Nhi Vuong 

0ct 17th 2018 

Networking event 

     I went to a National Design Week 2018. It is a networking event located at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Museum. The event celebrates the important role of design in all aspect of daily life. At the event, I met all different designers work in various fields. It is fun and helpful event to participate. 

    The event is 3 hours long. They set up the tables for each of the fields. So it is easy for you to look for your table. If you like Design and Social you could go to that table and talk to the designer, who has most experiences about it. They let us rotate every 10 minutes so that we could talk to more other designers. There are five rotations before the Keynote. It is when winners of the National Design Week share their experiences during the competition. There are 4 winners of the year of 2016, 2017 and 2018. I like how they shared about the work with passion and how they come up with an idea. I also like how they find a partner and learn how to work with each other. I learned that get a partner is a good way to keep the passion. The talking is about an hour, and then it is a free time when we could go around and see other designers.

    During the event, I met up 4 designers. Some of them is working for a company, there are two designers are working for their team studio and one is working for him and his partner company. I most interesting in the team studio, their table is Design and Human Experience, so after the Keynote I came back to their table and want to see more about their works. Scott and Cat represented for the generalist studio. Their studio designed logo, infographic, signage, directories, TV show advertising, posters, web design, etc. They shared about how they approached people and listen to what the client need. They showed their work randomly and observe people talking or express their feeling about the work. The MS campaign that they made is amazing. They came up with the idea try to get more people to involve in the activity by give them a marker and let them express it on the MS logo. Some people cross out the MS, some put dash lines. Another project that interesting me is that the directories that they made for a new building of a high school in the Bronx. They let the students participate in their project by made signs of student name and put it in the wall. So the student can take their name tag as pass when they work out the building. The second interesting table is the Design with Social Good Equity represented by Corey. He started worked at Adobe until he met his partner and started their own company. The company worked with clients from across the world. They had shown me design connected people together. He also shared his experiences when working in a team. They try to meet up the client need instead of what you think or what I think. The important is the information and research for the brand. 

    After the event, I learned a lot of new experiences for myself. I learned how to be more socialized and how to approach people. How to work with a partner or in a team. It is my weakness because I’m not good at communication and I refer to work alone than with someone else. It is difficult for me to compromise with others. I’m on the way to be a designer, so there are a lot of things to learn and I will start to find myself a  partner to go along with me.