“You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned” — Meet SmashingConf San Francisco #breakout (April 17-18)

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Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing, he’s most probably running front-end & UX … More about Vitaly ↬

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With our third annual conference in San Francisco, we want to explore strategies for breaking out of the box: leaving behind generic designs and smelly code base. We’ll unlearn old habits and dig into strategies for breaking out: leaving behind the generic solutions, exploring new design workflows, understanding new performance techniques, and all the capabilities that we have at our hands already and in the near future. We’ll find out find out how we all can be more productive today and how we can make smarter decisions tomorrow.

Meet SmashingConf San Francisco, packed with smart front-end and UX techniques to challenge everything about how you design and code. We’ll unlearn old habits and dig into strategies for breaking out: leaving behind the generic solutions, exploring new design workflows, understanding new performance techniques, and all the capabilities that we have at our hands already and in the near future.

With our third annual conference in San Francisco, we want to explore strategies for breaking out of the box: leaving behind generic designs and smelly code base. We’ll find out find out how we all — as designers and developers — can be more productive today and how we can make smarter decisions tomorrow. Tickets are available today →

One track, two conference days, 14 brilliant speakers, and just 500 available seats. CSS Grid, Design systems, new frontiers of CSS and JavaScript, accessibility, performance, lettering, graphic design, UX, multi-cultural design, among other things. We can’t wait to meet you there already! Jump to the schedule

SmashingConf San Francisco / #breakout / Apr 17–18

With our third annual conference in San Francisco, we want to explore ways and strategies for breaking out: leaving behind generic designs and understand the new techniques and capabilities available today. We care about the solutions we come up with, and the approaches that failed along the way. In San Francisco, we want to find out the why, and how, and what we all — as designers and developers — need to know today to be more productive and make smarter decisions tomorrow. Schedule and details.

The garden of the gorgeous Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco
Our conference venue, the stunning Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

Speakers And Topics

A wide range of everything web-related, covered in 2 days, with a single track, 14 speakers and 8 hands-on workshops. CSS Grid, Design systems, new frontiers of CSS and JavaScript, accessibility, performance, lettering, graphic design, UX, multi-cultural design, among other things.

Conference Tickets

$599Get Your Ticket

Two Days of Great Speakers and Networking.
Check all speakers.

Conf + Workshop Tickets

Save $100 Conf + Workshop

Three Days Full of Learning and Networking.
Check all workshops.

Smashing Workshops

Join one of the intensive workshops with a limited number of seats. Tickets for the full-day workshops cost $499 — all booking fees included. Save $100 by registering for a workshop when buying your conference ticket. Lunch will be provided.

Workshops on Monday, April 16th, 2018

Sarah Drasner’s Introduction to Vue.js

Sarah DrasnerApril 16th Vue.js brings together the best features of the javascript framework landscape elegantly. If you’re interested in writing maintainable, clean code in an exciting and expressive manner, you should consider joining this class. Read more...

Barry Munsterteiger on Critical Design Thinking

Barry MunsterteigerApril 16th Entrepreneurial success relies on approaching problems with a creative mind and critical eye. This workshop is designed to teach participants multiple tactics for creative and critical thinking in a fast­paced, adaptive, and agile environment, with a focus on communication. Read more...

Aaron Draplin on Behind the Scenes with DDC

Aaron DraplinApril 16th Whether you are designing an app or a website, following best practices and design methodologies will always help ensure your designs are usable and engaging. In this workshop, we’ll explore the design process in detail including user research, sketching, and visual design. Through real-world examples you’ll see how an idea can evolve into a design. Read more...

Vitaly Friedman on Smart Responsive UX Design Patterns

Vitaly FriedmanApril 16th In this brand new workshop, Vitaly Friedman (editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine), will cover practical techniques, clever tricks and useful strategies you need to be aware of when working on responsive websites. From responsive modules to clever navigation patterns and web form design techniques; the workshop will provide you with everything you need to know today to start designing better responsive experiences tomorrow. Read more...


Workshops on Thursday, April 19th, 2018

Rachel Andrew on Advanced CSS Layouts With Flexbox and CSS Grid

Rachel AndrewApril 19th This workshop is designed for designers and developers who already have a good working knowledge of HTML and CSS. We will cover a range of CSS methods for achieving layout, from those you are safe to use right now even if you need to support older version of Internet Explorer through to things that while still classed as experimental, are likely to ship in browsers in the coming months. Read more...

Josh Clark on Designing Exceptional Mobile Experiences

Josh ClarkApril 19th Call it the mobile majority: a growing number of companies now see most web visits come from mobile devices. That means the mobile experience is no longer a sideshow; it's the main event, with desktop in the supporting role. Does your design practice reflect that? "Designing for Touch" author Josh Clark takes you on an exploration of the techniques and design thinking you need to make your mobile experiences soar. Read more...

Mark Boulton on Designing Grid Systems

Mark BoultonApril 19th The way we make websites has changed. CSS Grids are challenging the way we think about layout and their underpinning foundation: grid systems. In this workshop, Mark will take it right back to basics on how to design your grids, what things you need to consider for designing grids for different applications and devices, and how we can practically start working 'content out'.

Vitaly Friedman on New Front-End Adventures in Responsive Design

Vitaly FriedmanApril 19th In this brand new workshop, Vitaly Friedman (editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine), will cover practical techniques, clever tricks and useful strategies you need to be aware of when working on responsive websites. From responsive modules to clever navigation patterns and web form design techniques; the workshop will provide you with everything you need to know today to start designing better responsive experiences tomorrow. Read more...

Conference Tickets

$599Get Your Ticket

Two Days of Great Speakers and Networking.
Check all speakers.

Conf + Workshop Tickets

Save $100 Conf + Workshop

Three Days Full of Learning and Networking.
Check all workshops.

Why This Conference Could Be For You

Pretty much because of the value it will provide. We’ll explore how designers and developers work, design and build and how they approach problems strategically. Think of it as a playbook with handy rules of thumb for your next projects: it can’t get more practical than that. Learn:

  1. Clever psychological techniques for smarter interfaces,
  2. Techniques and guidelines for better UI design,
  3. Modern Loading Best Practices,
  4. Guidelines for maintainable CSS,
  5. Gotchas and techniques for CSS Grid and Flexbox,
  6. Handy tricks and tools to improve efficiency and workflow,
  7. Mistakes and lessons learned from real-life projects,
  8. Methods on how to find out what the client wants,
  9. Responsive design patterns for future-ready websites,
  10. Performance optimization strategies for fast, resilient responsive websites,
  11. Building and maintaining pattern libraries,
  12. How to avoid generic solutions with designs that exhibit soul and personality.
  13. …more practical takeaways from real-life projects.

Download "Convince Your Boss" PDF

So you need to convince your manager to send you to the SmashingConf? No worries, we’ve got your back! We prepared a neat Convince Your Boss (PDF) (0.15 Mb) that you can use to convince your colleagues, friends, neighbors and total strangers to join you or send you to the event. We know that you will not be disappointed. Still not good enough? Well, tweet us @smashingconf and we’ll help you out — we can be quite convincing, too, you know!

SmashingConf San Francisco: Convince Your Boss PDF
"7 reasons why you should send your incredibly hard-working, deserving employee to the SmashingConf" (PDF). Quite self-explanatory, really.

We Welcome Lovely Sponsors, Too

We do everything possible to keep ticket prices affordable for everyone, and we welcome sponsors to help us create a truly unique, unforgettable conference experience. And you can be a major part of it. We have some attractive and creative sponsorship packages for you, and we are also flexible and would love to adjust them to your needs. So if you’re interested, please email Mariona at mariona@smashingconf.com — we’d love for you to be involved!

Conference Tickets

$599Get Your Ticket

Two Days of Great Speakers and Networking.
Check all speakers.

Conf + Workshop Tickets

Save $100 Conf + Workshop

Three Days Full of Learning and Networking.
Check all workshops.

See You In San Francisco!

We’d love you to come and join us. Walk in. Take a seat. Learn something new that will improve your career, and meet some wonderful and friendly people. We are looking forward to seeing you in San Francisco!

Further Reading

Smashing Editorial (mrn)