Last week I attended the An Event Apart conference in Atlanta. An Event Apart is produced by the folks behind A List Apart website and the A Book Apart publications.

Atlanta was a welcome respite from the 100-degree Austin heat. Sandwiched between watching the Dallas Mavericks winning their first NBA title and an Atlanta Braves game, I was immersed in two days of keynote speakers and a one-day content strategy workshop.

Topics ranged from responsive web design, mobile developments, SEO and trends in content. Here are several topics of conversation that remain stuck in my head.

Amazing Online Typography 

Jason Santa Mariashared his passion for typography and the importance of selecting font systems for projects. Looking over the examples he shared (such as Santa Maria’s Lost World’s Fairs collaboration), you can’t help but think: the design floodgates are open. With tools such as TypeKit and Lettering JS, web type can be as rich, as rewarding, as print design. It’s incredible, and, I’ve got to say, it’s about time.

Think Mobile First

Luke Wroblewski shared a series of eye-opening statistics. Morgan Stanley predicted that smartphone sales would outpace PC sales by 2012; in actuality, smartphone sales reached that benchmark in 2010. The impact? There was 600% increase in traffic to mobile sites in 2010.

Wroblewski suggested that organizations consider their mobile experience first. I agree. It forces organizations and agencies to distill their projects down to the most important, the most fundamental, information. Wroblewski also shared interesting approaches to mobile user interfaces, stressing the importance of leading with content, with navigation in a supporting role. Best case, the nav should be practically invisible to the user.

Psychology and User Interface Design   

Sarah Parmenter discussed the importance of psychology in branding and user interface design. Parmenter examined how pyschological design choices and techniques can have a direct impact on reaching one's objectives.  

On day two, Jared Spool offered common-sense advice on user interfaces in a presentation entitled the Secret Lives of Links. You might think you’d fall asleep taking in a presentation about user interface engineering; however, Spool’s talk was great. He presented example after example of how simple design and content considerations can direct users to the information they seek, faster.

Doing More with CSS

The first day, we saw CSS animation in action. Through the MadManimation project, which recreates the title sequence of Mad Men, Andy Clarke demonstrated the rich possibilities of CSS3 animations. The sky’s the limit. Scene by scene, he demonstrated the precision that web animators and content creators can achieve with CSS3.

On day two, Eric Meyer walked the audience through how the An Event Apart website was created using CSS flexible boxes. It was interesting to see how this flexible approach to development can make responsive websites easier to achieve.

Keeping Up with Content

Kristina Halvorson outlined steps that any web content producer can take to reach their business objectives. Halvorson echoed points from other speakers about the importance of having fully developed content for projects (content is not a feature you can tack onto a website in midstream). I’m halfway through Halvorson’s book, Content Strategy for the Web, and definitely recommend it to anyone interested in online content or writing for the web.