In New York yesterday, I attended the first PSFK conference and found that although it was occasionally a bit rough around the edges, it was worth the trip. I was also glad to see that the “creative type” uniform was being enforced, as I never before saw so many plastic rimmed, rectangular glasses riding above dark, peacoat length coats in one place in my life. There were many good things to take away from the presentations, however, even though some of the afternoon talks were a bit heavy on marketing speak.

One of the morning sessions involved two artists talking about how they turned their art into advertising. Laurie Rosenwald and Scott Campbell are two very different people, but both successfully created businesses out of traditional art. By traditional art, I mean non-digital. Scott told an interesting story about a client meeting that included four other graphic designers, all of which broke out their laptops at the conference table, while Scott opened up his pad of paper. In our highly digitized world, it’s taken for granted that anyone doing commercial art will create it digitally. We’re so inundated with stories of consumers creating graphics, videos, and blogs, all of it digitally, that we sometimes forget about physical art. Might there even be people who have visited Second Life art galleries, but none in real life?

Laurie and Scott, however, still sit down at a desk (Laurie) or an arm (Scott) and create. Their creations may finish their lives in digital form, but much of what makes their work desirable comes from the fact that they create the old fashioned way. They’ve tapped into something that’s awfully tempting to see as a counter-trend.

Laurie uses ink bottles, scraps of paper, and cut-outs to create designs that are meant to be touched. Even when they end up on a two dimensional page, they look very 3-D. Her designs make me think immediately of the current handmade card trend. These cards are embellished with paper, fabric, and plastic doodads that give them a hand made look (think scrapbook page). The tactile nature of these cards seems to be a reaction to the digital nature of much of the rest of our lives.

Scott’s art is rooted in tattoos, and he’s designed a line of tattooed furniture at Bergdorf’s and is working with Nike to design their 2008 US Olympic uniforms. I’ll certainly be interested to see those uniforms, although Scott was mum on what they might look like (contractual arrangements, you know). Scott had one of my favorite lines from the conference when talking about digitally designed, infinitely replicable graphics - “There’s no personality in perfect.” As he talked about the “grit” in his work, he told us how he met with Comcast reps in the back room of his tattoo shop. I’ve talked before about how tattooing came in from the cold quite some time ago, and Scott does an excellent job of keeping one foot planted in the street art underground while toeing the commercial line with the other.

I think both Laurie’s and Scott’s art is enjoying some popularity because they run counter to the mega trend of all digital all the time. Every large trend produces counter trends that swirl off of it like eddies at the edges of a river. While they may not slow the river down, they can still be quite profitable for an innovative company.