The Creative Summit at Texas State University in San Marcos: An Ecosystem.
by Michael Cronan
(from Graphis New Talent Annual '07/'08 Used by Permission)

Imagine a stage filled with world-class creative people like Kit Hinrichs, Anita Kuntz, Gene Hoffman, Dana Arnett, B. Martin Pedersen, Jennifer Morla, Lana Rigsby, McRay Magleby, C.F.Payne, Stefan Sagmeister, Greg and Pat Samata, Forrest and Valerie Richardson, Michael Vanderbyl, Francois Robert, and Jack Unruh. They are all applauding and looking out to the audience with big smiles. Shyly a nineteen-year-old student stands up and makes her way to the stage to accept an award and cash prize for her package design, which is projected twenty feet high above everyone's head. It is a moment that that young lady will not soon forget. Now imagine that scene is acted out every year with more world-class talent and more nineteen-year-olds. Who or what could bring scores and scores of big names to the hot and sleepy little town of San Marcos Texas? The who is Chris Hill and the what is the Creative Summit.

It is hard to talk about Chris Hill: 'A list' designer and recent AIGA Fellow; HILL, his solid Houston firm or; the Creative Summit, the perennially successful design conference for students he founded in 1984 while teaching design on the weekends, as separate items. In many ways they are the same animal. At least they are aspects of the same animal. This is a piece mostly about the Creative Summit aspect.

In the 23 years that Chris has grown the brand, the Creative Summit has become an energizing force, creating a heightened design education experience for students from all over the South. To date Chris has raised over $200 thousand in scholarships.

Branders know that a great brand is essentially a great experience. Chris has designed an experience that shows no sign of age, wear or tear. The Summit works on many levels, although it is only understood as an annual regional design event.

Here is the ecosystem of the Creative Summit.From September to May, the student competition, the Summit's ignition system, is in the back of every graphic design student and teacher's mind within 800 miles of San Marco. Student competitions are useful, this one has the bonus of encouraging wide ranging intramural competition. Each student and the schools themselves engage in the competition. The results of every project throughout the year are measured with a steely eye, "Is it good enough to enter the Creative Summit?" The bar gets raised.

As the Summit rolls into production, many of the student entrants help organize the event. (My guess is the dear and dedicated HILL office still does the heavy lifting of logistics, funding and thousands of hours of time.) The student volunteers see into the process of creating a gathering, a good thing by itself, volunteers get clipboards and lists of tasks, they run around, also very good. They see every piece that is entered in the competition, a yet better thing, and they hang around with nationally recognized visiting pros, who have relaxed into the bosom of Texas hospitality and who engage them at close range, this is a powerful thing. The student volunteers get to talk design and see how the pros judge design, they get a glimpse of how big and how small the process is. And they grow.

The Summit's heightened design education experience is not only for the students. In earlier days the judges/speakers bunked in a moldering yet perfect little 'resort', Aquarena Springs, which in still earlier days headlined an aquatic act, Ralph the Diving Pig. No, really. Back then Aquarena Springs was as big on bugs as it was small on formality. Chris made sure you enjoyed yourself. You quickly understood you were with family, of the best kind. (Chris kept the rumor of Ralph's eminent comeback afloat for years, until the Summit eventually moved to less memorable rooms. The trophy for the Summit still is a gold pig, cheaply crafted in Ralph's honor. I am proud to say my wife Karin Hibma and I possess 4 Ralph's, one wears a tiny Hawaiian shirt. How he acquired the shirt or how I qualified to receive the dapper Ralph eludes me.) The experience of such dear and casual and boundless good humor, inspired by Chris' personality is a tonic to all visitors he invites. Everyone becomes to a greater or lesser degree, a part of the family. The pros feel privileged to be in each other's company and they take away a renewed sense of the passion of being a designer, or photographer or illustrator or whatever. And they grow as well.

The experience continues with the exhibition and talks. The pros, after judging, hanging out, and doing a lot of laughing and sharing with individual students and one another, usually deliver their best talks, more from the heart than they might do speaking somewhere else. And at the very end of the event awards are presented. This too falls into the heightened experience category. Each winner gets a kind group acknowledgement from the judges, (here is where the scene from the first paragraph come in) hands are shaken and backs are patted but the effect is like a baptism of 'Attaboys' that give the winners the big taste of recognition, and that is a feeling they will want to chase for years.

The Summit experience continues as the students make their way into the world of design as interns and assistants for the very pros, speakers and judges they met and hung with in San Marcos. The pros become apostles for the Summit. They encourage others, old pros and new pros to go to Texas if Hill invites. The cycle continues.

As other conferences wither and morph. The Creative Summit gets stronger like the other aspects of 'Hillness'. The why in the equation is Chris Hill himself. Long ago Chris understood that design is essentially a way to think about and do everything. For him and his team, making the Creative Summit work year after year is not a struggle, it is yet another opportunity to feel the passion of being a designer.