The genesis of the design of everything Cusp Conference per Dave Mason.

Excerpt from DesignApplause.

[DesignApplause] first question that comes to mind: where did the Cusp Conference come from?

[Dave Mason] it really came out of my experiences going to other conferences. early in my graphic designer career I went to a lot of graphic design conferences and they were hugely valuable. after a while it seemed I was hearing the same kind of things over and over. it’s not a knock on those conferences per se but graphic design is a narrow vertical. so I ended up going to different types of conferences. for example I went to Ted several times way back when when it wasn’t quite as out of reach financially. eventually ted spawned a spinoff in toronto called Idea City. Kevin Krueger and I would take six or seven of our employees to idea city every year because of how much we got out of attending as a group.

Both Ted and Idea City had addressed design to some extent. those elements were presented in a very broad sense. as time passed Kevin and I realized we were investing a significant amount of money taking our team to these events.

so over time we began to look around for more design-centric options. since we couldn’t find anything treating design in the broad/focused way we were looking for, like idiots we decided to take a shot at creating such an event ourselves. after about two years of planning and thinking and designing, the 2008 recession hit and we decided to do it. like I said, idiots!

that’s really where Cusp Conference came from. because we view anything that’s been created by humans as being designed, we position Cusp as a conference about the design of everything, with design as a big broad idea that allows us to invite anyone we want. that’s the genesis of Cusp.