Apr 11 - Apr 12, 2023
UCDA Creative Summit
Live Virtual Event
Inspiration can fuel your imagination, spark the next big idea, or be the catalyst to respond to change. But for that to happen, we need to allow ourselves the time to discover, create, and connect. The UCDA Creative Summit—spanning two invigorating days (mid-day hours)—will provide you that creative outlet.
Engage virtually in an intimate setting with design professionals across North America. These illustrators, photographers, designers, and creative thinkers will be sharing their work and stories, with a hands-on creative exercise. Roll up your sleeves and come prepared to learn, share, and grow your creative potential. You’ll walk away with a unique keepsake, new ideas, and a tight-knit community to support you along the way!
TOP REASONS TO ATTEND IN THIS SUMMIT
Education—Carefully curated sessions from five speakers over two days to help you engage and spark your creativity.
Community—UCDA: Creating community for creative professionals in education. Connect with the folks who do what you do so you can charge your creative battery.
Affordable—Without the need for travel or lodging, the UCDA Creative Summit is very affordable—plus, There is the option to include session recordings! Both members and non-members are invited to attend.
MAIN STAGE SPEAKERS
20x20 SPEAKERS
AGENDA
The schedule below can help you protect and preserve your time. Note that all times are in North America Eastern Time.
Registration/Check-in: Monday, April 10—11 a.m.-2 p.m. ET
Live Event: Tuesday, April 11—11 a.m.-2 p.m. ET
Live Event: Wednesday, April 12—11 a.m.-2 p.m. ET
We start mid-morning at 11 a.m. Eastern (we have found this is the best overall time to allow different time zones to join us). Given this start time, we have only scheduled short breaks (no long lunch break), so plan to have water, coffee, and snacks on hand.
SESSIONS
MONDAY, APRIL 10
Registration / Check-in
TUESDAY, APRIL 11
11 a.m.-12 noon
Welcome and
1. Taking Time to Smell... the Developer
Mark Cornelison and Mark DiOrio
Photography is too fast in todays world. Photographers, especially ones that never shot film, are blowing through a shoot, looking at photos of the back of their camera , and not really knowing how they got there. Film photographers had to know how to solve all the problems at that moment, trusting their skills and training. Many times not knowing if they have a successful photo until days or weeks later when they got to develop the film. By then the subject is gone, the moment is gone forever.
Shooting with older film cameras forces the photographer to think about every shot from start to process. There was no saving the photo later with a crop, or photoshop to fix your bad exposure. We want to keep the true photography techniques alive, while still feeding the desire to go back to the way things were. No apps, no photoshop, just pure photography. It has a look.
12:10- 12:50 p.m.
2. 20x20 Presentations
How I Turned My Creative Block Into a Portfolio Piece
Olympia Crawford
As artists, creative block gets the best of us from time to time. In this session I will explain what caused my creative block, the steps I took to pull myself out of it, and how going through that process ultimately resulted in a portfolio piece.
It's About Finding the Flow
Amy Drill
A Sketchy Dood(ler)
Alex Parsons
After a few decades of aimlessly scribbling, I’ve pulled together several scraps to see if they amount to anything. And whether or not that matters.
Confessions of a Cranky Creative Director
Eric Wheeler
Tips from the Cranky Creative Director is a communication tool designed to educate colleagues on best practices in design and production. “Crankys” fill the void between emails and water cooler conversations in a format that is informative and often irreverent.
1-1:50 p.m.
3. Path to Paper
Reina Takahashi
Join paper artist Reina Takahashi as she dives into the papery process behind her projects. Through case studies, Takahashi will walk through the behind-the-scenes steps from concept and paper creation to delivery. Learn about her client engagement, paper building, and photo approaches.
1:50-2 p.m.
Wrap-up Discussion
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12
11 a.m. -12 noon
Opening and
4. The Creative Practice
Noah Scalin
What does it take to stay inspired as a creative professional? Noah Scalin shares his journey from graphic designer to world renowned artist and the secrets of creativity he discovered along his multi-decade spanning career.
12:10-12:50 p.m.
5. Interactive Workshop: Creative Sprint®
Noah Scalin
Artist Noah Scalin shares a simple, practical methodology for getting unstuck that can be used anytime anywhere to reignite your creative fires. We'll get the process started with several fun, fast, hands-on activities.
1-1:50 p.m.
6. You Look Like The Right Type: 15 years of daily type drawings
Mark Addison Smith
Daily, since November 23, 2008, Mark has been listening in on strangers' conversations and drawing their words as black and white, type-forward drawings, never missing a day with over 5000 drawings his ongoing archive. When the lockdown happened, Mark was unable to overhear quotes in public settings and invited strangers to hold conversations over Zoom. These conversations became his own virtual window to the world, and he spent hours at his dining room table translating other people’s words into lengthier, visual essays of how strangers (now friends) were grappling with the pandemic. You Look Like The Right Type is a story of sustaining a daily, fifteen-year design project while finding new sources of inspiration within it.
1:50-2 p.m.
Wrap-up Discussion
REGISTRATION
| SUMMIT PASS (all prices in USD) |
Live Event ONLY Participate live on dates |
Digital Recording ONLY Receive a link to the digital recording after the event |
Event and Digital Recording Participate live on dates and receive a link to the digital recording after the event. |
|||
| Regular | Early Bird (by March 11) | Regular | Early Bird (by March 11) | Regular | Early Bird (by March 11) | |
| UCDA Member (Professional, Emeritus, Corporate, or Faculty) Become a member |
$147 | $97 | $147 | $97 | $197 | $147 |
| Non-member/Subscriber | $297 | $247 | $297 | $247 | $397 | $347 |
| Full-Time Student | $147 | $97 | $147 | $97 | $197 | $147 |
See UCDA’s Cancellation Policy
See UCDA’s Inclusiveness, Code of Conduct, and Anti-harassment Policy.
Featured Speakers
Mark Cornelison spent 30 years as a photojournalist—24 of which were at the Lexington Herald-Leader—before jumping into higher education. As a photojournalist, he has photographed nine Super Bowls, 15 Final Fours, and 24 Kentucky Derbys. Mark began his career in the early 90s when film photography was still the standard. Every now and then during his time at the Herald-Leader he would use an old Crown Graphic from the 1950s and he also shot a lot of Polaroid 55 film. I loved that camera would use it awhile, then put it away and forget about it again for a few years. Later in his career, Mark started freelancing for the University of Kentucky on his days off and evenings, which eventually turned into a job offer. At age 50, he quit his job of 24 years and had his first baby. (“Wasn’t stressful at all!,” he says) One constant in Mark’s career has been taking one step forward and a couple steps backward—photographically. He was lucky to always have the most recent digital cameras in the industry, but now his main loves are a 1950s Speed Graphic and a 1902 Century #2 studio camera. Mark has also recently taken yet another step back—learning the 1850s Civil War-era Wet Plate Collodion process.
Mark DiOrio is an editorial and commercial photographer based in Upstate New York. He is also the University Photographer at Colgate University.
DiOrio earned his Master of Science in Photography from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the State University of New York College at Purchase.
He worked as a photojournalist at midsize newspapers, documenting communities in Louisiana, Utah, Florida, and New York. “Some of the best stories to be told can be found right in your backyard. You don’t have to travel the globe to find people with something important to reveal, or photograph for that matter.”
While on assignment, DiOrio often spends more time listening to those in front of the camera than making pictures with the intent on building trust and finding the story within the story. “The trust you build leads to access. Access is everything. It’s the point where you make the most intimate photographs. It’s where you capture someone at their most authentic representation. Without access, you have nothing.”
When his brow isn’t smudging up a viewfinder, you can catch DiOrio out for a hike, having a sip of bourbon by a bonfire, squeezing in another mile on his road bike, hunting for vintage things, daydreaming about another trip to the Colorado Plateau, and with a camera in hand taking photos for leisure, but probably not in that order.
Noah Scalin is the creator of the Webby Award-winning project Skull-A-Day and the collaborative science fiction universe and performance art project League of Space Pirates. He was the Grand Prize winner of Artfields 2022 and his collaboration with Old Navy was one of the most viewed commercials of 2020. Noah was the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business and his fine art has been exhibited internationally, including installations in Times Square, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. Noah is the author of six books, a sought after public speaker on creativity, and was a co-host of the Emmy-nominated VPM PBS program The Art Scene. He is also the founder of Another Limited Rebellion, an art and innovation consulting firm.
Reina Takahashi is a commercial paper artist based in Oakland, California. Her paper creations are made by hand and photographed for use in publications, social media, and ad campaigns. Since starting her commercial practice, Reina has provided artwork for The New York Times, Wired, The Los Angeles Times, and Target. She has a background as a product designer in finance, a visual designer in innovation consulting, and a founding member of the Design Museum of Chicago. When left to her own devices, she will almost always make paper food.
Mark Addison Smith is a queer artist whose design specialization is typographic storytelling: allowing illustrative text to convey a visual narrative through printed matter, artist books, and site installations. With his on-going, text-based archive, You Look Like The Right Type, he has been drawing snippets of overheard conversations every day since 2008 and assembling the works into larger conversations between strangers who haven't officially met or exchanged words. You Look Like The Right Type has been featured in Deadline, Goodtype, Hyperallergic, PRINT Magazine’s The Daily Heller, Queerty, and MAGMA Brand Design’s Slanted Magazine, among others. His artist’s books and typographic specimens have been accessioned into permanent collections and special collections archives worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum Artists’ Books Collection, Center for Book Arts in New York City, Getty Research Institute, Guggenheim Museum Library and Archives, Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection, Kinsey Institute, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Library of Congress, MoMA Franklin Furnace, the Smithsonian American Art and National Portrait Gallery Artists’ Book Collection, Tate Library, and Watson Library at The Met. He currently lives in New York City and serves as Associate Professor and Program Director of Design within the Art Department at The City College of New York (CUNY).
Event Files
Speaker Files
Date and Time
Tue, Apr 11 - Wed, Apr 12, 2023