This past Friday, Derek and I, had the pleasure of attending the Front-End Design Conference is St. Petersburg, FL.

This was one of the first design conferences that we had been to, so we weren’t sure what to expect. We arrived around 9am and were greeted by a slew of friendly people.. not to mention free coffee and breakfast too! After getting our name tags and swag bags, we made our way into the main room. I sat down in my chair, opened my laptop and noticed I only had about an hour of battery life, and 20% battery life on my iPhone!!! So I was that guy scouring for an outlet and ran his charger across the walkway…

Dan Denny, Front-End Design Conference Founder, kicked off the day by introducing himself, explaining what the conference was all about, and thanking the sponsors. The format of the day was basically two speakers, break, two speakers, lunch, etc…

There were a number of great speakers that were crazy informative and extremely helpful. I’m only going to cover a few, but all were great.

The first one up was Larissa Meek, from AgencyNet, who gave a great presentation on  brainstorming. She covered the difference between idea storming and brainstorming, the pros and cons of individual vs. group sessions, and gave a few great techniques to help you generate ideas. You can view her slides from the presentation here!

Next up was the hilarious Niki Brown from Metropolis Creative! Niki discussed the importance of of details in design including: Color Schemes, Typography, Grids and PLAID! I know she stepped out of her comfort zone by speaking at the conference, but there’s no reason for her to be uncomfortable. She definitely knows her stuff and totally commands a room! Check out her slides from her presentation here.

Lea Alcantara started off her presentation, ” The Art of Self Branding,” with an audience exercise. She instructed us to switch seats and sit next to someone we didn’t know, introduce ourselves and take two minutes to get to know that person. Afterwards, we wrote down three adjectives about the person we just met and disclosed them to each other a little later. I got, ” personable, proactive, and central florida haircut!” Not sure what that last one means, the girl I said it was a good thing, so i guess I’ll take it. The purpose of this exercise was to find out how others perceive us. This was my favorite presentation, because I just finished reading ” Celebrity Branding You,” by Nick Nanton, and could really relate to everything she was saying.

The next presentation was on taking your designs from wireframes to finished products. But, I was too busy staring at Meagan Fisher’s unbelievable slide designs to remember what she talked about (jk)!!

Meagan broke her process down into four categories – Get to know the project, Develop the strategy, Bring it to life, and Make it shine.

Next on the agenda, LUNCH BREAK! Lunch consisted of White Russians, Bloody Mary’s, Burgers, and running in the rain.

When we got back, Jina Bolton, from Crush + Lovely, was setting up for her presentation on CSS Organization & Workflow. My background is primarily in Print Design, and I just started diving into code. Jina was extremely knowledgable, but most of what she covered was over my head. Hopefully next year, I’ll be on the same page!

Sarah Parmenter was up next with a presentation on the Principles of UI Design. I think everyone fell in love with her accent, as soon as she started talking! Sarah discussion was focused mainly on iPhone App design. She went over both good and bad design and showed examples of each, as well as showing us some projects she had worked on.

After the conference was over we headed to the “After Party!” Free appetizers and drinks.. count us in!

Overall, the conference was AMAZING!! Dan and Cherrie you all did a very impressive job putting it all together! We met a ton of great people including Vishal from GrooveShark, and Mitch from Freshbooks. Everyone was soo friendly and you could tell they were actually interested in what you had to say! We look forward to staying in touch with everyone that we met and attending next year’s conference!!