#26 Sep 13 2018

Side projects have always been a big part of Elliot’s career in design, publishing, and music – some successful, others not — and in latter years the line between ‘side’ and ‘full-time’ has become increasingly blurred, as has the line between client work and making products. In this talk, Elliot reflects on the pros and cons of his various projects, and the concept of productivity and creativity as a whole. He proposes that because creativity always seems to manifest itself at the ‘wrong’ time, now has actually never been a better time to follow our passions and make a living from what we love the most.

About Elliot

Elliot Jay Stocks is a designer and musician. He is the Co-editor and Creative Director of lifestyle magazine Lagom, the Creative Director of coffee roaster Colonna, and the founder of typography magazine-turned-book 8 Faces. He was previously the Creative Director of Adobe Typekit and his design work, for clients such as Virgin, Microsoft, Brooklyn Beta, and MailChimp, has been showcased in publications such as Communication Arts, Creative Review, Computer Arts, Page, The Independent, .Net, and Design Week. He lives and works in the countryside near Bristol, UK, and creates electronic music by night under the alias ‘Other Form’.

How everything you do is connected by an obvious, but often overlooked common element: You.

Work, hobbies, books, interests, travel, films, music — our preferences make us who we are, but those aspects of our individuality are actually greater than the sum of their parts — if we know how to look at the connections and spaces between them.

Through his own experiences and personal experiments, Dan will share how each of our overlapping diagrams can help us explore and achieve more than most people realise.

About Dan

Born in Miami Beach and now living in London, Dan is a designer, photographer, and founder / creative director of webgraph, a multi-disciplinary studio based in the US.

In addition to working with selected clients and speaking at conferences around the world, he also provides his photographic services to select clientele on request.

Internet connected devices, notifications, @mentions, emails... we're at a time where our lives rely heavily on our devices with people and services vying for our attention from the moment we wake up. Sam's brief talk looks at how turning some of that attention to a hobby which relies less on being connected can help you switch off both mentally and physically, giving you some respite from our attention-hungry world.

About Sam

Sam is a designer/developer/illustrator from Halifax. He's been designing and building websites since 2003 but has lately been delving into more analogue activities like drawing comics and cartoons with real pens and paper.

Same Site Cookies are a new twist on the browser cookies you know and love to hate. In this short talk, the browser engineer that invented the feature will teach you all about Same Site Cookies and how they can be used to protect your site from various attacks.

About Mark

Mark is a software security specialist with decades of experience in building and securing Internet facing systems. Mark currently works for Mozilla on the Firefox web browser.

Sarah is a Graphic Designer and an artist. She has also been a knitter, a potter, a quilter and a photographer. Since childhood she has been drawn to creative pursuits for the simplest of reasons - they make her happy. But does creativity have a measured effect on wellbeing?

About Sarah

Sarah is a designer for White Clarke Creative in Milton Keynes. Core skills include concept creation, design development and innovation with a drive to really understand and interpret the ideas of the client. She is passionate about creating successful communications that hit the brief but challenge expectation. As an artist she loves to experiment with new techniques and the transformative nature of light.