Analogue/Digital Creative Conferences 2011.

On Friday I went to the Analogue/Digital Creative Conference and listened to five great Australian, home-grown speakers who have had a strong stance and influence in the creative industries to date. My favourite speakers were Billabong's art director, fashion photographer and graphic designer extraordinaire Claudio Kirac, three-man Melbourne design studio South South West and co-founder of Deus Ex Machina and ex-owner of Mambo Dare Jennings.

After attending many of these conferences over the years, I've noticed that most of these great creatives sing the same kinds of songs: to do what you love without concern for rules, money, fame or any other trivial pursuits. If you're interested in something, keep doing it, and forge good relationships on the way.

South South West said that we as creatives have both a privilege and a responsibility: we have a privilege in that we are gifted with a talent that not many other people share, and we have a responsibility not only to ourselves but to others to use our abilities as best we can for good.

I find that time and time again the people whose work I am most inspired by are those that, like me, take a rudimentary approach to their creative process before it becomes a digital reality: to concentrate on idea generation and inspiration outside of design, to spend time sketching, conceptualising and developing those ideas and then refine the process until the end point. It seems that most who use this approach end up with much stronger, more solid bodies of work that stand on their own.

I hope everybody who attended the conference had a great day and came away with something that will help them for the rest of their creative careers, whether that be the motivation to keep moving forward or the knowledge that in doing what we love, and what makes us the happiest to the core of our being, we will always be okay.