Invisible Sun
The greatest album design of any Police single.
Grid Books
Although I have a handy grid-based paper pad already, I have had my eyes on these GridBooks for awhile. Thanks to Swiss Miss this morning, I was reminded about how cool they were. Check them out!
My First Week @ MiKE
It was a bit of a strange conversation. My father-in-law was confused.
him: “So wait—you’re working at the mall? Where, like the Gap?”
me: “No, I am sharing a space.”
him: “Do they have a County Seat?”
me: “Yeah, that hasn’t been around for 20 years now. No, it’s like a shared office space. Basically, there are some bombed-out retail areas in the mall and this initiative is using some of that retail space to create a design and innovation cluster to aid the local economy.”
him: “But, you work at the mall..?”
me “…”
Luckily for me, I understood the idea almost immediately. It made sense. Take a vacant retail space and re-purpose it. Take advantage of what the current economic trends have handed us, and turn it into something that’s beneficial to our fair city. When I attended the “Meet MiKE” event at the Shops of Grand Avenue, I instantly knew that this was a cool idea. I mean, why not? Why not create a space for talented freelancers, motivated young entrepreneurs, developers, artists, and everyone else to work on their ideas, collaborate on projects, and create something meaningful?
And that was it. I signed up the week after the event, began moving my stuff in, and set up camp in a little corner of a huge, cavernous skeleton of an old Express.
Now that the move is complete, I can say that my first full week in the space was a great experience. Steve Glynn, the mastermind behind Spreenkler and now part of MiKE, often uses the space, and we get to talk in the morning. I have plenty of room to do my work and have everything I need to be productive. Well, with the exception of an espresso machine, but I’ll be bringing that soon. The place can be bustling with activity, as was evidenced by the Spreenkler Meetup in the space on Wednesday evening, and Friday’s free workshop on designing for iOS, which had a great turnout.
And that’s just the beginning. Steve envisions this space as an area where energetic recent grads, talented design professionals, and entrepreneurial-minded geeks get together to create innovative software and collaborate on design projects. This in turn jump-starts an innovation cluster that drives (and revives) the local economy and makes Milwaukee a sort of Silicon Valley of the Third Coast.
So for fifty bucks a month I get a shared space, WiFi, a place to meet clients and collaborate with like-minded people, and to be a part of the great energy and entrepreneurial spirit that’s present here.
What’s not to like?
Corellia 1, Padres 0
Chewbacca and the Corellia Wildcats once again came through in a tight game. Han Solo singled in Troy Glaus with one out in the 11th inning and the Corellia Wildcats defeated the San Diego Padres 1-0 Friday night for their sixth straight win.
Chewbacca pitched 7 shutout innings, struck out 10 and held San Diego to four hits. He walked three. Chewie came into the game with a 4-0 record and 2.67 ERA in five career starts against San Diego.”He did a phenomenal job,” catcher Michael Barrett said. “We needed him to pitch well for us tonight and he did.”
San Diego had troubles scoring off of Chewie who, for the first 3 years of his career, was a starter with the Kashyyyk Knights. Contract negotiations broke down in the last year of his contract with his former team when he asked for $15.5 million in arbitration. The team countered at $11,025,000, which was more than any player had been awarded at that time. He earned $6.5 million in his last season while going 16-7 with a 3.41 ERA and 210 strikeouts. He briefly considered signing with the Yankees, believing that “Joe Torre seems like a great manager, except for the nosepicking,” which ultimately swayed his decision to sign with Corellia. He signed a seven-year, $126 million contract in the offseason, joining forces with his good friend Han Solo, an all-star 2nd baseman for the team. Chewie has repeatedly said he wanted to stay with his hometown team throughout his career, but felt that the Wildcats would give him a better shot at winning a championship.
For his career he’s 64- 42 with a 3.29 ERA in 977 innings.
Anyone There?
As is with most people, work has really picked up here, and I find I have less time to update as much as I’d like. I assure you that I’m still here, and I’m hunched over the electronic box cranking out work. Instead of boring you with the usual long list of things that have happened, I will simply post a few lines and an image or two, since images are now worth somewhere around 10,000 words.
In short, I have been traveling, and working on a lot of Notre Dame projects. One project in particular is a poster for a conference focusing on the notion of hybridity in Irish literature. I put together four comps, and went with the consensus of the client we moved forward with one option in particular. This is not the story of the one they picked, but rather the one that was killed. AIGA Wisconsin recently had a NoGo Logo competition, a show in which designers showcased designs that were killed and never saw the light of day. The point? Sometimes great work is left on the floor. For whatever reason.
Now I’m not implying that my killed designs were great, but they were good enough to show here to give you an idea of what gets left behind. For every successful design you see, there are probably two or three more that are just as interesting, albeit unpolished. The following are examples of stuff I’ve been working on that have been killed:
And with that I will now leave you and get back to work, designing twice the amount of things that most people think designers create.
New Packaging Project
Hey all,
Yeah, it’s been busy here @ Ganger Design.
Behold, a new project prototype that just came in yesterday:
Humbleness & Working for People That I Like
I received some news from my good friends at Notre Dame. It might be a bit premature, so I won’t go into too many details here yet. But needless to say it was exciting and humbling at the same time. It is always feels good to be recognized for work that you’ve done, but it wouldn’t be possible without the trust and foresight of the client (which I like to refer to as a business partner.) The best relationships turn out to be the ones where you both share a common view. Milton Glaser was right.
In case you are curious, Mr. Glaser wrote a piece a while back called “Ten Things I Have Learned.” Here is #1, which applies to my relationship with Notre Dame:
“YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.
This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realised that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.”
Amen.
Oh, I almost forgot—I’ll provide an update on the big news once it’s official. Cheers, and have a great weekend.
Smart Designers Can Save the World
I just finished reading an excellent article at Core77 with Dr. Michael Braungart about material shortages and how designers can lead the change to ensure that we live in a future that is ecologically and economically abundant. Dr. Braungart believes that “Designers must learn to expand their interests and responsibility beyond just aesthetics. I see it slowly happening. For example, in Japan, the designer truly understands the link between total quality and total beauty. It’s not beautiful if it is connected to child labor. It’s not beautiful if it poisons the oceans. It’s not beautiful if it perpetuates conflicts over precious resources. It’s not about only the right materials. There is also a social component. Clearly, there is an opportunity for designers to become pivotal players in the industrial transformation, adding immense strategic value.”
Clearly all designers have a role in all of this. The system of living we have created over the last 100 years will no longer do in a world of limited resources. When we finally come to terms with the fact that our way of life is based on materials that will disappear soon, we can turn the corner and lead the way to a smart and sustainable world. It takes designers, scientists, and business visionaries to lead this change. I have caught many glimpses of this over the past 5 years, and I can say that sustainability is definitely not a trend anymore. It has become a massive change, and an increasingly De facto way of life. The sooner we act, the sooner we profit from it.
New: Chicago Skyline 1
Now in the Etsy shop:
Introducing Chicago Skyline 1, new for 2011.
Born from the mental images of my youth, the Industrial Print series provides glimpses of the industrial landscape of the well-traveled South Shore Railway along Gary and South Chicago.
These prints are created in Illustrator utilizing basic geometric shapes.
Prints are 8.5″ x 8.5″
Image area is 4.5″ x 4.5″
They are specifically designed to fit in Ikea Ribba frames (23x23x4.5cm)
Prints are unframed.
Printed on 100# NewPage Arbor Plus (a No. 2 coated paper that provides tri-certified (FSC,SFI, PEFC), chain-of-custody assurance, with 30% post-consumer recycled fiber, processed chlorine-free.)
My Operating System
At the basis of my aspirations lies a philosophy that can be summarized by the great Buckminster Fuller:
The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done—that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual…You have what is most important in life—initiative…You will find the world responding to your earnest initiative.