Imprint

So going back to an earlier post, I mentioned the Imprint culture lab that I attended in New York City. This is actually an LA based event that they held in NYC for the first time. They gather prominent leaders from various subcultures to discuss the creative processes, beginnings, the future obstacles, current events etc. Pretty much how to succeed, or at least how they succeeded. A lot of the people who take part in this are the top dogs of what they do. This year I was fortunate enough to find myself in the presence of such forerunners such as Paula Scher who is partner at Pentagram, google that, Chip Kidd of Knopf Books, google him, Marc Ecko of Marc Ecko Enterprises, Paul Bunditz, founder of Kidrobot, and of course jeffstaple.

Obviously I wasn't going to miss this for the world. I was however, scheduled to leave NY the day of the event. I thought to myself; not gonna happen. My ticket was non-refundable, but I'm not stupid. Come on, an oppurtunity to meet jeffstaple? Those don't come very often. Matter fact, if not now never. I canceled my flight and the rest is history. Life is about taking risks, something that I'm going to get used to if I plan on breaking into this profession. You never know what might come your way. Anyways the rest is not history.

Imprint was held in the basement of the architecture center. For professionals etc. the cost to attend was something like 400 dollars, for academia and students like myself, 200 dollars. But for students liek myself with a 50% off promotional code from jeffstaple's blog, cheap as hell. The event itself was priceless. Just watching Paula blaze through slides of her work knocks you down. I found Chipp kidd to be quite hilarious and Paul Bunditz even more so. Greatest graphs I have ever seen. Plus he showed us some of the upcoming toys they had planned.





At lunch time while everyone was in line for their AsiaDogs, I found jeffstaple and started talking to him. Its hard to keep cool in a situation like this when you meet your idol in the industry for the first time, cuz it was dope as f**k. I don't know how to describe it really, but think of your dream profession, and think of the guy at the top of it all. THINK.



His discussion with Marc Ecko was saved for last of course. It was just two living legends sitting at the desk up front talking about what they do. Like if you were to sit down with kobe and lebron and have em just talk about basketball. What you get out of that would be so different from what you get from a press conference or a post game comment.



I felt lucky to be here already, but even more so when I got to the reception which was held at the penthouse of the Soho Grand Hotel. Yea, I said Penthouse and Soho Grand Hotel. With complementary drinks and refreshments. The view of New York was just ridiculous, and throw in all these creative people just chilling and kicking back. I was fortunate to meet some great people, Chung, a film producer who flew out from Hong Kong, Unkle Chipp of the Elite Camp, some of the nice folks from Nike Sportswear at 21 mercer, Jerry Hsiao, supposedly the spock of Staple Design, and his wife Amanda from Gap. I wanted to talk to Jerry cause he started out as a Staple intern which is where I hope to see myself in a year or so. I later found out that he's the cousin of one the girls in my high school class. Small world.




Looking back on it, what I sacrificed just to make it to this event was nothing compared to what I took away from it, specifically some email addresses and business cards, haha. I'm still nobody, but God has blessed me with oppurtunities left and right that just opened up on the spot. It's crazy how things might come together in the future. I'll be comin back to Imprint. Check em out here.