Darcie and I are going to be printing up some new GiantSquid tshirts this weekend. There’s 2 designs, and I’ve got both mens and womens shirts. They’re American Apparel 50 50 shirts, and they run just a touch bigger than the traditional AA tshirt. My awesome squid illustration was done way back when by the infamous Neil Fasen.
I’m gonna give away 5 tshirts to random commenters on this blog post. Since this blog only has 2 readers, if you’re reading this the odds are pretty good you’ll get one. So get in there and leave me some comment lovin.
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We’re The Ones We’re Waiting For
~Tom Kemmer
My studiomate scrawled that on the walls of our studio. I’m not sure where it came from, or what he was referring to. I am struck by it’s truthfulness and pointedness.
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I’m working on a project for GRSS, an organization within IEEE. The work is coming along really well, but I was totally in love with this design and it got nixed along the way. I’m sure it’ll creep back into a project somewhere someday, but I’m sad that it isn’t going to get finished. It was just coming into it’s own, and now it’s going to find a spot on the shelf before it was fully realized.
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“Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do”
~ Oscar Wilde
I’ve been doing the self employed thing for almost 2 years now. The question I hear the most is “How do you get anything done? I’d just sit around all day and eat popsicles.” Ok – so maybe they don’t mention popsicles. As time goes, I find myself getting more and more productive, and constantly finding ways to be more efficient. Part of it is practice, part of it is a little bit of research. Here’s how a normal day breaks down, this could apply to you whether you’re a designer or not.
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So as of late, the Squid has been working on a project for a pretty massive software company out in California. The project itself is pretty top secret, and I’m sure I’d be dead within the hour if I started talking about it specifically – but I can say that I’ve been doing a smidgen of research into viral marketing and celebrity endorsements.
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I got the privilege of attending Wordcamp 2009 in San Francisco over the weekend. Overall it was a really positive experience. For those of you not in the know, Wordcamp is a conference surrounding Wordpress with topics as specialized as Buddypress and as abstract as Tara Hunt’s Whuffie or social capital. Ideally, I would have liked to see a little more about how people are using Wordpress in new and unusual ways – and a little less on basic web development. As mentioned, I did see a nice presentation of the Buddypress project, which is a series of plugins and themes to turn Wordpress into a social networking environment.
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I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.
~ Billy Joel
Before we start – Yes I did just quote Billy Joel. You want to make something of it?
There’s a fine line that designers and working creative types everyone needs to walk. How much or how little of yourself to invest in your work. Invest too little of yourself and obviously your work will suck. That’s true of designers, developers, accountants, circus jugglers who ever. It takes a certain amount of personal investment to do any job well. But… what about being to personally invested?
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I’m making the pilgrimage to the west cost for Wordcamp 2009 San Francisco. There’s a couple speakers that I’m excited about hearing. Foremost Tara Hunt from Citizen Agency. They’re a totally cool consulting firm in S.F and I think she’ll have a lot of interesting things to say. There are some panelists speaking that I’m curious but not optimistic about. I’m sure they’re all successful, and have been able to use Wordpress to leverage a readership – but I’m just not sure what I can learn from LOLCats in business terms. BUT I’m prepared to eat my words.
I will be holding down one of the spots at the Genius Bar for an hour. I plan to be humbled quickly – but hopefully I might learn a few things and pick up some new tricks.
Post Wordcamp I’ll be spending a few days in sunny Santa Cruz, hopefully get a chance to drown myself on a trainer surfboard and eat some good food.
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GiantSquid was responsible for the front end implementation of this urban gossip celeb hip hop magazine esque site. It picked up a Webby Honoree. That’s not quite the same as getting nominated, or winning an Webby outright – but it’s pretty friggin cool none the less. It was an intense build out with a ton of talented people working on it. Shane & Peter ran the crew, working along side the internal team at iOne, and managed to orchestrate the madness and get us launched and running. It’s a wordpress buildout, with 4 other sister sites. They’re all running similar installs with different theme implementations. Check them out at
http://theurbandaily.blackplanet.com
http://newsone.blackplanet.com
http://giant.blackplanet.com
http://hellobeautiful.blackplanet.com
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