Inspiration break at ADC Summit 2010 and a sneak peek of things to come

From time to time, it's good to raise your head over the rim of your cubicle and take a look around. In a daring attempt to fulfill my desire for an overdue escape from day-to-day work, I ventured to Frankfurt and this year's ADC Summit Expo with projekt-pr's Rüdiger Hahn and Anke Schöneweiß, a freelance graphic designer. 11.000 square metres worth of design samples were waiting for us on this sunny Saturday.

While most of the exhibited ideas were well executed, it was only a handful that really caught my attention, and none did quite match my favourite from 2009. Still, a few caused a good laugh, while others delivered their message with such force that it took a while to digest the visual impact and sometimes gruelling information.

I took a few pictures of questionable quality on my iPhone before its battery died on me (that is to say, "died.. again" — great fun, but a different story):

Thankfully, these two were among my overall favourites. I absolutely love the simple and yet striking typographic visualisation in the first one, where the text doesn't need any accompanying image but becomes the image itself.

Jeep (or their agency) comes around with another strong punchline, "No limits.", and underlines it in a wonderful way. It is a reminder to think outside the box more often and even more unconventionally, and duly noted.

Fanning the embers

The day after my visit to the Expo, webfactory closed the agency for a week and went out to DevCamp, our personal in-house version of a BarCamp or HackDay. We've been working frantically on company projects, one of which is a redesign of this very website. Still aglow with creative energy and filled with longing for a desgin that conveys breadth and weightlessness paired with good typography, I set to work. Below is a sneak peek of what I am envisioning for the near future: