Last day of HOW 2008

The final tally of designers attending the HOW Show 2008 was somewhere shy of 4,000. I think I spoke to half of you at our booth, The Paper Mill Store. What a blast we had!

I've been telling folks that HOW is my favorite trade show, period. The group of folks who attend are always interesting to talk with and for the most part in a great mood. The theme we heard again this year was ECO-Design and its growing importance with clients and of course with the design community.

I met up with my good friend Sabine Lenz during the final moments of the show. Sabine always has good insights into design and the design community. You should visit her site, PaperSpecs, where you can get great information on paper and design topics.

I had some great conversations on the topics surrounding paper and the environment. Its clear that most everyone is clamoring for accurate information on the subject. We gave out diskettes packed with good eco logo usage information.

HOW Show 2008

We're here in Boston for the HOW Show 2008. A reported 3,600 attendees had pre-registered making this the best attended HOW show to date.

We arrived into Boston on Friday night to take advantage of the town for a few days prior to the show. We stayed in Cambridge and enjoyed the great restaurants and museums of Harvard Square and Kendall Square areas.

The Sunday arrived and we set up our trade show booth to prepare for the onslaught of graphic designers and others in related graphics fields. Lot's of great companies are here and lot's of free stuff for attendees. To kick off our new Pantone products we are giving away a free ColorMunki tool. ColorMunki is Pantone's newest device. This thing is really cool. You can capture color from any surface and bring this color into your graphics program. As an example you can capture the color of an insects abdomen and the color of a piece of fruit and bring this into your MAC files. These devices retails for $499, we're giving one away free. Stop by and get a chance to win a ColorMunki.

HOW Design Conference Videos

See Exclusive HOW Conference Videos

Nothing beats attending the HOW show to experience the energy and to have the opportunity to talk to other people in graphic design from around the country and the world. Even if you attended, did you get to talk to the paper mills during the mad rush? Did you get to hear what some of the industries biggest names had to say? Maybe and maybe not.

We have some great videos to give you an insiders view of the conference no matter where you were last week. See our exclusive HOW Design Conference videos.

HOW Design Conference 2007

We came back from the HOW Design Conference Wednesday. Travel was smooth except for the bomb scare in the Atlanta airport that caused the longest security line I've seen since getting back into the USA from Europe the days after September 11th. We found some great places in Atlanta. We stayed at the Glenn Hotel Friday and Saturday, the roof cocktail bar is outstanding. YUPO held a party there one night. Couches and views as far as you can see. As well the Atalanta Botanical garden is a must see. However all Northerners should be sure to get there early in the day as by 4:00 pm the heat was oppressive. One of the best orchid collections I've ever seen.

Last but not least as places to go is Rathbuns for great dinners, good wines and a great atmosphere. Its neighbor the Krog bar is a must for a pre or post dinner cocktail. This is a great place to meet friends or take your special someone. Great service. We went there 2 nights.

The HOW conference was great from our point of view as suppliers exhibiting. We met with a huge number of graphic designers in our booth, we gave away two sets of TINTBOOKS, winners to be announced, and we created 10 exclusive videos speaking with industry observers and paper mills, etc. We're going to post these videos Sunday night.