When was the last time you said that to someone? Remember making mix tapes in high school, maybe even in college? Break up tapes, I have a crush on you tapes, a tape of Alphaville’s “Forever Young” repeated over and over… Then you used the photocopier to make fancy covers for you tapes, gave them [...]

I don’t watch very much TV. I just forget to do it, even if there’s a show I know I might like. Now, don’t think I’m some self-righteous anti-TV do-gooder, because I’m not. I love me some TV! Give me my stories! Make me laugh! Show me a gross autopsy! I want my Cyclons!
We recently [...]

I was just reading and article on the BTA Blog about updating your old, tired out helmet, which reminded me that I should change out my own helmet even though it’s barely more than a year old.
I bought a new helmet last winter because my previous one reached the three year mark, the age at [...]

I admit it, I can be a social networking curmudgeon. MySpace confuses me. Facebook bores me. LinkedIn just helps me keep track of former coworkers. So I was pretty set against Twitter from the start. I mean, seriously, who cares what you’re doing right now? Brushing your teeth? Who cares?
It turns out that I do. [...]

In 1999, Emigre reprinted Ken Garland’s 1964 First Things First Manifesto in issue 49. It was a call to arms for designers to stop whoring ourselves and start waking up to the social, environmental, and financial responsibilities we face in our work. Then came First Things First 2000 in issue 51, with a simultaneous printing [...]

New, new, new!
I moved out of my small Activspace office a few months ago to take a job with a local interactive agency, but that affair only lasted six months. Now I’m in a great new office space with two other designers, where we’re starting a design collective geared toward providing design solutions ranging from [...]

Have you ever been asked to explain how your design skills are better than those of a high school kid with some HTML skills and Photoshop? Or maybe you had a client who wasn’t willing to pay you a fair market rate for your expertise because “anyone” can design a web site? How do you [...]

I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten in to an argument with fellow designers about “design” versus “art” and how they are/aren’t the same thing. My stance is pretty clear: Design is not art. Design can be visually appealing, attractive, interesting, exciting, controversial, but it is not art. The goal of design is [...]

The pop/synth band Freezepop has a catchy little tune about casual bike thieving that I’ve always found entertaining. But as “they” say, it’s all fun and games until someone loses and eye, or until someone steals your bike. I’ve been the target of theft a couple of times over the years, mostly related to a [...]

I always wanted to be a teacher. Ok, not always, since I already wrote about wanting to be a ninja. But starting in high school and going in to college, the plan was to be an English teacher. Since turning into a designer, I’ve either wanted to go to graduate school or teach. I only [...]