June 17th, 2011

Thoughts on SWAG design and ISTE 2011.

With 18,000 attendees and 500 exhibiting companies, we’re in in crunch mode preparing for ISTE 2011. This is going to be exciting! We have some big announcements coming at the conference that we can’t wait to share.

We took some time rethinking Stuff We All Get (SWAG). Most of the time SWAG is poorly designed, cheap junk (we should really call it JWAG). Since it’s useless beyond the thrill of being given something free, often it makes it no further than the hotel room and inevitably winds up in a landfill.

That said, people love getting free stuff. We wanted to give out GradeCam T-Shirts and I’m sure tons of people would want a free t-shirt even if they never wore it again. Instead, we made Philadelphia/ISTE/GradeCam T-Shirts commemorating the liberty bell, the city, and the conference. I designed it in the hope that the shirt was actually something that someone would consider wearing after the event.