A legendary industrial designer. An award-winning documentary filmmaker. And today’s leading UX and front-end visionaries. What do they have in common? They’re all part of An Event Apart 2019. Read on to learn how.

Our back (web) pages

One of An Event Apart’s first speakers was Chicago designer Jim Coudal—publisher of coudal.com, inventor of Layer Tennis, and co-founder of the ever-popular Field Notes Brand. Jim’s not only a web and product designer, advertising art director, and entrepreneur, he’s also a filmmaker… and a close friend of legendary documentarian Gary Hustwit.

You may know Gary from such wonderful movies as Objectified, Urbanized, and Helvetica, the film that made everybody a type nerd. Gary’s latest project, Rams, is a documentary portrait of one of the most influential designers of all time: Dieter Rams, the industrial design giant who made previously humdrum products not only touchable, but downright lovable. Herr Rams’s 10 Principles of Good Design are spoken of reverently by designers from multiple disciplines.

Those ideas, and the aesthetic brilliance of his product design, had a fundamental impact on the first generation of web designers—from Clement Mok, who emulated Rams’ touchable buttons in Photoshop, to Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer, who tried to achieve the same effects in CSS. (And who later co-founded An Event Apart.)

What goes around

To bring things full circle, folks who attend An Event Apart in 2019 will be treated to a special lunchtime presentation of Rams on the Tuesday of each three-day conference. It’s an overview of a giant’s legacy, influencing everything from the aesthetic of an entire generation to the product design of Apple Computer. But it’s more than that—it’s a rumination on consumerism, sustainability, and how technology is changing human behavior. The film also addresses the question of why, at 86 years old, Herr Rams now regrets being a designer. And it’s all set to an original score by pioneering musician and technologist Brian Eno.

In addition to enjoying this private screening of Rams in the company of a few hundred of your colleagues and peers, attending An Event Apart in 2019 means you’ll also enjoy seventeen superb, live presentations from the visionaries of our industry: influencers like Val Head, Gerry McGovern, Jen Simmons, and so many more. Check the schedule to find the event nearest you—or in the great city you’d most like to visit this year—and make 2019 the year you set yourself Apart.