Don’t talk about it, do it.
The three successful women at Rockets, Robots and Resilience spoke about how tiresome the gender debate has become. Every minute spent debating gender equality is a minute wasted, just get on with it and focus on growing your business and working towards achieving your goals. The debate should also be more diversity focused; race, age, social backgrounds etc. Diversity within a team is what achieves the best results.
– Hilary

 

Consider the feelings behind the craziness.
Natasha Jen, Pentagram Partner, spoke about getting into the real feelings behind actions. As people we automatically react to things, rather than stop and work out what is the feeling causing that to happen. E.g Your client suddenly wants to stop your project and go back to their old logo – instead of getting defensive and thinking they’re crazy, ask what’s causing that reaction – they could be scared or not understand the process.
– Megan

 

Play has a place in the design process.
Mark Gowing, Formist, creates absolutely stunning books and identities through exploring and playing with the subject – this is where the best ideas come from. The idea for a project doesn’t necessarily need to come from a person’s values or the obvious, rather from the exploration process itself.
– Luke

 

Step in the shoes of your customer.
As designers, we must remember that everything we are designing for, no matter what it is, is for people. You need to truly understand those people, walk in their shoes and ask questions that challenge the WHY in order to solve their problem through design. Otherwise design for design sake is art.
– Reuben

 

Bring design back to design – strip out the complex, let it do what it is meant to do.
Mark Gowing spoke about simplicity as his key design principle. He spoke about how as designers we can get caught up on making something bigger than it needs to be, but how sometimes it’s just about servicing something that needs to be serviced – design doesn’t need to be huge but needs to be done with beauty and quality.
– Alice

Ask the DUMB questions.
I Love Ugly Creative Director, Valentin Ozich, talked about the importance of naivety and not being afraid to ask the obvious, simple, sometimes dumb questions. Often we are too scared to ask the simple things because it’s the way it’s always been done and no one has thought to wonder why. It is only by asking the seemingly dumb question can we challenge the norms and shake things up.
– Hannah

 

Resilience makes all the difference.
You’d think that being a leading space engineer, Sinead O’Sulllivan would have been the type of student that excelled at everything. She wasn’t, she didn’t even enjoy school. It was refreshing to hear from someone who is so successful that being the best wasn’t important – what was more important was passion and trying, trying again. You can’t get anywhere if you give up.
– Anne

 

Technology is the key to unlocking growth.
We are on the brink of the 4th industrial revolution. The future will be about combinations – where real and synthetic are fused until we no longer understand where one starts and the other stops.

In the future, technological innovation will also lead to a supply-side miracle, with long-term gains in efficiency and productivity. Transportation and communication costs will drop, logistics and global supply chains will become more effective, and the cost of trade will diminish, all of which will open new markets and drive economic growth.
– Steve