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May 13-15, 2013 • Austin, TX
ARTIFACT is a two-day, single-track conference for DESIGNERS adapting to the challenge of designing for a MULTI-DEVICE world.
This is your chance to focus on the design process—how you do your creative work and how you communicate those ideas to clients, stakeholders, and developers. See real world examples of responsive workflows, prototyping strategies, new tools, and deliverables and decide which ones will help YOU adapt. Sessions and workshops are packed with plenty of how-to information and practical takeaways, topped off with a layer of inspiration.
Register for Artifact More Information »Speakers
Jennifer Brook
Independent designer, educator, and traveler
More About Jennifer
As an independent designer, educator, and traveler, Jennifer Brook navigates the center and edges of publishing, education, and culture and is in madly in love with both the printed and digital artifact. She lectures internationally and teaches at Parsons The New School for Design. Her most recent UX work includes the NBC Politics iOS app and numerous projects for The New York Times including The Lively Morgue, The Opinion Pages, and over a dozen apps including NYTimes for iPhone and iPad. Jennifer began designing for interaction through prototyping, printing, and binding limited-edition artist books. Her work has been acquired by dozens of public and private collections and rare book libraries at The University of California, Duke University, Savannah College of Art and Design, and Cleveland Institute of Art.
thenewschool.edu
Ben Callahan
President, Sparkbox
More About Ben
President of Sparkbox and founder of the Build Responsively workshop series, Ben shares his ideas about the web on the Sparkbox Foundry and other industry blogs like .net Magazine and Smashing Magazine. His leadership at Sparkbox has driven the team to be a pioneer in responsive web design techniques, and he continues to push for great user experiences outside the context of specific devices.
seesparkbox.com
Kristin Ellington
COO, Funny Garbage
More About Kristin
Kristin Ellington brought her experience as a designer and producer to Funny Garbage when she joined the company in 1997. Her leadership and vision has transformed a small design studio into a full-service production and content development business with a global clientele. Kristin directs the operations of Funny Garbage, including its strategic planning, brand strategy, business development, human resources, and client relationships.
funnygarbage.com
Brad Frost
Web Designer
More About Brad
Brad Frost is a front-end designer, consultant and speaker located in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA. He is the creator of This Is Responsive, a collection of patterns, resources and news to help people create great responsive web experiences. He also created Mobile Web Best Practices, a resource site that lays out considerations for creating great mobile web experiences. He curates WTF Mobile Web, a site that teaches by example what not to do when working with the mobile web. He is passionate about mobile and is constantly tweeting, writing, and speaking about it.
bradfrostweb.com
Matt Griffin
Principal, Bearded
More About Matt
Matt Griffin is a designer and one of the founders of Bearded. He is an avid advocate for collaboration in design, and has been published in A List Apart and .net magazine. He is also one of the creators of Wood Type Revival, a successfully Kickstarter-funded project which seeks out lost historic wood type and converts it into digital fonts for modern designers. Matt lives in Pittsburgh’s East End with his lovely and talented wife Elizabeth and their adorable son Argus.
bearded.com
Dan Mall
Founder, SuperFriendly
More About Dan
Dan Mall is an award-winning designer from Philadelphia, an enthralled husband, and new dad. As the Founder & Design Director at SuperFriendly, Dan and his team defeat apathy and the forces of evil with heroic creative direction, design, & strategy. He’s also co-founder of Typedia and swfIR, and sings/plays keyboard for contemporary-Christian band Four24. Dan was formerly Design Director at Big Spaceship, Interactive Director at Happy Cog, and a technical editor for A List Apart. He writes about design and other issues on Twitter and on his industry-recognized site, danielmall.com.
danielmall.comsuperfriend.ly
Jason Pamental
Founder, Thinking in Pencil
More About Jason
Jason Pamental is the co-founder of h+w design, writer at thinkinginpencil.com and overall web & typography nerd. Favorite self-descriptor: specializing in being a generalist (he's worked on the web since 1994 in a range of capacities). With a background in design and an intimate understanding of technology and its application on the web, he's led creative and technical groups for NFL and America's Cup teams, Fortune 25 and technology corporations and many other clients, serving in both creative and technical roles. Jason also speaks about Responsive Design, Web Typography and Web Strategy at conferences and pretty much anywhere people will listen. When that’s not happening he’s usually hanging out with his family or following @aProperCollie around Turner Reservoir in the morning, posting photos on Instagram.
thinkinginpencil.com
Yesenia Perez-Cruz
Designer, Happy Cog
More About Yesenia
Yesenia Perez-Cruz is a designer living in Philadelphia, PA. She works at Happy Cog, creating beautiful, functional design systems for clients like MTV, Zappos, and Harvard University. She has spoken at SXSW Interactive and AIGA, and teaches for GirlDevelopIt. You can find her on Twitter@yeseniaa. Her alter-ego Perez Chews is on a constant mission to find and devour the world's best foods.
Happy Cog
Andrew Pratt
Creative Director, Funny Garbage
More About Andrew
Andy is a creative director at Funny Garbage in NYC, where he has created award-winning interactive experiences for some of the largest brands in the world, including the Smithsonian Institution, Sesame Workshop, Cartoon Network, Wenner Media, HarperCollins, Lego and Turner Broadcasting. Andy is co-founder of Pricetaghq.com, an online quoting tool for digital agencies. He is also a professor in the MFA program “Designer as Entrepreneur” at the School of Visual Arts and is co-author of Interactive Design: An Introduction to the Theory and Application of User-Centered Design. www.andypratt.net
website.com
Jared Ponchot
Creative Director, Lullabot
More About Jared
Jared Ponchot is the Creative Director at Lullabot, an interactive strategy, design and development agency. Jared received his BFA in Graphic and Interactive Communications from Ringling College of Art and Design and began his career in print design, but has now spent more than ten years designing for the web and interactive applications. A strong advocate for responsive design, Jared helped create the first fully responsive site for GRAMMY.com for their 54th annual awards show. Jared is passionate about beautiful, usable design, and has shared his knowledge speaking extensively around the world on design principles, visual hierarchy, and designing for complex content models. He also hosts a bi-weekly Podcast called "The Creative Process", where he and Lullabot co-founder Jeff Robbins chat with designers, artists, musicians, authors and filmmakers about how creativity happens.
lullabot.com
Jennifer Robbins
Designer/Author, O'Reilly Media
More About Jennifer
Jennifer has been designing for the web since 1993, as the designer of the first commercial website, Global Network Navigator. She is the author of several books about web design including "Web Design in a Nutshell" and "Learning Web Design" (O'Reilly). For kicks, she interviews indie rockers about cooking and food for her show "Cooking with Rockstars". She currently works as a soup-to-nuts digital product designer at O'Reilly Media and is a co-founder of the ARTIFACT conference.
jenville.comoreilly.com
Christopher Schmitt
Founder, Heatvision
More About Christopher
Christopher Schmitt is the founder of Heatvision.com, Inc., an Austin-based new media publishing and design firm. An award-winning web designer who has been working in the medium for twenty years, Christopher interned for both David Siegel and Lynda Weinman as an undergraduate at Florida State University. He has a Masters in Communication for Interactive and New Communication Technologies, and is the author of six books, including Designing Mobile and Web Graphics and CSS Cookbook, which was named Best Web Design Book of 2006.
environmentsforhumans.com
Kevin Sharon
Design Director, Happy Cog
More About Kevin
Kevin Sharon is a web designer with over 10 years experience designing innovative, engaging, and usable web experiences. His expertise lies in: creative direction, strategy, user experience, graphic design, animation, and film. Prior to joining Happy Cog, Kevin spent two years designing and developing sites for higher education, financial service, healthcare, and entertainment industries at Razorfish. Kevin has been an adjunct professor at Philadelphia University’s School of Design and Media. He has taught courses to Digital and Graphic Design undergraduate and graduate students in design for the web as well as motion graphics and video. In his free time, Kevin enjoys spending time with his family, eating, soccer (playing and watching), music, and reading—in that order. Next time you see him, be sure to ask about the time he was in Iceland, sharing a hot tub with Björk.
happycog.com
Sophie Shepard
Designer, Happy Cog
More About Sophie
After graduating from NYU Film School and then working in digital book publishing for two years, Sophie realized that what she really wanted to do was to design websites. She freelanced for two years before becoming a full time designer with Happy Cog, honing her skills working with clients such as Texas Monthly, the Texas Department of Transportation, and National Geographic. Her love of beautiful design is only overshadowed by her passion for websites that are simple, easily navigable, and full of necessary, applicable content. When not in front of a screen, Sophie enjoys cooking, reading, road trips, and camping. She is passionate about craft and import beer, and can talk about it for a very long time.
happycog.com
Jen Simmons
Designer, Host of "The Web Ahead" on 5by5
More About Jen
Jen Simmons is a designer who builds stuff, too. She’s best-known as the host of The Web Ahead, a weekly podcast about changing technologies and the future of the web. Creating websites since 1996, Jen works as an independent consultant and trainer helping teams transition to a responsive design process, implement sites with HTML5, or architect Drupal websites to last. She also provides a mix of design and front-end development services. Her clients have included CERN, the Annenberg Foundation, Mt. Holyoke College, MIT Press, Zinch, and The New York Stock Exchange. She lives in New York City.
5by5.tv/webahead
Trent Walton
Co-Founder, Paravel
More About Trent
Trent Walton is founder and 1/3 of Paravel, a custom web design and development shop based out of the Texas Hill Country whose wife has put him on a font allowance. In his spare time, he writes about what he learns at his blog, and on Twitter.
paravelinc.com
Dan Rose
User Interface Designer, WSOL
More About Dan
Syracuse, NY native Dan Rose is a User Interface Designer at WSOL. An advocate of side projects, he's the creator of Photoshop Etiquette, a guide to discernible web design. His affinity for workflow and Photoshoppery are evident in his talks, articles, and screencasts. His ramblings can also be caught on Twitter, @dblizzy.
danroseonline.com
Keep Up With Artifact
Program
KeynoteDesigners and Code and Workflows and Stuff (8:30 - 9:30AM)
Jennifer introduces the emerging responsive design workflow and concepts that will set the stage for the conference.
Get Your (Visual) Style On (9:45 - 11:15AM)
Our speakers present alternative approaches to web page mockups that separate the visual design language (the "look and feel") from they layout of specific pages.
Evolving the Digital Style Guide (11:30 - 1:00PM)
Many digital style guides are ancient relics, created for the designer as a way to properly dictate the use of visual elements. However, we live in a world where our digital products and services are judged not just how they look, but by what they do and how they behave. So a relevant style guide needs to speak to a larger audience, including the UX designer and developer, to create the attribute that all brands should strive for: consistency.
We will explore:
• The problems with current style guides
• What other companies are doing
• The essential components
• Where to go next
Lunch (1:00 - 2:00PM)
How to Prototype Using Responsive Frameworks (2:00 - 3:30PM)
It's becoming clear that it's preferable to transfer your designs into code as early in the process as possible, and using a grid or a framework can give you a head start. But how do you use them? Jared introduces the best options and translates a sketch to an HTML prototype before your eyes!
Break (3:30 - 4:00PM)
How to Set Client Expectations (4:00 - 5:30PM)
We designers aren't the only ones needing to adapt to a changing web ecosystem. Our clients and bosses also need to change their expectations around what a "site design" entails today and what deliverables will be provided during the design and development process. Every member of our panel has experience selling responsive design to clients and adjusting deliverables and payment schedules in an appropriate way. They'll share their experiences and welcome questions from you and your fellow attendees.
KeynoteGoonies, Conquistadores, and Astronauts (8:30 - 9:30AM)
The shape of the web is changing, and with a spirit of bold ingenuity we must adapt our roles, tools, and processes to forge ahead. Within all this uncertainty lies the core of why we love working on the web: the opportunity for discovery and creation.
Responsive Layouts Beyond the Sidebar (9:45 - 11:15AM)
When approaching the design of a responsive website, old habits might focus you on sidebars and footer regions for placing content. It's natural to assume the best responsive solutions are to be found in moving those regions around the page as whole units. But that way of thinking could lead you miss the best stuff about responsive design. Let go of the old habits, and discover how focusing on content can drive far superior responsive layouts.
Github for People Who Don't Code (11:30 - 12:30PM)
As code becomes an integral part of the designer's toolbox, it becomes increasingly important for designers to "play well with others." Git is the most popular version tracking system in the web development world and you'll learn how to use it! This session gives you basic GIt training including what Git is, how it looks on the command line, how to find your way around GitHub, and services that provide a friendly front-end interface.
Lunch (12:30 - 1:30PM)
Photoshop's New Groove (1:30 - 2:30PM)
Not too long ago, being the best web designer around was synonymous with having serious Photoshop skills. But having to design for a bajillion devices, you've likely been told "you can't use Photoshop anymore". In a HTML5 and CSS3 world, is there any room for our old friend? Absolutely. This session is chock-full of ideas, including an in-depth look at some great tools for repurposing Photoshop in your Responsive Web Design workflow.
How to Design with Web Fonts (2:30 - 3:30PM)
You can't design 'content first' without good typography, but there's more to it than just dropping in a line of Javascript or linking to some CSS. We'll cover things like:
• Font services vs. self-hosting (smackdown-style)
• Where they work (and where they don't)
• Performance (and how to get more of it)
• Icon fonts (even MORE resolution independence)
• Mobile use (benefits and bear traps)
• Fallbacks, FOUT & Freakouts (don't present to clients without this)
• Super Fancy (ff)eatures (ligatures & other Open Type goodness)
Don't get me wrong—I love web fonts and good typography—but it is still a bit 'Wild West' out there, so it pays to be prepared.
Break (3:30 - 4:00PM)
A New Toolbox: Secrets from Happy Cog (4:00 - 5:00PM)
Kevin and Sophie reveal Happy Cog’s design process through their experience building a responsive site from beginning to end, including: kicking off the project, the collaborative design process, and the tools they tweaked along the way. Find out what worked and what they learned. In the end, it should be clear that this is a time for experimentation and finding new approaches for new tasks.
Closing Words (5:00 - 5:30PM)
Brad Frost wraps up the first ever Artifact Conference.
Workshops
Build Responsively Workshop (full day) (10:00 - 5:00PM)
Build Responsively introduces workshoppers to the mindset and techniques necessary for embracing the fluid nature of the web. The full-day workshop provides a broad sweep across the major topics involved in building responsive websites, including:
- Responsive Web Design 101
- Web Design Process for Responsive Sites
- Project Deliverables
- Techniques for Structuring Code
- Flexible Content Considerations
- Shifting Interaction Models
- Navigation on Responsive Sites
- Performance Considerations
- Responsive Thinking
Across each topic, Ben Callahan from Sparkbox will provide a good starting point of best practices, relevant examples, recent industry developments, and challenging hurdles. Throughout the day, workshoppers will have opportunity to dig into code examples and exercises, but content will also be accessible for non-developers.
We ask that all workshoppers bring at least a basic understanding of HTML/CSS, a laptop, and an opinion.
Responsive Design Patterns (1/2 day) (10:00 - 1:00PM)
As responsive web design continues to evolve, we’re confronted with difficult problems about how to create adaptive interfaces that look and function beautifully across many screen sizes and environments. How do we handle navigation that’s four levels deep? How do we deal with large data tables? How well do modules like lightboxes, tabs, embeddable maps and more translate to various contexts?
This workshop will take a detailed look at the pros, cons and considerations of many emerging responsive patterns, and will explain how to incorporate them meaningfully in your projects. You'll come away with plenty to think about and plenty to implement when you get back to work.
Designing for Touch (1/2 day) (2:00 - 5:00PM)
For more than a decade and a half designers have used the same tool to make the web that we’ve used to interact with it, namely the mouse.
The emergence of mobile and touch devices presents us with both an opportunity to step away from our desks and explore new ways of thinking, creating, and working, as well as responsibility to cultivate empathy and contextual awareness for the specific needs of mobile users.
In this workshop, we’ll challenge the idea that t