While most people were likely sleeping in this past Saturday, I woke up bright and early, put my moxie pants on and headed over to MoxieCon, where eleven speakers taught the crowd dozens of ways to build a better design business. Totally worth it.

The five fantastic women that make up Chicago-based design collective, Quite Strong, put on an incredible debut design conference on Saturday. I got my hands on a last-minute ticket to this sold-out event, and took some notes for sharing. After all, sharing is caring.

Local designer and illustrator, Mike McQuade, shared with all of us at today’s Creative Mornings the beauty that comes from pouring all you’ve got into work you love.

Every month, I volunteer to help my buddy Mig Reyes a little with Creative Mornings Chicago, a monthly breakfast lecture series. And every month I leave feeling more driven and inspired to keep doing this work that I love and to work really hard at it. This month’s source of inspiration came from Mike McQuade’s presentation hosted in the incredible workspace of Gensler, a global design, architecture and planning firm, while Artisan made sure our bellies were happily full of delicious coffee and morning treats.

“Work hard. Stay humble. And get your work out there, because you never know who’s watching.”

Those are the awesome words Mike left us with for the day, and he is living proof that if you want to be successful doing what you love, that’s the way to do it. Mike’s work has been featured in tons of publications including Communication Arts, Gestalten Publications, HOW, Print, We Love Typography, GQ Style Blog, Design Taxi, Smashing Magazine, The One Show, Chicago Creative Club and Cannes. He is also a recipient of the Young Guns 9 Award.

If you have paid any attention to the world of web design lately, you’ve likely heard of something called responsive web design.

It’s the new Big Thing, and as such it’s seen its fair share of hype as well as backlash. What designers need to understand about responsive web design is that it’s essentially a screen-size solution, not necessarily a full mobile solution.

Some take-aways from my first DrupalCon experience in Denver. What a week!

Bryan and I recently attended DrupalCon Denver for nearly a week of immersion in all things Drupal. The conference is divided into eight tracks: Business & Strategy, Coding & Development, Commerce, Core Conversations, Design & UX, Drupal Community, Mobile, Government and Education and Site Building. Most of the sessions I attended fell into either the Business & Strategy or Design & UX tracks and here’s what I learned. Links to session videos are provided where possible.

The Post Family reminds us at this month's Creative Mornings Chicago about the importance of sharing.

I was lucky enough to snag a seat at this month’s Creative Mornings event, which sold out Monday in a record-breaking two minutes! Creative Mornings is a monthly morning meet-up and lecture for creatives. The seven fine fellas of the Post Family took the stage this time around as The Coop kindly shared their awesome co-working space for the event.