‘Build things that make people cry’ and more design inspiration from #ContraryCon

This past Friday was the chance to for the local design and creative engineering communities to embrace their rebellious side.
At iStrategyLabs’ second ContraryCon, held at the WeWork Wonderbread Factory, attendees took part in an all-day event with two concurrent tracks for the 12 presentations — traditional design and general creativity, as well as interactivity. The event is meant to “spur contrarian conversation and stimulate thought that defies the hive-mindedness of contemporary creative culture,” according to the event page. The first one was back in late 2014.
That’s not to say the event was all about going against today’s more popular trends — the event did come complete with its own custom Snapchat filter.
https://twitter.com/GoForTopherB/status/743582137190912000
Here are some of our favorite takeaways from the conference Twittersphere.
Zach Goodwin, creative director at iStrategyLabs, kicked off the day by sharing his secrets to successful creative work, like the deceptively simple “go make some stuff.”
https://twitter.com/stuartsymington/status/743808738495242241
Vanessa Newman, founder of Butchbaby & Co., which sells gender-neutral apparel for pregnant individuals, quoted a statement that reminds us how design and visualization is more than just making something look good.

"Designers are communicators and thinkers. Not pretty makers." #ContraryCon

— vanessa newman (@itsfiveboi) June 17, 2016

Nour Tabet of Huge, a worldwide digital agency headquartered in Brooklyn, had something similar to say to her audience when she talked about how “bad design is dead, but usable design is not enough.”

Challenging designers to reach outside the "sea of sameness" with @no_r (& in spirit @sherwoodforbes) #contrarycon pic.twitter.com/4gj05K64Qi

— Amy Lee (@amyleew) June 17, 2016

Mapbox’s Amy Lee provided some comfort to those of us out here winging it (read: everyone).

The truth about making interesting content online (hint: not just websites) #ContraryCon @istrategylabs pic.twitter.com/K4uasQ2EVq

— Amy Lee (@amyleew) June 17, 2016

Ken Barber, a letterer and typeface designer at Delaware-based House Industries (whom we featured on a list of the 12 best Delaware brands with awesome social media accounts) shared an enlightening blast from the past with a video they shot with the late typographer Ed Rondthaler, speaking about how confusing English spelling really is.

Awesome video "Ed Rondthaler on English spelling" https://t.co/02Y0L3Xk2V shown by @TypeLettering at #ContraryCon / @ContraryCon

— .skratch.dot. (@skratchdot) June 17, 2016

The theme of looking back at the history of design continued with Mapbox’s Saman Bemel-Benrud and Tatiana Van Campenhout giving a talk on the history of map design. (You can check out the shared slides from his presentation here.)

thx @mapbox design team for introducing me to the work of Hatsusaburo Yoshida https://t.co/uy8toKZGIr #ContraryCon pic.twitter.com/kz2MpRJ2sb

— 👁👅👁 (@AlisonBuki) June 17, 2016

Leave it to this community to design things as they’re listening to talks about design, like Kristina Walter of the Web Development Group who compiled a whole bunch of her takeaways from the conference in the best way she knew how.
https://twitter.com/redheadwalter/status/743841062251335680
Carrie Brickell of The General Design Co. picked up some inspiration from Capitol Hill design firm Workhorse.
https://twitter.com/carriebrickell/status/743888919276695556
iStrategyLabs has some archived videos available from the event’s livestream.