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4 Lessons We Took Home From DesignThinkers 2024
Complacency is no friend of creativity, and design is no exception! Masterful graphic designers wear many hats, balancing artistry, communications, technology and consumer trends in their work. In the bold spirit of continued learning, we attended the DesignThinkers 2024 conference to nerd out with the best in the biz.
This year’s theme, Into the Rabbit Hole, was a reminder that the creative process isn't always neat and tidy, and that in this rapidly evolving industry, industry standards are subject to curiosity, innovation and improvement. Here are the lessons, and teachers, that we took away from the conference to implement into our studio in the year ahead.
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Unmute yourself: speak up and be heard.
Our very own Taralyn Carver RGD—Creative Director and Co-Founder of BOLD LIP—moderated a discussion where creatives could talk about where and why to speak up for their work. As a studio emphasizing transparency and collaboration, we understand that client advocacy and education are part of the job. We’re a team on both sides of the client brief, and it’s in everyone’s best interest for creatives to own their expertise and use all the tools available to them, stories, data, visuals and more, to communicate their creative thinking to clients.
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AI is a tool, not a replacement, for creative thinking.
The robots aren’t here for your job, at least not yet. As we develop the norms for using AI in design work, there's no singular way to use this technology yet. Presentations from senior creatives at the conference highlighted the room for discovery and exploration still possible in this space. In Robert Wong’s presentation, “A Year with AI”, he positioned AI as any other tool, akin to clay or a paintbrush (or Adobe, or Figma…). AI requires human taste and sensibility to be effective, and is only as good as the unique, subjective, taste-driven decisions we make as creative professionals. Further, he suggested that AI may even make us stronger creatives—opening possibilities that have yet to be explored.
Some tools we’re looking forward to exploring this year:
- Notebook LM: allows users to interact with large language models directly within Google Colab notebooks for various text-based tasks1.
- TextFX: helps users enhance their creative writing process by generating similes, acronyms, and other linguistic elements.
- Style Drop: allows users to apply various artistic styles to their photos using text prompts.
- Imagen 2: generates high-quality images from textual descriptions.
- Gentype: automatically generates TypeScript type definitions for JavaScript code.
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You don’t need to be a big agency to make a big impact.
This year’s event marked a noticeable shift: instead of showcasing the usual industry behemoths, the spotlight was on nimble, independent creative teams whose work was no less spectacular. This shift reflects a broader industry need for authentic, resonant creative work that grabs people’s fleeting attention.
A couple of the multi-disciplinary, independent designers who embody this change were speakers James Martin and Aries Moross. Both emphasized an inside-out approach, letting your unique creative skillset and identity radiate outward into your professional life. Martin, a force in the industry, reminded us that you need to be your dream designer to get your dream clients. Instead of focusing energy outward on industry forecasts, he recommends a shift to focus within, on creating creative confidence and resilience. Moross offered the story of their start, illustrating live music flyers and ultimately creating the dynamic Studio Moross. Now their blend of design and creative direction has opened doors in live music performance treatments for huge artists, a testament to what’s possible when passion is your guide.
Creatives like these aren’t just filling gaps left by large agencies—they’re redefining what high-quality creative work looks like, focusing less on scaling the ladder and more on engaging audiences with authentic self-expression.
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Presentation is everything.
As creatives we’ve all spent more hours than we’d care to consider on decks: building them, reading them, and walking clients through them. Seemingly, no matter the idea or the audience being presented to, we live and die by the deck. This year’s conference, however, signalled a bold departure from traditional, static presentation formats, instead spotlighting non-linear and interactive storytelling. exemplified by Shantell Martin and Mindy Seu. They moved away from traditional slide decks, opting for fluid narratives that utilized messages within code, live drawings, collages, and seamless transitions across browser-based content.
More and more, designers are adopting flexible tools and presentation methods that reflect the iterative, exploratory nature of the creative process, making both processes and presentation more adaptive, collaborative and visually compelling. As we put our heads together for how we want to evolve as a studio in 2025, we’ll be looking to implement these more fluid storytelling methods while still coming away with a discrete asset our client can review back and feedback into.
Admittedly, this piece was supposed to be about design trends to watch for the year ahead.
Yet, what all of the speakers we loved most had in common was a message of self-awareness and curiosity about the status quo. We took away tools that will help us supercharge our work, and the valuable reminder that nurturing a playful and innovative work environment will help us achieve the authentic work our clients need to stand out.
Speaking of, book a BOLD SESSION with Kate and let’s make some magic happen together. Trust us, the rabbit hole’s worth it.