A even if I did feel a bit out of the loop on all the gossip in all the bars that night.

So Saturday, after missing the talk, I headed back to the hotel got my shit together and decided to head off to the Google party. This party set the theme for the rest of the evening — queues. I got down to the venue and the queue to get in stretched quite a way. With Ben from Beef already inside I decided to join the line and see what gave. Eventually it was me — the guys in front of me decided to try somewhere else and I tagged along to the Frog Design party. The chaps I went with were pretty cool especially a man named Zeke who hung out with us for the rest of the evening. He’s a developer who dabbles in design and is at the start of his career. Was great to meet someone with so much enthusiasm about the industry and we chatted whilst in line at the Frog party queue.

A crazy moment then happened - in front of me there was a guy walking down the line handing out free ice creams. Oh shit - it was the Ice Cream Man.

Photo by Noah Kalina

To quickly fill in a picture - this guy contacted us about 3 years ago asking if we could help him design and build a site. His concept was cool - to drive around America in his ice cream truck to all the major festivals, hand out free ice cream and generally spread good vibes. Alas - because we had only just started TAK! we couldn’t do the job (paying work first - boooo!)

I quickly flashed my TAK! button which I was wearing and watched his expression turn from a quick glance to a “no wayyyyyyyyy” stance. It was definately a great highlight of my short tour and we chatted for a while seeing what we’d both been up to since we ast spoke way back when. He’s still handing out free ice creams and keeping the dream alive and has a very cool new site to show off.

The Frog Design party was pretty wack (stupid long beer queues) and after hooking back up with the gang we headed over to the 16bit party which (again) was queuing round the block. Bollox to it - back to Buffalo Billiards for rematches of Shuffle Board and beer.

(We won with a final shuffle(?) from the TAK! MVP)

Pete loved the robots. I loved the interactive visual feedback loop Eric Archer had made. It was good:

This image is entirely produced without digital graphics input. It’s a camera feeding back on itself connected to a modified […]

I came to SXSWi with a goal to discover new technologies which could help TAK! in the future as well as examine whether graphic / interface design excellence is a lost art. Over the past year or two I’ve gotten quite bored with the state of the web and how design can appear so cheap in comparission to other creative mediums (ie: print, motion etc.) So at SXSWi I wanted to find out whether the internet today (and tomorrow) is more about content and social networking than unsability and interesting design.

Upfront my opinion is that the very best sites should do everything. Visually they should stand out from the competition, work well and be feature rich. Not wanting to blow my own trumpet but TAK!’s community site StickerNation covered a lot of bases — where great content sat within a visually inspiring look and feel; still today we get a lot of emails thanking us for doing that project and how it inspired them to get involved in street art or web design.

The first talk I went to was Design is in the Details by Naz Hamid from Weightshift. I caught the 2nd half and although Naz didn’t cover any new ground, he did reaffirm the design process and made me feel better that people out there do strive for good design online.

The next panel I checked was the How to Rawk SXSW — a fun primer to the festival with a good bunch of speakers.

After that I decided to get some food and see if I can find a cheap iPhone and small gifts for loved ones. I forgot how big this place is, and an hour was spent walking a couple of blocks and discovering nothing but eateries and roads. I did stroll past the Childrens Museum which looked pretty cool. Nice characters!

On return I proceeded to check out Ellis Labs’ presentation of version 2 of Expression Engine. I’ve not heard of Expression Engine before but a quick check of the internet during the SXSW Rawks panel I realised it was a session worth investigating. Expression Engine is a well priced CMS which seems to be both powerful and desincentric. What they presented literally blew me away. Of all the features on display the sheer innovation in the interface was the thing which impressed me the most. Shit was shown that I didn’t even think was possible. From the reaction from the more technically minded, it would seem the CMS itself is very good behind the scenes being fast, scalable and customisable. It’s something TAK! will definately look at for certain projects.

After that conference I got stopped by a chap from Utterz who took my photo and interviewed me. Straight after that my good friend Ben Hostler from Beef spotted me — he’s at SXSWi representing Bristol on a very similar thing to myself and the West Midlands Massive. At this point we both realised our 3.30pm panels were starting and I quickly rushed to check Great Design Hurts. Unfortunately the room was full and so I ended up missing the talk which I wanted to see most (shit). The talk seemed to tackle the question which I have come here to research. From the pre-talk blurb — great design does hurt and doing something new and different is scary, but worth it. From what I gather all the talks will be available to download afterwards - so all is not lost!

More updates from SXSWM 

Is there an unwritten rule that says, ‘the day before you’re about to go on a trip - your workload will explode’? There seems to be a direct correlation between the number of days you are away from the office and the length of your to-do list.

However, this time around I shouldn’t be too far from my office, albeit a virtual one, despite being nearly 5,000 miles away. I’m lucky enough to be heading to Texas tomorrow for SXSW Interactive, thanks to support from Digital Central. A group of us are heading over to live and breath interactive media for the next five days, make some valuable contacts and share our experiences with the digital media community back in the West Midlands. My reason for going is to learn more about this fantastic festival , make some valuable contacts and spread the word about the Digital Media and Film Event taking place in Birmingham this October, which I’m project managing. I can’t wait. All I need to do now is attempt to clear the to-do list,  pack by bags and find my passport!

I’ll be posting my thoughts and SXSW experiences on this blog, and you can  find out more about what we’re all up to at www.sxswm.com. More news on the Digital Media and Film Event to come very soon.

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