Day two of Adobe MAX was a whirlwind and a love fest – exhausting in the best way possible. Our podcast booth hosted a cast of brilliant creative thinkers and passionate makers, and session after session celebrated the humanity at the center of our creative community. It’s difficult to ignore what feels like a subtle pushback against the drumbeat of AI, even as speakers and attendees explore the potential benefits the technology could provide. Oh, and we gave away a heck of a lot of Monotype socks ??.?
- “We cannot underestimate the power of creativity. It’s totally free, but it’s more precious than gold.” - Dana Tanamachi. Dana’s heartfelt personal story drove home the power of creativity – expressed in the simplest of ways – to carry people through difficult times. She spoke of her family’s experience in the WWII Japanese internment camps, and how her grandmother’s love of origami and dressmaking inspires her today. You find yourself tearing up more than you expect at MAX, and Dana delivered a heartfelt call for creating as an act of love.?
- “Don't be afraid to do what we do for the people closest to us.”- Aaron James Draplin. The Man from Michigan opened yesterday’s keynote session with a hurricane of stories, advice, do’s and don’ts, and praise for his patient partner-in-crime, Leigh. Like many speakers at MAX, Draplin is a big fan of doing things for yourself, but also for sharing your skills with your loved ones. He flashed through designs he created for and with friends, hand-painted signs he created for a yard sale at his mother’s house, and spoke at length about designing as an act of care and love. "Design was a hobby first, he said. “I got to make a living being creative and I got to take care of those around me.”?
- “We should only automate where we cannot elevate.” - Eph Gerard Cruz, Director, Operations, Xfinity Creative. After launching multiple successful clothing brands, founding a boutique agency to serve socially good clients, and even managing a hip-hop artist, Eph has learned a few things about building a strong creative team and implementing processes and tools to support them. In his talk, he told the story of building out the first-ever in-house creative agency at Xfinity, launched smack dab in 2020. In addition to obvious tools like JIRA, Adobe Workfront, and Sprinklr, Xfinity is adopting automation tools and AI – but only to make time for creativity – not to replace it. ?
- Do it for yourself. Many guests spoke of the pressure to create for everyone but themselves - clients, bosses, The Algorithm and its promise of glorious virality, and even for some abstract idea of what a capital-C creative should be. But as often as that theme came up, so did the antidote: Creating for yourself. And not only as an exercise in good mental health and creative wellbeing, but as a way to break free of that pressure and create work that conveys your passion, perspective and humanity. ?
For Dana Tanamuchi, that meant walking away from a wildly successful medium she felt had become commoditized. For Walker Noble, it meant a leap of faith away from corporate job security into the wilderness of creating art for a living. For Ben Levitz of Studio on Fire, it was simply saying “no thanks” to digital design and getting his hands on some old school letterpress machines. And if you think this doesn’t apply in your?case, Walker Noble had this to say: Why not you??
- People. Love. Fonts. Ok, our bias might be showing on this one, but each year we’re reminded how much people just love the heck out of fonts. All day long, people come in and out of our booth, and each one of them is excited to talk type. John Roshell, founder of Comicraft and Swell Type (and a Monotype Foundry Partner), demonstrated the art of comic book lettering to a captivated audience, while other guests played our Font dating game or picked the brains of our type designers. It’s always fun to be around people who love fonts as much as we do. ?
- We’re going to borrow from one of the morning’s keynote speakers, Karen X Cheng, who closed her talk about combating the pressures and expectations of social media with a simple question: “What would it look like if the next generation of technology was designed more mindfully?” As creatives continue to take measure of AI and its implications for our world, Karen’s question served as both a challenge and a plea for a future that values the humans technology is meant to serve. Our minds are cluttered and scattered, and our livelihoods are seemingly hanging in the balance as we determine if AI is truly friend or foe. Can we design a future where less is more, and creativity is celebrated, supported, and sanctified? Please??
