All designers need inspiration, but where do you go to get it? While the web is full of great finds, design books often have just as much insight, not to mention beautiful paper and spreads to spark any designer’s imagination. Last night, Converse attendees shared together the design books that inspire them the most during a meet up at Zen West Roadside Cantina and they came up with quite a list! Make sure you add a few of these to your wish list and don’t forget to drop some hints to friends and family!

We totally believe in feedback.

Back in October, we went all out for our friends and colleagues in the Baltimore design community and we’ve been hearing about it ever since. If you haven’t emailed, tweeted, or talked to us face-to-face about your experience, we’d like to hear from you. Complements, suggestions, or criticisms: the more we receive, the better Design Week gets.

Okay, that said, let’s get to the wrap-up..!

Design Week opened up with a bike race through Baltimore to find and capture the each letter of the phrase” AIGA Baltimore 25″. Participants sent their photos back to our judges at Canton’s Myth & Moonshine. Search for #AIGATypeRace on Instagram or check out the Charm City Type Race photos on Facebook.

Then on Monday, we welcomed former design director of NYTimes.com, Khoi Vinh, to the 2640 Space in Charles Village for an evening panel discussion about interactive design. Vinh was joined by Andy Mangold of Friends of the Web, April Osmanof of Fastspot, and James Pannafino of Millersville University. The conversation included topics ranging from the evolving purpose of the web and the technical specifics of responsive design to the Baltimore art and tech scene. You can read more about what we learned here.

Next up for Design Week was a type design workshop with Mucca Design’s creative director, Matteo Bologna. Held at one of Stevenson University School of Design’s swanky Mac labs, attendees were given a hands-on tutorial on how to manipulate letterforms and craft their own typefaces. Matteo demonstrated the quick and dirty overview of formatting characters in Glyphs, a font editing software. Being a Bezier curve master certainly helps!

Thursday was AIGA Baltimore’s 25th anniversary, so we just went ahead and threw a huge party in Fell’s Point at the Waterfront Hotel featuring our guests of honor: the chapter’s past presidents. Baltimore Print Studios donated super-cool thank-you certificates, hot off the letterpress, to help us recognize the presidents, their respective boards, and everything they accomplished over the last 25 years. Studio, in-house, and freelance creatives from all over the city showed up, (and some students too), making it a very memorable and fun evening for all (Well, most of us can remember it, anyway). Check out those memorable moments on our Facebook page.

The next morning, we took visitors on three studio tours, each one unique in their approach to design and what services they offer.

First, we went to ADG Creative in Columbia where we got an in-depth look at their ultra-modern setup, well-equipped with innovative technologies for interactive design and video production. From there, we headed back to Fell’s Point, dropping in on Orange Element to hear about their process, tour their 3-story row house studio, and look at some of their clever design work, including some enviable wrapping paper. Our last visit was to Gilah Press where we got to see how their top-quality cards and wedding invitations are created in a surprisingly old-school way.

We invited our participants out to Birroteca  after the studio tours to join us in a collective sigh of relief as another fantastic Baltimore Design Week came to a close. Thanks to everyone who supported us, volunteered, or attended the events. You’re totally our new (or our old) best friend. And if you couldn’t make it, don’t worry because we’re going to start planning next year’s events shortly after our holiday break and we’ve already got some stellar ideas.

Want to see more pictures? Check them out here.

On Monday, October 21, Khoi Vinh, former design director of The New York Times, joined AIGA Baltimore for a Design Week panel discussion on interactive design at the 2640 Space. Khoi and fellow panelists April Osmanof from Baltimore’s FastSpot, Andy Mangold from Baltimore’s Friends of the Web, and James Pannafino from Millersville University discussed what it was like to be an interactive designer in the 21st century. We laughed, we learned, and we gained new insights on working in the interactive field.

Here are a few things attendees learned from the discussion:

1. Every medium starts out with an initial purpose that evolves over time. The web started out as a library of documents and its purpose has evolved into a method of sharing content and creating conversation.

2. Baltimore has up-and-coming art and tech scenes (that often collide). People are moving to Baltimore because it’s a “cheap” place to start from the ground up. April Osmanof says Baltimore “has an art heartbeat at its core,” which fuels creativity on many different levels and industries.

3. Designers are learning to code HTML, CSS, and sometimes even Javascript because helps the team to complete projects on tight deadlines. Of course, it’s also helpful for designers and developers to speak (or at least understand) the same languages.

4. Pairing designers with developers is great for project communication and cross-training. Plus, it often results in better products.

5. Very few team-based creatives work from home. When everyone works together in the same place and at the same time we produce better work; we can get work done faster with fewer communication roadblocks.

6. If you’re just starting out in interactive design, work on a personal project to get some portfolio material. Remember that every artist was at first an amateur with developing skills.

7. There’s always something new to learn working in web production. On trying to keep up on new technologies, even James Pannafino struggles: “I freak out everyday.” So, know that you’re not alone.

8. As interactive designers, we have to get and stay comfortable with the ultimate unknown web. What’s next? Who knows.

9. Most clients know what responsive design is and why it’s important (finally!). If you still need to make the transition to coding responsively, ask yourself: “does this column or object need to have a fixed width or can it be flexible?”

10. Quick prototypes (like QuickTime movies with screen captures) are a great way to engage your client and convey interactivity from the get-go.