Haggared and hung-over participants and speakers were awoken by James Sommerville of the Attik‘s request for everyone to stand on their chairs and face the far end of the conference room with their hands in the air. His demonstration of the effect of “following rules” was an interested aside and provided a humorous provocation to the teams to question what they were being told. As a scruffy ex-footballer, Huddersfield local, and head of one of the most successful design firms around, Sommerville was an intimidating presence. Speakers and participants learned of the Attik’s growth and determination, broad range of impressive client work, and their struggle to evolve and not be stylistically pigeon-holed. Sommerville remarked about still having to do “shit work” sometimes and having a lot of “mouths to feed” with offices worldwide. Putting a human face on an oft-viewed design demon like Attik was a sobering realization for some. The very real struggle to do good work, get paid, and feel good about what you do is something Sommerville knows all too well, and with a young baby and a busy schedule, everyone felt lucky to have seen his presentation prior to his early flight back to the UK.

Another design heavy-hitter, Razorfish, was represented by sound designer Gavin Shepard. A new addition to the Razorfish conglomerate, Shepards’s sound expertise spans from his school years playing bass to his explorations with keyboards and synthesizers for broadcast and online. Shepard’s level of sophistication with regard to tonality, tempo and his ability to bring emotion to the visual was astonishing. Shepard showed pieces with and without sound to underscore the importance of the audio-visual experience, and provided glimpses into the creative limitations of designing for sound online. It was apparent that Shepard’s talents are far greater than what the web will allow and it will be interesting to see how Razorfish facilitates his unique abilities.

As the last presenter, I wanted to talk a little about the division between “culture” and “discipline” within the interactive design scene. In many ways, the only reason I was able to go to Project 40 was through and ongoing dialogue with Henrikk Karlsson after having seen his site, module8, a long time ago and having hung out with him when he visited New York. I touched on examples of experimental work and how online experiments can be used as working examples of functionality and ideas that can be pitched to clients. Far too often, good ideas die on the white board because there is too little time or too little planning to execute an example of an idea to evaluate its viability. In addition, I also touched on the “culture” of the design community and showed examples from the new Codex Series Two CD-ROM to show others that people are out there exploring and discovering things on their own and pushing the medium as a result.

Well over half of the speakers and participants at Project 40 have their own personal sites, and nothing was done to gather this information. During the lunch break after I spoke, I went around to every person and collected their names and personal urls. On a certain level, Project 40 was like meeting all your favorite designers, but at a funeral. Everyone wanted to talk to each other and say “hey I really like your work,” but between speakers and the ever-looming AIDS project, there seemed to be more pressing matters and too little time to really get to know each other creatively outside of the project teams.