Badass Ideas

For Christmas I wanted a Wii. I constantly hinted it to Jim and tweeted about it every chance I had. I am actually not a big video game person… I never could beat super Mario Brothers and only loved Duck Hunt because the ducks made funny little expressions when I killed them. Last summer Jim and I went to a friends house to play and I was hooked on the Wii. I still can’t win any of the games, but I enjoy the interaction… and especially making the Miis.

Jim managed to surprise me with a Wii on Christmas despite the grim televised reports that depicted thousands of sad Wii-wanters being turned away from Best Buys across the country. Wii is the bomb-diggity… I can not say it enough… I have made miis for my whole family and posted pics to flickr of bowling and boxing.
So when my friend Carly sent a link to this…

I jumped right on it.

I have been waiting for Valentines day to reveal my amorous surprise. With anticipation and excitement I watched Jim tear into the Wii box of Love to find…
two girl Wii Miis!

Thats not what I planned!
It was suppose to romantically symbolize my passionate devotion. Boy meets geek girl. A love story that could launch a thousand ships. But no…2 girls. Bummer. Its all my bad, seems I all Rick-Santorem-style forgot a couple could be something other than a man and woman and missed that section of the form.

I think these little Chocolate Miis are a Bad Ass Idea… and if you would like to learn more about them and their creator please check out Paul Papes Nouget page.
Please, someone I know get married and have one of his custom Wii Mii Wedding Toppers made.

In the 6th Grade the big field trip was to the Science Museum of Virginia for an overnight sleepover. At the age of 12 this is a big deal, and every kid anticipated it for months in advance. Each class got divided in groups by gender and the girls got to sleep in one wing of the museum and the boys in the other, and despite the fact that we were there to learn about science the real goal at that age was to compile all your super-cool magazines and makeup to share with the other girls and talk about kissing and boys and trendy stuff. As my group hunkered down with flashlights and started pulling out their crackly issues of “Seventeen” and “Teen” magazines I reached deep in my bag and pulled out my issues of “Macworld” and “MacAddict” to a snickering audience of pre-teens. There seemed to be disconnect and I honestly did not understand why no one was as super-stoked as me. It was like the beginning the Blind Melon Video with the little Bumble Bee Girl tap dancing… which came out in 1993, the same year I went to the Science Museum.

This year will be my third SXSW Interactive in Austin Texas. If you are not familiar with SXSWi it:

celebrates the creativity and passion behind the coolest new media technologies. In addition to panel sessions that cover everything from web design to bootstrapping to social networks, attendees make new business connections at the three-day Trade Show & Exhibition.

If you want the equally accurate Ze Frank Version of what it is…

Patrick Haney points out on his latest post that Cindy Li likes to call it “geek spring break” but I feel like its a little like Web Disneyworld. People are always so enthusiastic when they say “I’m going to Disneyworld!”. Well, take that tone of voice and sparkle in their eye and picture me saying “Im going to South By South West!”. Yeah… thats about right.

So why do I get so excited? In addition to all the reasons that I was excited last year…. when I walk into the convention center in Austin its a lot like that little girl busting through the iron fence and dancing with all the other Bees. Seriously, you can tap anyone on the shoulder there and they will be interesting, engaging and passionate… and/or Bad-Ass.
Between now and March 7th the anticipation is only going to build. I can hardly wait… expect more SXSW themed posts. I can hardly contain myself.

There is web stuff happening all over this darn town.
Everywhere I turn there are things going on, happy hours to be had, talks being given… and oh the networking. A few weeks ago it snowed here. If you have ever been in DC when it snows you know its like the world is about to stop. Refresh DC was scheduled to happen that day. If you aren’t familiar Refresh it is:

a community of web designers, developers, and other new media professionals working together to refresh the creative, technical, and professional aspects of their trades in the Washington, DC, area.

The talk that Thursday was on Web Accessibility (a great talk by the way, given by John Croston) and despite the snow and panic, the room was packed. Standing room only. How awesome is that?

The themes of these events are predominantly technical. I like learning about how things work, so I go to a lot of them, but there always seems to be a void on the design end of the spectrum. AIGA and ADCMW hold fantastic events but they are really geared towards print designers. So after a lot of people saying “yeah we should do something for web designers” M. Jackson Wilkinson and Jason Garber did.

On Feb 29 Viget Labs (where I now work… did I mention that they we rock?) is hosting DC Design Talk. It is the first “talk” in a 3 part conference series geared for people who make websites. I am pretty excited about the focus being on design and it is shaping up to be a great event. Already there are a list of speakers that I anticipate learning a lot from.

An improvement to the classic Web Trend Map, IA in Japan has added a third dimension for extra flavor. I see some interesting additions this time around, including Swiss Miss and Ogilvy. What the map really says about either of them is pretty vague to me, but it is an interesting interpretation and stunning design. Perhaps this will be my next poster to order.
Another version of the Map can be found in 2-d here…

Since my interest in information design has seemed to blossom over the past year I created a new category so you can browse all of my past posts where it is featured.
Want a clarification to the practice of information design?

From Wikipedia

Information design has its origins as a subset of, or synonym for graphic design and it is often taught as part of graphic design courses. One of the first uses of the term was by the London graphic design consultancy Pentagram, who used the term in the 1970s to mean their graphic design, as distinct from product or other kinds of design. Since that time, the term has come to be used specifically for graphic design that has the purpose of displaying information effectively, rather than just attractively, or for the purpose of self expression by the designer as artist.

Recently IA Japan posted a response to Steve Clayton’s dissatisfaction with Microsoft’s placement on the map. Clayton boldly states:

Their recent Trend Map may have some delays on the line if the Yahoo deal goes through.

Along with a second blog post in response to Clayton’s statements, IA Japan included a revision to their map… which just made my day.

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Information Design raising eyebrows, stirring up discussion, making people think and making people talk. Its beautiful when design can raise awareness to a certain topic.

A while back I had a super-secret brief encounter with kind-of sort-of working on a presidential web campaign. While I can’t say much about the experience it made me realize how completely out of the loop politicians are on web, design, brand, and social media. That is all but Senator Barack Obama. This post is in no way an endorsement of his candidacy for president, even though many would not put it past me to make a major decision based on the quality of someone or something’s logo design. If the president of the United States WAS required to be an All-American Brand Steward, Mr. Obama would the winner.

I have been secretly sitting back watching his online campaign blossom from the first seed of his candidacy with a logo to his full blown online brand campaign with a stunning website. I really wanted to investigate the ins and outs of the whos and whats behind this stellar brand, but I am not all that connected like that. You would think living in DC I would get wind of these things, but a few weeks ago the much more connected blog “Speak Up” broke the 411 on this mystery.

The logo was designed (jointly or separately, depending of what you read into each firm’s blurb) by Chicago-based Sender LLC and mo/de: “We were looking at the ‘o’ of his name and had the idea of a rising sun and a new day,” explains Sol Sender, “The sun rising over the horizon evoked a new sense of hope.” Sutton at least got the sun rising part right. “Undefined”, on the other hand, might be this logo’s strongest asset and the result of clever designers not someone “too inexperienced”.

The post goes on to reveal the sexy implementation of the Obama logo through each page of the site. I have to totally pull this from Speak Up because its so hot I can not handle myself. I get flustered and sweaty just looking at each iteration of the banner. For a more extensive look at this aspect of the Obama Campaign, please check out the “Speak Up” piece.

Overall the attention to detail is really what wins me over on this site. Each icon is carefully crafted and customized around the Obama brand. The only negative criticism I can really give is that I think they overdo it just a little in the main header with layers of texture and lens flair. Just a little over the top with the lens flair, but its ok… I can get past that.

I did a little more digging on who was responsible for the actual site design and found this post on The Bivings Report where “who” actually designed the site is discussed in the comments. With many merely speculated in the early comments, Ryan Terry later states that he wrote one of the designers on the Obama staff to find out if any of the rumors are a little true. The response he got was:

I am the Creative Director at Obama for America’s, new media department. There is, in fact, a team of people working on the site. All the rumors have their truths. Joe Rospars is the Director of New Media, he founded Blue State Digital, and we do in fact use Blue State Digital as the backend to our site. Chris Hughes the co-founder of Facebook, is in fact overseeing the my.barackobama.com portion of the website, activating users to take action in their communities. The teams consists of many others that all do remarkable work, including John Slabyk, who’s eye is blessed and has been a major force in the site aesthetic, and Michael Slaby the true machine behind the curtain. Not to mention the many other volunteers and staffers that helped in the site design at an absolutely break neck pace.

So there ya go, Obama has assembled a bad-ass team to put together a great visual web campaign . Its a very special thing to see a leader assemble and trust a creative team to take calculated design risks.