Smashing Magazine

A Community Event For Web Designers

Discussions about design trends and visual style are often very subjective and they rarely provide actionable, valuable takeaways. Nothing beats a conversation about what worked and what didn’t work in actual real-life projects and what decisions were made along the way. That’s exactly what we’re setting off to explore in Oxford — accompanied by a lot of learning and networking in the beautiful pathways and gardens of legendary Oxford.

The two conference days (15th and 16th March) are flanked by optional full day workshops (14th and 17th March), offering attendees the chance to delve deeper into their topic of choice. No fluff, no theory — just curated quality content, stellar and diverse speakers, a personal and intimate atmosphere — all in a beautiful and historic Oxford Town Hall in Oxford, UK. 

Code of Conduct

We embrace respect and tolerance with our code of conduct. Be friendly, be cool, and be smashing to each other. Networking is important, and we always organize many networking activities, and we will not tolerate any kind of disrespectful behavior. There’s no room for it at the conference. Full stop.

Speakers

Some speakers aren’t quite fond of it and some speakers love it: we thoroughly curate every single talk and work alongside our speakers to make sure that each talk fits nicely within the overall theme of the conference. We’ve invited speakers who are passionate about their work and who’ve learned a thing or two from their own experiences:

• Aarron Walter
  UX Design • MailChimp
• Rachel Nabors
  CSS Animations
• Sara Soueidan
  SVG, Front-End
• Umar Hansa
  Front-End, Tooling • Shazam
• Vasilis van Gemert
  Front-End • University of Applied Science in Amsterdam
• Wes Bos
  JavaScript, Flexbox
• Chris Shiflett
  Front-End, UX • FictiveKin
• Chris Wright
  Flexbox Grids • chriswrightdesign.com
• Jina Bolton
  Living Style Guides • Salesforce UX
• Jon Setzen
  Mobile UX• Media Temple
• Patrick Hamann
  Front-End, Performance • Financial Times
• Alla Kholmatova
  Modular Design • FutureLearn
• Hannah Donovan
  The Future of Content • Drip
• Heydon Pickering
  UX
• Tobias Frere-Jones
  Typography • Frere-Jones Type
• a Mystery Speaker
  (Somebody you definitely know, and respect.)

...more speakers will be announced soon!

Smashing Workshops

Our workshops offer the opportunity to get to grips with new ideas and techniques in real depth, with a full day spent on the topic of your choice. It’s a great way to round off your conference experience, and we provide lunch, too. By registering for a workshop while buying your conference ticket, you save $100 on the regular workshop ticket price.

Smashing Workshops on Monday, March 14th, 2016

Aarron Walter on “Interface Design Bootcamp”

March 14th • Whether you are designing a web app or a website, following best practices and standard design methodologies will always help ensure your interfaces are usable and engaging.

In this workshop we'll explore the design process in detail including user research, defining workflows, interaction design, aesthetics, and personality. Read more...

Sara Soueidan on “Mastering SVG”

March 14th • Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) are the new big thing in web design today, and for a good reason. SVG is going to be one of the fundamentals of web design, and getting a grip of it and how to use it is becoming more important as its usefulness becomes more obvious every day.

With the proliferation of retina screens and high resolution displays, we need to adopt techniques that allow us to serve graphics that look good on all screens in all circumstances. Read more...

Vitaly Friedman on “Smart UX Design Patterns”

March 14th • 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 co 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...

Smashing Workshops on Thursday, March 17th, 2016

Rachel Nabors on “The DOM in Motion”

March 17th • With animated user experiences moving from nice to have to a necessity, it's more important than ever to understand the ins and outs of CSS animations and transitions, motion design best practices, and how to ensure high performance, 'jank-free' animation on even everyday mobile devices. Animating DOM elements is crucial to developing interactive designs and interfaces, and CSS and the Web Animation API offer some of the most performant ways to animate today. Read more...

Vitaly Friedman on “Responsive Design, Clever Tricks and Techniques”

March 17th • In this full-day workshop, Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, will present practical techniques, clever tricks and useful strategies you need to be aware of when working on any responsive design project. Most techniques are borrowed from mid-size and large-scale real-life projects, such as large eCommerce projects, online magazines and Web applications. Read more...

Location

In the centre of Oxford, next to the world famous Christ Church College, and just a stone's throw from the iconic Radcliffe Camera, lies The Oxford Town Hall. The Smashing Conference will be held in the beautiful Main Hall; an amazing example of the Victorian Gothic Revival style.

Ready?

We think you'll be blown away. From the amazing plasterwork and vaulted ceilings, to the enormous pipe organ and the chandeliers, you're in for a treat! Ready? Go!