Information design conference 2007: a debrief

There is a small group of people, UK-based, who form the first generation of professional information designers, compete professionally, and still meet to compare and contrast every few years. It may be (I tentatively suggest) that this group is now reaching the stage where it feels able to raise an eyebrow here and there at more junior colleagues, and starting to infer that things weren’t done that way in the (good) old days. It looks – to those of us who weren’t there – as if lots of things were done very well in those days (from the late 1970s onwards; much was bomb-proof and/or research-driven and it underpins current practice). But do I detect the hint of a challenge to the younger generation? If not to prove itself, then at least to dig out projects of suitable merit on which to work.

The conference itself was very stimulating; I felt greatly refreshed by sensible and illuminating talks, provocative questions to the speakers, and conversation with other delegates. Delegates from all over the place; I wish I had spoken to far more of them. We were all well looked after, too, in a good venue, with an excellent conference dinner.

The event was largely conceived and executed by ‘old hands’ and I would like to express my gratitude to them and to the speakers and exhibitors. And of course these old hands who I make out to be grizzled relics are not really that old at all: they’ve got many more years of yeoman service yet to give and I hope they will forgive me the epithet. I think I am not alone amongst my peers in feeling that the best way to take up the unstated challenge of those raised eyebrows is to keep turning out good-quality, useful work; particularly in that upstart arena, the Web, which was barely examined in its own right during this conference. There’s plenty to do.