Has it been a week since Nate and I left Chicago after spending six days and five nights at the HOW Design Live event? According to the calendar?

Well, before even the first recap of the event was recorded, I had spent most of Wednesday in the windy city waiting for Nate to get there. He had spent the entire day in a vehicle with Stefan Mumaw, who was on our show talking about his Caffeine books in Season 2, driving from Kansas City. I was really hoping for some epic road trip stories, but I think other than traffic, it was pretty standard stuff.

As Stefan was with Nate, and he has a new book out (Chasing the Monster Idea: The Marketer’s Almanac for Predicting Idea Epicness), we made him stop in and chat with us and our scheduled guest.

As for the scheduled guest? Dyana Valentine speaks more about the “Perfect Pitches” we spoke about last year. This was a lot of fun, and really set off our week on the right foot. Enjoy.

Download The Reflex Blue Show, Season 4 Episode 3 or, click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

The Reflex Blue Show

After speaking with Mike Adair and Bob Holt at Hallmark, the next stop on our Kansas City podcast tour was to find Stefan Mumaw at Reign. As we pulled up to the entry, we noticed Hammerpress Letterpress and Design Studio, and decided to stop by a bit later in the day to see the presses. For now, it was up to the third floor, in what may be the most square footage I have ever seen for a four-person design shop. But the guitars, massive open spaces and white boards everywhere told us they were serious about the creative.

Even though Reign has only been around for a few months (Stefan just moved to Kansas City this year), you can already sense that it won’t take long for them to make their mark on the city’s design scene. But Reign was only part of what we wanted to speak about, we mainly wanted to talk about the other hobbies Stefan has, which seems to be writing design books.

Starting with Simple Websites and Redesigning Websites, Stefan then moved on to teaming up with Wendy Lee Oldfield and creating two books that seem to be everywhere in the design circles now: Caffeine for the Creative Mind and the just released Caffeine for the Creative Team. If you ever run out of creative, these books will give you the pick-up you need to get going again, and this is what we mostly talk about. When you create two books like these, it’s really all we want to cover.

After the fact, we realized what we should have talked about is if Stefan Mumaw is a hobo. Let’s consider that Stefan just moved across country and is working in a basically vacant building. Now let’s remember that Stefan took us to Jack Stack BBQ for lunch and confessed that he is all about the Burnt Ends when it comes to his BBQ. Aren’t burnt ends like the pieces of meat that fall off the real food? Like table scraps? And now we remember that this episode of The Reflex Blue Show is the only one being released during 36 Hobo week? Not sure if this is all coincidence.

Finally we bring another student tip from Mig Reyes. This may also make Mig a hobo. Sorry.

Our roadtrip returns in a few weeks with Ann Willoughby, but look for some sort of special episode from the AIGA Make/Think Conference in Memphis between now and then.

And as always, leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments below. And anyone who has more information on what burnt ends are, and why they taste so good, please share.

Download The Reflex Blue Show with Nate Voss and Donovan Beery, Season 2 Episode 14 (29 meg) or click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.