Design Camp 2009 :: What you missed

This year 15 Stout AIGA members made it all the way up to Nisswa for Design Camp and had a blast!
From workshops, to dinners, to speakers and karaoke it's not possible to describe design camp to the full amazingness but I'll give it a shot.

Camp started at noon Friday morning. Nervous first-timers were immediately mixed with camp veterans who soon became friends and network buddies. The first interaction was a tough one... designing our camp shirts with potato stamps and paint. We giggled with some Canadian designers as we shared stamps and printing techniques.

The first speaker at camp was Aaron Draplin. Personally my favorite speaker of the entire weekend. To sum up his talk/life: Wanted to get out of small midwest town, Moved West to snowboard with his friends, found some sweet jobs that let him snowboard all day, Chilled all the time in his van when he didn't have a place to sleep, Moved to another state because he had a sweet offer, designed more sweet stuff, Loves his weiner dog Gary, Makes logos just for the hell of it, and Collects everything people would usually look at as old useless junk. Aaron was an extremely down to earth funny guy who doesn't let his success get to his head. 

This year the theme was "Make your Mark" and took on a whole different approach to a picnic. During some down time the Stout kids wrote our very own recipe:

Rutabaga-Starry-eyed Surprise

3 cups Stars, 2 cans Eyes, 1/2 cup Rutabaga (optional), 3 tbsps of sparkle, 3 large balloons, 1 package

lubricant to taste, 1/2 tsp

Mix love and balloons together in a large bathtub until fluffy. Then mix in some fricken confetti. Bring mixture to a boil and cook down until it resembles John Vorwald. Scrape into a 9x13 casserole. Bake until Sexy. Garnish with sparkles and serve. Your guests will giggle uncontrollably

Friday Night brough on the mixer, where vendors have a booth and tell you a bit about their services. Bill from Hamilton Wood Type Museum was a hit! Studio on Fire brought a mini-press for people to do their own sample of letterpress. Laser Plus was also there to showcase their beautiful laser designs. Great contacts to meet during this event and delicious cake.

The night wouldn't be complete without some Karaoke. 

 

 

We woke up Saturday morning to donuts and DJ Stout, a partner of Pentagram.  He went through his work and shared stories about logo ideation, client relationships, recycling logos and a lot about farming. Very interesting to learn more and to understand how Pentagram is organized and works. All us Stout kids jumped in the photo with him - he was proud to have a University named after him.

 

Ellen Lupton was the third speaker of the weekend. You may  recognize her name from some of your design textbooks. Great talk - very funny. I just hope I'm not an easy bake oven. (don't get the joke? That's why this post is called 'Design Camp 2009 :: WHAT YOU MISSED) Before hand Ellen got all the students together for a free lunch! Last year at camp I would guess that there was only 40 students who attended. This year was quite surprising and overwhelming with over 130 students. 

 

The last speakers were Erik Karasyk and David Schwarz the founders of Hush.  It was awesome to see some of their past work and the work that they were currently working on. Hush is celebrating their 3 year anniversary as a company - it's insane to see how successful they have become in a short amount of time.

 

Each camper had their choice of workshops to attend between speakers. Nomatic Press was there to demonstrate Paper Marbeling, French Paper was there to educate more people about their product, there were workshops about photography, legality of runing your own shop and a few others. The above photo is marbeling that Katy did. Currently we're woking on having a workshop to teach this method. 

A huge thanks to all the students, designers and volunteers we met.  Design Camp was a blast. I think everyone that went would pass up Homecoming for it anyday. I already can't wait for next year.