Alt Design Summit, SLC 2013 :: find your voice

this was my third year to attend Altitude Design Summit {affectionately alt} and it was an experience totally different than my first two years. to start, it’s like going home now – not just because it’s held in one of my home states, utah, where i lived for twenty-two years. but because alt. includes a community of creatives i feel connected to. alt is a group of people just as obsessed as i am about design, parties, holidays, fashion, food, creating, motherhood, and more. and we tolerate each others craziness!

i attend alt because of this community and the wealth of inspiration i find there. this year, as i sat in classes i kept hearing a similar theme over and over again. make life happen. create your own story. find your voice. be honest. content is king. know what you want out of life and run like hell at it.

while i believe i work passionately towards creating the life i want – creating the life our family wants. i also realize that i shelter myself and my true feelings from the majority of people around me, and the public. especially here on seejaneblog. i remain silent about a lot of things that could be shared. shared respectively.

a new goal for 2013: find my voice.  i’m going to create my story. be more honest.

Stefan Sagmeister probably needs no introduction, but just in case… he’s an austrian born, new york based designer. i did not know stefan or realize what designs he was connected to until this month, and at alt I got to hear him speak. he talked about the in’s and out’s of happiness – it was fascinating, and to be completely candid, life-changing for me. he, and his “filming accomplice”, david hillman curtis worked together to make a beautiful film, called the happy film. we only got to see 12 minutes of it {it will be shown in film festivals later this year}, but what we saw was amazing! The idea is that “in the course of a year, sagmeister will experiment with various practices that are widely touted as increasing one’s happiness: meditation, cognitive therapy, and pharmaceuticals.” tt was so interesting, touching, inspiring, and don’t even get me started on the typography!*

what made stefan so incredible was that he knew what he wanted out of life, he is genuine. he has found his voice.

{moi, my darling friends: shelby russell – owner of soel boutique in provo, utah and mindy gledhill – the talented & beautiful indie-music artist}

another keynote speaker was katie, of color me katie. she considers herself a professional fun maker. at the end of her talk about making people happy, she told us to find the balloons under our chairs.  katie turned the design summit in to a spontaneous balloon party:

{moi, shelby, bestie becky kimball, and emily frame of the new-er blog small fry!}

three cheers for the founders, organizers, speakers, and all the sponsors of alt for helping it reach its full potential!  i look forward to working with many of the sponsors this year.

starting right now, i am going to push myself. instill a new passion to continually raise the bar and accept that failing at times is part of the game. it’s how quick you pick yourself back up that really matters. i am going to be on a mission to find my voice. right now, due to the terrible-terrible air quality in utah (i am still hiding in bed as often as possible) i am literally trying to find my voice that went missing when an awful head cold started on my last flight home. nine days ago. what is up with the inversion in utah this winter? ugh…

we’re all disguised. you can’t find the peace you’re looking for without a fight. {inspiring song lyrics via}

want to see more? here are a few Alt summit reviews i recommend: Design Mom: one,two, and three, justin hackworth, jasmine star, *the jealous curator, the paper mama, and creature comforts.

{pictures courtesy of justin hackworth, on the alt summit flickr stream.}