Finding Professional Community During a Pandemic

As the rain settled in on month eight of social distancing since COVID-19 hit Bellingham, WA, I found myself craving professional gatherings, conferences and geeky design talk. I hadn’t felt drawn to sign up for conferences, as I feel like the most beneficial part is the random meetups in the lobby and catching up with friends from around the world. However, out of desperation for community, I signed up for the Adobe Max and ATypI conferences.

Adobe Max is usually a 10,000-person conference in California, but this year it was free, online, and had about one million attendees. I was impressed with the stunning conference motion graphics, the amount of talks and workshops, and the caliber of speakers. Listening to Gwyneth Paltrow talk about business and creativity was inspiring, as was hearing Shepard Fairey talk about his illustration work and encouragement to artists that “success and money are two totally different things.”

Inspiration was a good starting place, but since I teach classes on Adobe products, I was left needing more nitty gritty education to get my geek on. Last month, the ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) conference was supposed to be in Paris, but was moved online. It certainly wasn’t the same as networking with new and old typography friends at a rooftop bar overlooking the Eiffel Tower, but the conference committee did a great job creating a remote experience. The highlight was the “hangout room” where we could drop in anytime and catch up with international friends and discuss conference talks and typographic controversies. I attended a talk on italic type, which was incredibly helpful as I’m working on my first italic font, learned about the incredible Noto Sans project, listened to debate revolving around the controversial issue of “freeing fonts,” and attended as many talks on variable fonts as possible.

While not quite the same as in person, both events definitely gave me some inspiration to keep moving forward with projects that would’ve gone neglected during a normal busy social year, and shift my mindset to an isolated, but productive, winter.