ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

HOW This All Started

The HOW Design Conference is sponsored by HOW magazine, the creative and business resource for graphic designers.

Like HOW magazine, the HOW Design Conference recognizes that graphic design is a business as well as an art. We launched this annual event in 1991 with the goal of providing a hands-on, educational program to enable designers to better balance the three key components of graphic design: creativity, business and technology. Conference sessions cover a mix of these three critical design issues, with particular emphasis on creative and business topics.

Over the years, many strong design cities have hosted the Conference: Miami, Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston, Atlanta, and Washington D.C. The West Coast has been a popular venue; we've held the Conference twice in San Diego and once in Monterey and San Francisco.

Each year the HOW Design Conference recruits more than 45 speakers to address the range of concerns designers face. Past speakers include Lauralee Alben, Charles Spencer Anderson, Primo Angeli, Marshall Arisman, David Carson, Margo Chase, Joe Duffy, Milton Glaser, April Grieman, Jeffrey Keaton, Chip Kidd, Clement Mok, Jennifer Morla, Mike Salisbury, Richard Wilde and a host of others.

Year after year, attendees remark about how approachable the HOW Conference speakers are, and how inspiring—and comforting—it is to know even top designers have some of the same concerns and struggles a less-experienced designer might face. Conference attendees have an opportunity to meet many speakers face-to-face during dinners and other intimate events.

The HOW Conference has welcomed designers from hundreds of design firms, as well as from some of the biggest corporations, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions in the country. No matter what city we're in or who's speaking on what subject, we hear the same thing over and over from attendees: How energizing it is to be with 2,000+ other creative people, sharing successes and frustrations, regaling each other with "I-can-top-that" client horror stories, passionately discussing the challenges of being a designer in the Information Age, meeting new friends, making great contacts, and—through it all—reaffirming their decision to become a graphic designer.

Thanks for visiting the HOW Design Conference Web site, and we hope to see you at an upcoming Conference. We know you won't be disappointed. Register today.