Notes Design

Jump ropers get air at Art Center's Serious Play conference

Show's over, kids! Design conferences have become exercises in regenerated, wasteful spectacle. A self-described conference junkie shows us how to bring back the magic.

"Have I died?" I swooned, gnawing my way into a third mound of chili cheese French fries. These were not your typical chili cheese fries, mind you. These fries came with a full condiment bar; overflowing, help-yourself buckets of offbeat fry adornment that included three--three!--varieties of mayonnaise. I nodded back at Bruce Nussbaum between large, ungainly forkfuls of cheese sauce swirled with so much ketchup that it had turned pink, too focused on deciding which flavored mayo I'd ladle over my next serving (chipotle or truffle?) to actually pay attention to a word he was saying. What I heard instead was my inner monologue shrieking over the mastication of fried potatoes: "Now this is what I call a design conference."

Art Center's third biennial conference, Serious Play, held this past May, was packed with such sensory overload. There were blinking Google martini glasses and sleek Steelcase seating; rockstar designers and rocket scientists. I made friends with Eames Demetrios. I talked physics with a Mentos-and-Coke fountain-making scientist. When I left I had two grand-slam presentations still ringing in my ears: The adorable John Maeda and a heartfelt Paula Scher.

But even after my fry binge, I found myself riding around Pasadena in a chauffeured Hyundai, clutching a bag overflowing with designed-for-all Target products, feeling oddly...empty.