Attending the 2024 Brand New Conference

Last fall I attended the Brand New Conference in Salt Lake City and I wanted to share some of my key takeaways.

Brand New is a branding and design blog that’s been a staple of my weekday mornings for nearly a decade. The Brand New Conference (BNConf) is a manifestation of that blog, all about branding and brand design. At Savas, I spend the days working in Figma, flowcharts, and docs, but I've always had a deep affinity and interest in identity and branding design, so I was excited to immerse myself in that world for a couple days.

A goal of mine this year was to make it to a design conference; it'd been a while since I’d attended one, and I find it’s quite energizing to hear people in your field give these great presentations about the same kind of work you see in your own day to day.

• To talk about traveling for work to other people traveling for work
• To meet and greet strangers irl; not everyone’s favorite, but a great opportunity to break through those introvert inhibitions
• To get surprised
• To get refreshed

• To see a lot of remarkable design
• To feel uncomfortable (see above re: meet and greets)
• To hear some Whys and Hows*
• To hear at least one thing that makes attending feel worthwhile

*This is the key. How ideas get proposed, where inspiration comes from, and how to weave the thread between effective strategy and gorgeous visuals. And, hearing that in the context of seeing incredible branding, identity, and motion design.

✅ Saw a lot of remarkable design
✅ Felt just uncomfortable enough
✅ Heard some Whys and Hows
✅ Heard at least one thing that made attending feel worthwhile

Most remarkable and foremost in practically every presentation was the emphasis on motion reels and making design move. It’s clear motion is an element that resonates strongly among designers and clients. I’ve taken that as a cue to make motion a stronger element of the UI and UX work we produce at Savas. Stay tuned!

A few presentations stood out for how well they demonstrated dedication to their craft:

• The BNConf identity: more about this further down!
• Kevin Cantrell: a designer and educator, Kevin wowed us with extremely detailed filigree work, ornate labeling, and even a variable font with a dragon glyph.
• Violaine & Jérémy: these French designers take the attitude of More is More in their work and it’s demonstrated through hand-drawn graphite illustrations, lustrous and textured interior design, and custom typography and font design.
• Brethren Design Company: Brothers Jordan and Jeremy Coon design approximately one billion graphics and max out artboards with graphic elements that come together to tell a brand story.

I attended BNConf solo, which can feel a little daunting when many other attendees are visiting as part of a larger team or department. After wandering around the common area for a morning between sessions, I managed to break into a circle of folks who were also attending solo, and in doing so, I connected to their connections. Together, we spanned roles from in-house brand managers to graphic design students to brand strategists. Proof of friendship!

I only took one photo of a slide across the two days of sessions. BNConf provides recordings of every session after the conference so there’s no problem with accessing anything that’s said or shown on stage. The reason I took this one photo was because it was:

1. the literal first session of the conference
2. the One Thing I was looking for

Max Ottignon, co-founder of Ragged Edge, served up this slide:

It might have been his lovely accent, but I believe it was more because that slide encapsulated something that I love about design; how similar concepts can be effective across different disciplines. Obviously, there are technical differences in how a UI/UX designer conducts their work from a furniture designer to a book designer, etc, but there’s a baseline mindset that strongly sets you up for success.

So often, clients are spoken about as an obstacle to work, specifically good work. That’s poor framing, and these four bullet points distill the concept of working with the people you want to work with and building upon one another’s experience. Without clients, we don’t have anyone to design for but other designers, and they’re a picky bunch.

“Find your common language” is, in so many words, How We Design Websites At Savas. From the perspective of the web design client, it’s important to stay aware that everything you’re talking to your client about—wireframes, information architecture, flyouts, hover states—is probably totally new, nearly a foreign language. Not only is it our job as consultants to create those deliverables, but it’s also our responsibility to create an environment of understanding for the client to receive, question, and understand those deliverables in the terms of their business and project goals.

It can be extremely frustrating when clients push back on design decisions. But, if we approach it as a collaborative process instead of an adversarial one, we're much more likely to get buy-in and alignment. Hearing this nearly first thing in the morning was an incredible validation check that reached out from its base in identity work to my own experience in UI/UX.

The final speaker of the conference, Michael Benjamin, reinforced this notion by discussing the merits of learning how to teach a design course at the University of Colorado ultimately led to learning how to give his clients the knowledge they needed to be active participants in the success of their project. Design isn’t a mystical science, it’s a process; a process that deeply rewards understanding.

It’d be criminal to go on about BNConf without commending the branding of the conference itself. Every year, founders Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio create a multi-faceted identity that reflects the conference’s location and history.

The 2024 BNConf was held in Salt Lake City. On an exploratory trip, Armin and Bryony captured three main sources of inspiration:

• a color palette from the surrounding mountains and landscape
• layout from the rigidly planned grid of Salt Lake City’s streets
• custom typography pulled from old streetcars

While the founders excel in creating an expressive and modular brand identity, they take it to another level by manifesting the conference swag themselves. Armin and Byrony spent nearly an entire month hand-dying paper, tote bags, and t-shirts to produce a unified set of swag that was, at the same time, completely unique to each conference attendee.

BNConf is a great experience for designers of all stripes and other creative professionals. I can’t wait to see what they cook up next.