FITC San Francisco 2010: Wrap-up

I returned from my big trip to FITC San Francisco 2010 this weekend, and after a short break from the blog and all things scheduled I’m ready to get back to work. San Francisco was wonderful, and it was great to meet some new creative folks and re-unite with some pals. After a short stint of lost luggage upon my arrival, the whole trip went real smooth. Please excuse the low quality of some of the presentation shots above, as I only had my handy iPhone available to snap pictures of people onstage. I’ll have to see if I can track down some more professional looking photos. However, here is a little wrap-up of the 3-day event as I wandered from talk, to party, to talk.

One of the highlights was certainly meeting my pal Fabio Sasso, creator of the mighty Abduzeedo. I’ve been in touch with Fabio for about 2 and a half years as we teamed up on a few giveaways and other fun blog collaborations, so it was awesome to finally hang out with the dude and shake his hand. He’s just as cool as you would think and we had a great time having a few drinks and talkin’ blogs.

I also got to see Scott Hansen, ISO50 speak for the second time. He made some adjustments to his presentation this time around, which included a breakdown and explanation of his art show poster in Photoshop. He opened up the source file and showed us how we went about creating the composition, effects and color treatments. Scott is great at explaining himself and the reasons he makes design choices along the way, so it was wonderful to see his layered work in action. To top it off, he performed as Tycho at one of the FITC after partys where I got to hang out backstage with Scott and Dusty Brown (whom I only knew through Scott’s posters). It was a great time.

Following their talks I had the pleasure of meeting a few of my other art & design heroes such as Erik Natzke and Robert Hodgin. Erik’s presentation was beautiful, where he took us through his progression as a code-driven artist chronologically, showing us how one idea led to another and how his he ended up being hired by big clients for the work he sees as “play”. Very inspiring and nice guy. Robert, or Flight404, has been one of my favorite visual artists for the past 10 years so it was awesome to finally shake his hand. His talk was excellent and he covered topics from video feedback, magnetic sculptures to building a universe. His work is always intricate, scientific and inspiring.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Brendan Dawes following his presentation as well. Brendan is always entertaining to watch and manages to get some really good advice into his delivery as well. He talked briefly about the products his company produces, and described it as “We wanted to be more in control of our own destinies, rather then at the whim of a budget.” A good point there. He showed us a few of the projects he and his company worked on over the past while, and previewed his new iPhone app, the Accidental News Explorer.

In conclusion, FITC always delivers on quality speakers and great networking opportunities to meet those you look up to and make new friends. This is the third even I have attended and have had a wonderful time at them all. If you are an artist, designer or developer and have the means to get to an FITC event, you won’t regret the trip. A big thanks to Shawn Pucknell and the FITC gang for making this latest event a fantastic time!