I’m at the HOW Design Conference in Boston for the first part of this week, thanks to the generous support of my employers, who like to send me on little adventures like this every now and then so that I can keep myself sharp, learn new things that might benefit our company, and (possibly most importantly) not go nuts and kill everyone in the office.

One of the most interesting parts of the HOW Conference is, for me, the opportunity to be around thousands of other designers. Generally speaking when someone says "I’m a designer" there’s a certain expectation of creative ability–the casual observer naturally wants to assign the designer some preternatural ability to ooze creative juices nonstop.

To some extent this is true; I’d certainly expect the folks at a conference of this sort to be the type that are always questioning everything around them and looking at things in new and different ways. But in all honesty, designers can be quite lazy, just as employees in virtually any other field can be (witness highway construction projects wherein one guy is in a hole doing something and seven other guys are standing around said hole, discussing it). And a couple of things that I’ve seen so far from my fellow attendees have dismayed me.

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Over the weekend I submitted my thesis to the Media Studies department at The New School.  Barring any unforeseen circumstances, all that’s left for me to do is to graduate in two weeks.

The past five months’ worth of work have been difficult and challenging, but I’m pleased with the outcome and will be interested to see what comes of this work next.

If you are interested, the entire document (it’s over 140 pages all told, so be forewarned) is available for download.  I hope it’s as interesting for you to read as it was rewarding for me to write.

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From Stovetop to Screen: A Cultural History of Food Television