What seems to, usually, most of the time, 60% of the time every time, be our most fun show to record is the yearly ad recap from the big game. Hey, we record it the night after the game, and launch it the day after that, so we may be two days behind some, but that’s how we do this every year, so without delay, or much more of one anyway, we bring you the Superb Owl Spectacular iv!

Joined by Steve Gordon, Ashley McFeeley, and this episode’s guest host Tom Nemitz, we bring a fun show this time, enjoy.

Oh yes, we break it down to five catecories before debating the “best”:

• Cars
• Beverages / Food
• Retail / Online
• Movies
• Whatever Else is Left in a Giant Grab Bag of Stuff

For those who enjoy some footnotes to go with the show:

• Will Ferrell’s commercial only shown in North Platte, Nebraska
• The 3 that ran in Davenport, Iowa
• Eleven19 – 10 Year Open House
• April 11th – The 1st 36 Pints event at 5:30 – The Homy Inn
• 5 Hours of Adriana Lima in 1080p
• Flavor Flav Hugging Tom Coughlin

Download The Reflex Blue Show, The Superb Owl Spectacular iv or, click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

The Reflex Blue Show

Looks like we ended the fourth season of The Reflex Blue Show with 12 episodes featuring guests such as James Victore, Jessica Hische, Michael Osborne, and Dyana Valentine. We also somehow found the time (with help from Ben Lueders) to cover 3 national conferences (in HOW, How Interactive, and AIGA) with 12 special episodes featuring guests like Emily Potts, Von Glitschka, Doug Powell, Cami Travis-Groves, and Terry White.

Season 5 kicks off with the biggest change we’ve ever made on this show – my co-host, Nate Voss, is stepping down from his podcasting duties. I am a bit unsure of how this will effect the direction of the show, but I’d love to take you with me on this adventure – and thank you for listening, it’s the reason I keep doing this.

In my six plus years of podcasting now, I have realized that the show has not always been just me and Nate, but has grown into what it is because of the listeners, and because of the great guests we have been able to have on the show. It is with that in mind that I bring back one of our most frequent friends of the show in Steve Gordon, and our newest one in Ben Lueders.

New Year? I guess it’s time we discuss 2011 then, as we each talk about what we found to be the Design Event of 2011; the Design Product of 2011; and the Design Story of 2011. Then I empty my fridge of vintage (i.e. old) soda in a taste test.

Hope you enjoy the new show.

Your host,
Donovan Beery

Download The Reflex Blue Show, Season 5 Episode 1 or, click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

The Reflex Blue Show

How we made it through half of a season without having Steve Gordon, Jr. swing by to guest on a show is beyond me – and a problem we decided to fix immediately. So, welcome back to the show Steve! This time around, we start by talking of the Field Paper show in Omaha, Nebraska, which led to me getting this week’s topic from the immensely talented Cathy Solarana. We basically talk about staying relevant, and positioning yourself as a freelancer when you are no longer just a year or two outside of school.

We spend the second half of the show going over all sorts of things: Steve’s new book (which he just found out about this month), 365 Habits of Successful Graphic Designers: Insider Secrets from Top Designers on Working Smart and Staying Creative (ends up that Rockport is packaging his previous book with two others in a new volume); Steve judging the HOW International Design Awards with Ann Willoughby and Mary Zalla; other upcoming F+W Media competitions; me blogging for Neenah Paper at the upcoming AIGA Pivot Conference in Phoenix; and what we are working on right now.

I’ll be back with daily podcast recaps from the big Phoenix event in a couple weeks, and we’ll be back with new shows starting in a month. Thanks for listening, and here is a link to the behind-the-scenes work on the new Neenah Paper promotions Design Army did (the ones we keep referencing in this episode).

Download The Reflex Blue Show, Season 4 Episode 11 or, click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

The Reflex Blue Show

Emily Potts, Matt Porter, Steve Gordon, Theresa D’Alessandro, Ensley Peters, and Tom Nemitz recap the first day of the HOW Design Live straight from the hotel bar at the Hyatt.

Download The Reflex Blue Show, HOWLive 2011: Day Two Recap or, click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

The Reflex Blue Show

This nearly-two-hour podcast is the very ultimate in Superbowl TV Commercial recaps. All the best, none of the rest. Our panel of six experts (including Design Princess Ashley McFeely, Show Friends Aaron Stubbe and Joe Sparano, and Steve “Aren’t I Too Famous For This Yet?” RDQlus Gordon) cut through nine categories of awesomeness to bring you the very best of the best of the best of Superbowl Ads. Listen in to see how we picked winners (and runners up) for the following categories:

• “Best” Use of a Celebrity or Athlete
• Best Nutshot or Nutshot-Like Behavior
• Worst Use of 3 Million Dollars
• Best Movie Trailer
• Best Use of Sexy to Sell an Unsexy Product or Service
• Character You Would Most Like to Party With
• Best Series
• Best Ad, Serious
• Best Ad, Comedy

Download The Superb Owl Spectacular iii or, click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

The Reflex Blue Show

Steve Gordon introduced us, through Twitter, to Brandon Herbel of Make Believe Studio. Not only does Brandon do great work for music acts nationwide, but he also started his own clothing company eight months ago. When we found out he was located right in our backyard of Omaha, Nebraska, we had to have him stop by to be on the show. We speak of the new Make Believe Clothing Company and his other ventures. And how can we speak of any fashion without having Steve on the show, where he shares a bit more about his ventures into clothing – and then we talk Starbucks.

For those people not within a block of a Starbucks, it appears they are all rebranding.

We’ll be back in a couple weeks with our annual Twitter show, so send us questions @36point and we’ll answer them on the next show.

Download The Reflex Blue Show, Season 3 Episode 19 or, click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

The Reflex Blue Show

We bring back Steve Gordon to talk about talking. And talk about piggyback rides. And talk about talking to clients. But not to talk about giving piggyback rides to clients – we have to save something for next time…

Download The Reflex Blue Show, Season 3 Episode 13 or, click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

The Reflex Blue Show

First off, big thanks to Justin for making the first few hours of our trip to Denver worth it for that alone. Not only did he greet us with a sign that made us realize we were in for serious design business all week, but he got us started off with a session of Street Fighter on the PS3 before lunch. Faces were kicked.

After lunch, it was off to the conference center to check in, and it was all about the Creative Freelancer Conference. We recap the conference and talk about what is in front of us the rest of the week with a variety of guests in today’s show: HOW Conference Speaker Jeni Herberger, Freelance Designer Michael King, Jamie Saunders of Neenah Paper (she also runs their Twitter account @neenahpaper), Jackie Brown of Jax Design, Bryn Mooth of HOW Design, and no show is complete without Steve Gordon.

Day two will bring us the closing of the Creative Freelancer Conference, the opening of the In-HOWSE Designer Conference, and the kick-off of the 2010 How Conference.

Check back for more updates, or follow us on Twitter (@36point and @vossome) as we spend the week in Denver, Colorado covering the design event of the year.

Download The Reflex Blue Show, 2010 HOW Conference Special: DAY ONE or, click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

The Reflex Blue Show

We bring Steve Gordon back (for the first time in Season 3) to discuss the HOW Conference in June (use Steve’s promo code SG10 to save $50 on registration) and the little fight Apple is having with Adobe in regards to Flash. Is Flash really crashing Macs at a rate that only Stitch was built for? Is Flash bad for iPhones and iPads, but good for Google? It’s so far around the Internets I’m not even sure which tube to link to.

But as important as all of this is, when walking though the local No Frills Wednesday evening, I ran across this year’s new flavors of Mountain Dew – so figured we’d start the show with another taste test. I guess you can vote for your favorite flavor online, but since the site is in Flash, it crashed my Safari browser and won’t show up on my iPhone. Strange. But are trying new flavors of Dew safe? We didn’t know either, so we brought Chris Kelly back to have him test with us.

Let us know your thoughts below, and enjoy.

UPDATE 5/3/10 from @iKitty Podcast pics show per track: http://twitpic.com/1kotfm

Download The Reflex Blue Show, Season 3 Episode 2 or, click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

The Reflex Blue Show

We bring back last year’s Superb Owl i host Tom Nemitz, as well as guests Steve Gordon and Rob Maguire to recap the ads played during Sunday’s football game. Nicole Blauw also makes her first appearance on The Reflex Blue Show, and brings the knowledge that the rest of us lack on more topics than I care to speak of.

The Superb Owl Spectacular is probably the most fun we have recording a podcast each year – enjoy.

Download 36 Point Superb Owl Spectacular i i (43 meg) or click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

How far have we come in design over the past 10 years? Think butterfly ballots and iPods.

How far has technology evolved between Y2K and the end of 2009? Obviously not enough to where a laptop running GarageBand and iChat can handle more then 15 minutes of audio before crashing with memory problems is the answer to that one.

The aughts also brought designers the merger of Adobe and Macromedia, the demise of the rolodex and a change in how stock imagery is bought.

So this week we bring Steve Gordon and Adam Nielsen out of the frozen lands of Hoth (or Omaha, it’s the same place this week) to recap the last ten years with Nate and I, while making predictions of the next ten.

And how can a design podcast on the past ten years not mention the design blogs, the design podcasts and forums? We can’t – we cover them as well.

As the show progresses, it becomes like the Highlander, “in the end, there can be only one.” The technology delays kill the time we have with Adam. Nate is soon to follow (and since Nate was stranded on a remote area of Hoth, and had to conference in, we immediately moved to more traditional recording methods, making the sound instantly better). Steve and I are left dueling for the Immortality that we both feel destined for until Mig Reyes swoops in with the final say and wins the game.

Do you have some wild predictions of your own for the next ten years? Be sure to leave them here.

Download The Reflex Blue Show with Nate Voss and Donovan Beery, Season 2 Episode 19 (28 meg) or click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

Today we welcome Steve Gordon as our guest to do a complete recap of our experiences from the HOW Conference.

We also spend some time discussing Graphic Design, Referenced by Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez Palacio, and how it may be the best graphic design textbook released since Meggs’, and possibly even better.

And of course, we discuss the office decoration we just got. Things will never be the same around here again.

Download The Reflex Blue Show with Nate Voss and Donovan Beery, Season 2 Episode 8 (36 meg) or click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

Day Three of The HOW Conference Special Reflex Blue Show podcasts come with serious thunder today. Day Two seemed a bit like an appetizer in comparison to tonight’s seven-course steak-and-lobster dinner featuring Matt Porter (master of the Neenah Paper Blog), twitter-captain and designer/writer Seth Lilly, HOW Editor / Conference Mastemind Bryn Mooth, the two-man vaudeville act that is Steve Gordon and Justin Ahrens, and the return of Debbie Millman and Armin Vit which brings the whole damn show to a close.

It’s magic, and I can say from experience that if you weren’t at HOW this year, this is probably as close to it as you can get. We get a pretty serious blow-by-blow of UnderConsiderations Mano a Mano competition from yesterday, a lot more looks into the sessions and speakers, and lots and lots of bagging on Marc English’s double-super-long presentation. Word.

Download The Reflex Blue Show HOW Conference Special: DAY THREE (23meg) or click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

Doing it right from Austin, Texas, live from the Conference Center’s 4th Floor — The Reflex Blue Show HOW Conference Special continues!

Day One guests include speakers/authors Jen & Ken Visocky O’Grady, author/speaker/man-about-town Steve Gordon, and Not-Anymore-Speaker/Not-Quite-Author Justin Ahrens (who graces us with a full-show appearance)! It’s all about setting the tone for the conference and covering the pre-conference workshops (sort of), and the lead-up to the conference itself — as it appears on Twitter? Also featuring the mad psyching-out of the O’Gradys vis a vis Armin Vit’s Design History & Practice: Mano a Mano battle royale that is apparently going down like Chinatown Thursday night.

Are you in Austin? Want to be on the show? Hit the 4th Floor everyday at 5:00 (right after the close) and chat it up!

Download The Reflex Blue Show HOW Conference Special: DAY ONE (17meg) or click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.

Some people might shrug off launching a new feature as lo-fi as we have here, (and lo-fi afficionados should buckle-up) the content is there, if not the proper tools. This will be corrected with time, I imagine. For now, check out the video by clicking the link below. Eventually this regular feature will be available as a video podcast an in other media, but for now you can get it right here:

Download Reviews Gone Bad: 100 Habits of Successful Freelance Designers (36 meg) or click here to subscribe to Reviews Gone Bad from the iTunes Music Store.

Today, finally, we coax Steve Gordon into revealing his new book, 100 Habits of Successful Freelance Designers, available this Spring from Rockport. While we dart and dash between a few topics (such as Donovan’s absurd GI Joe collection and my resultant absurd level of jealousy) Steve drops info bombs on where the book came from, what it’s all about, and what readers can expect when it releases.

Also on Episode 22 we cover the 2008 36 Point Holiday Design Review, reviving an old favorite from the Be A Design Cast days, which will be dictated to us by you, our readers and listeners. We also touch on a very, very important topic regarding the STEP 100 Reader’s Choice awards this year. Listen in and wonder –

–nv–

Download The Reflex Blue Show with Nate Voss and Donovan Beery, Episode 22 (27.5 meg) or click here to subscribe directly from the iTunes Music Store.

This week: Music Meets Creativity with special guest — Graphic Design’s DJ — Steve (RDQlus) Gordon.

Rarely do you see the designer today without their iPod (or, if you’re one of those people, your Zune) plugged in, filling the gaps in their creativity with their music. While we spend the first few minutes being a little Radiohead-centric, Steve, Donovan and I eventually discuss the parallels of creation great design to creating great music, what music is great for design and what music can kill a creative mood, and why the Halo 3 soundtrack is actually awesome and Donovan needs to shut up about defunct 80′s rock. Enjoy The Reflex Blue Show Episode 9 with a cold one and your favorite playlist.

–nv–

Download The Reflex Blue Show with Nate Voss and Donovan Beery, Episode 9 (22meg) or click here to subscribe directly from the iTunes Music Store.