Last Thursday we had Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners in Chicago out to speak at the occasion of the Salazar Student Awards, at the Vancouver Film School auditorium. (If you have a high-bandwidth connection, you can view Jim’s presentation video online courtesy of 2c Visual Communications)
Jim apologized before, during and after on the tangential style of his talk, but in my opinion, one of the great things about a good speaker is that you feel like you’re sitting across the table from them having a good ol’ discussion—just you and 80 other people or so. Yes, Jim took many exits and side trips with his thoughts and stories, but this actually served as the perfect metaphor for what he was saying, which was basically, “you never know what’s going to happen in life.”
While that may sound trite, it is also true, and served as Jim’s answer to the perception that all that he has done, and all his successes, have been planned or organized or willed into being. Of course it takes a person of certain talent or fortitude or bravery or insight to make those accidents which befall all of us into worthy ventures, but as Jim said, if you don’t try or allow it to happen, well, it won’t.
Jim is one of those designers who is known not so much for the commercial work that he’s done as the, yes, tangential work: thoughts and ideas he’s brought to the design arena. I’ve known about his website coudal.com for many, many years; long before I even knew there was a Jim Coudal to go with that. Coudal.com has functioned as a kind of design magazine; a sort of Utne Reader of the web. Such things, collections of links and commentary, are common now, but coudal.com was certainly one of the first, and remains one of the best. Famous in their earlier days for sporting events such as Photoshop Tennis (yeah, right, those guys! You know who I’m talking about now), and their fabulous Museum of Online Museums (MOOM), they have since branched out into poetry, films, field-testing books, and various mind games).
Fun stuff that has been keeping the design world (and many, many others) entertained for many years, but uh … the rest of us have business to attend to and clients to supplicate, right? Well, the thing about people like Jim, Hillman Curtis and Ze Frank (both of whom the GDC is bringing out to speak this year), is that they have found a way to make the things that they enjoy doing be the things that they make money doing.
For Jim it was a series of accidents (you had to be there) that led to the realization that the thousands of people who came to his site every day were people who generally liked the same things he did, dealt with the same issues, and would probably like and buy a product he was developing called JewelBoxing. He was right, and his succes in that has led him to other ventures, doing other things he likes to do.
While Jim’s battle cry to designers to fire their clients and do interesting things for themselves may have been a tad confusing to the student audience, his advice to be continually searching and learning, and be willing to take risks in life for the things you believe in is good advice for young and old.
And like any good verbal crocheter (crochetist?) he brought all the tangential loops back to the main and left us with those interwoven thoughts to admire or pick apart as we will. I had a good evening out with Jim; I’m confident that all those other people did as well.
Click here to view photos from the event. (photos courtesy of Mel Buenaventura and Robert Earnest Photography)
June 5th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
It was definately an enjoyable and inspirational evening that was well attended.
How about a link to the photos in Flicker?
June 5th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Okay, now I really regret not going. Thanks for the recap Marian. Coudal.com is pretty cool and an inspiring read. Already bookmarked, TYVM.
June 5th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Josh Werner wrote another great review of the event and managed to capture a photo of Coudal giving him a headlock.
Also some great photos of the event on Flickr.
And if you have a high-bandwidth connection, there’s a video of Coudal’s presentation here.
June 5th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Thanks for the great event, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
June 5th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
is it just me, or does that video have no sound?
Mind you, It’s quite hilarious watching mark speak without sound …
June 6th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
Ha ha ha. Better without my voice you mean?
Nope, there’s sound. Works fine for me.
June 13th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
That was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone for organizing the event. I had a lot of fun in Vancouver and enjoyed Jim Coudals talk emmensly.
July 8th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
[...] La section Britanno-Colombienne de la GDC nous présente, via son blogue, une allocution de Jim Coudal. Visionnement que je vous recommande fortement de faire, tant parce que le monsieur nous propose des réflexions stimulantes ainsi que pour la maîtrise parfaite de son propos — son style est très particulier. [...]