This year, our annual design conference returns to New York City with SPAN Brooklyn. We’ll gather at 99 Scott—a rehabilitated warehouse-turned-arts space in Bushwick, Brooklyn—for a day-long event uniting design, technology, and art. We’re planning a full schedule of talks, demos, workshops, art installations, and lots more. Over the next few weeks we’ll be announcing our speaker lineup—stay tuned and follow #SPAN19 for the latest. In the meantime, you can explore our related articles, videos, and guides from past SPAN events. SPAN Brooklyn is invite-only, but there’s another way to get your SPAN fix: Enter our giveaway of SPAN Helsinki readers—Volume 4 is chock-full of interviews, art, and essays on everything from AI to waste-free design, and features contributions from Linda Bergroth, Dan Hill, Lidewij Edelkoort, and James Bridle. Simply fill out this form—the first 100 people will get a copy. Good luck!Visit design.google/span2019 and our FAQ for more information.

Today we’re announcing our open call for the 2019 Material Design Awards. If you’re a designer using Material Design to build a useful service, execute an ambitious vision, or simply spark delight in a product, we want to see (and celebrate!) what you’ve created.This year we’ll be accepting nominations in four categories: Theming (products that brilliantly exemplify Material Theming guidelines), Innovation (work that creatively expands on Material), Universality (think inclusive and accessible), and Experience (for superb interaction and navigation). We’re keeping an eye out for meaningful experiences across all categories, and platforms. To see the work we’ve honored in the past, look through our MDA archives from 2018, 2017, and 2016.Nominate someone (or yourself) by filling out this entry form by August 24, 2019. Material Design Award winners will be announced on Google Design this fall.

With summer upon us, it’s time to pass along poolside reading recommendations—and nothing beats a good hero’s journey. We’ve got you covered with a series of Medium stories on how designers get where they’re going, starting with one design director’s tale of how growing up with immigrant parents influenced her role as a leader at Google. From there, follow one UX researcher’s surprising path from architectural theory to machine learning, and a UX director’s decade-long epic of mining the human side of technology. Cap it off with a journey that might ring familiar to any designer: The tale of what it’s like to be an intern.