An Event Apart, Chicago 2008 || Part the first

(Pictured above: Curt Cloninger; friend Kacey Nelson takes a break at "An Event Apart" in Chicago; Kacey talks design and comics with Welshman design honcho Andy Clarke; the Godfather of CSS – Eric Meyer – sits down for an interview)

This past Monday and Tuesday I Amtrak'd my caboose to Chicago to attend a web and multimedia design conference (An Event Apart) for my job. On back-to-back days two friends and I were immersed in about 13-14 seminars that featured graphic design and artistic icons like Curt Cloninger, the comic enthusiast Welshman Andy Clarke, the Godfather of CSS Eric Meyer, and many other top professionals in their fields.

Each guest speaker contributed a unique perspective on the realm of interactive media and design: there were lectures on history, art aesthetics, business models, coding, group collaboration, critique, etc.

I could write a novel if I tried to encapsulate the watershed of information, but I found a couple of neat-o things that were directly applicable to Monsieur Stone's informatics and media mad dash.

First, for an overload of Korean flash animation, check this site out: Xiiin. I selected "Idol" to give you an example of what the top industry gurus think is one of the best sites they've ever seen. You don't have to understand Korean to appreciate the animation.

Second, for those who are unfamiliar with Curt Cloninger, he's an Informatics icon. Just by going to his site, lab404, you can see the amazing array of topics that he brings up, like Web geeks spontaneously creating art using Flickr.

Note on the opening page of lab404 you'll see a boldly patterned background. This is for a reason, and if you explore his work, he'll tell you why. Cloninger preaches that we should merge the macrocosmic with the microcosmic. "I had to consider chiefly the following things: the paper, the form of the type, the relative spacing of the letters, the words, and the lines; and lastly the position of the printed matter on the page," said Cloninger.

Oh yeah, and Cloninger is apparently a performance artist, too, exemplified in this video.