“ ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ Whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”    — Steve Jobs

The tweet here is probably something along the lines of “I’m hanging up my podcasting spurs.” Of course, brevity has never really been a strong suit of mine, so I’ll elaborate below. But if you just want the quick hit, there it is. These old spurs, I am a’ hangin’ them up.

I’ve been hosting a podcast about graphic design as long as podcasts about graphic design existed, I’m proud to say, though a few rascals beat us out of the gate onto iTunes. I thought the Steve Jobs quote above would be a nice way to kick this story off, not just because it sums up my feelings, but because he was the reason I began podcasting in the first place.

When Apple added podcasts to the iTunes music store I was about as big of a fanboy as you could get, both for Apple and for graphic design. As we all know, to hear Steve Jobs describe anything is to be riveted by it, be it iPods, computers, or shoelaces. So after hearing the pitch about how great the addition of podcasts would make iTunes, I immediately loaded it up and went looking for the best design podcast I could turn up.

I turned up none.

At the time I was writing at a blog called Be A Design Group with my friends, and we had a decent number of readers coming to the site, so I thought there was a natural market opening for us. My friend Tom had a little radio experience, and we invited our other friend Donovan to make it a hosting threesome (and not in the gross way).

That’s how the show began. A couple of young, energetic, passionate design fanboys talking about typefaces, Pantone colors, papers, Adobe products, and our design heroes. Before we knew it, we had those very same heroes sitting down with us. It was design-geek nirvana.

I always wanted the show to fit somewhere between friends-sitting-at-a-bar-talking-shop (“Mrs. Eaves is the worst!”) and a broader, deeper conversation about our industry and where it is headed. On a few magical occasions, I felt like we achieved that. Mostly I was my own worst critic, making the few trolling comments we would get around here perfectly redundant. I craved contrarian opinions and points-of-view that challenged mainstream ideas of what our industry could be. It felt like that didn’t always win me a lot of supporters, certainly at times it cost me more than I gained, but to me it is important to question authority. It is important to ask questions about our world, and our little piece of it.

When we launched 36 Point, there were a few reasons. One, we had begun to chafe somewhat under the Be A Design Group masthead and longed for complete creative freedom. Second, we thought, surely there must be a way to monetize this thing (and there is, just nothing we had any real interest in pursuing), and it would be best to own our own intellectual property. Lastly, I had just begun my own business, and needed a good way to self-promote. So, with reckless abandon and an overabundance of boldness, we cancelled the Be A Design Cast and launched The Reflex Blue Show here on 36 Point.

We’ve had a very good run, and I expect it will continue to improve in my absence. But when I look at the reasons I started podcasting, and my reasons for continuing, I could no longer find a compelling hook. My passion for design hasn’t diminished, but it has matured, changing in the process. I can no longer summon the will to idolize the more successful designers in our industry; obsess over Adobe updates; or ask people what their least favorite typeface is (everyone just says Comic Sans now, anyway).

I look at all of the extraordinary work being done these days online and cataloged on sites like Dribbble, and I think of all the young designers pouring their passion into pet projects, and realize that my passions have changed. I’ve begun a new career at a fantastic and supportive agency (VML), and I am passionate about that. I have a loving wife and a great dog and I am passionate about them. I spend half my days staring at pixels magnified to 1600% and I am super passionate about that. Moving forward, those are the things I want to concentrate on. And in order to do so, I came to the realization that I need to step away from the show I created.

My design heroes now are all 10 years younger than me, and they are a large group of passionate, creative people who can build the things I never could, and I’m hopeful that they, too, will pick up that fanboy torch for design and carry it forward. I can’t wait to cheer them on, I just won’t be doing it from behind a microphone.

Lastly, I’d like to give credit where it’s due. These shows were nothing if not a group effort, and every single person who ever showed up, spoke up, stood behind-the-scenes or showed up with cheeseburgers and beer in a Burger King mask deserves credit for its successes. While I can’t name everyone, there are a few folks I would like to take a minute to single out:

Best Frequent Guest: Justin Ahrens

We’ve had many, many guests on the show, all of which were extraordinary people with extraordinary thoughts on the design profession. For as much as I hope bringing our conversations to the world has brought others, being able to sit down with these designers and ask the questions I’ve always wanted to ask has been more fulfilling than I could possibly communicate here.

Of all our guests, though, having the excuse to catch up with Justin Ahrens — who is one of the most positive and supportive people you will ever meet, in or out of the design world — always brought me joy. If there was one guest who fundamentally understood what our show was about, and was never afraid to dive into it’s deep-end headfirst, it was J.A.

Best Role Model: Debbie Millman

One of the best, and most unexpected, things to come from the show was my friendship with Debbie. She was hosting Design Matters and occupying the stratosphere while we were digging in the mines for content. Debbie took me under her wing and made me want to be a better host, a better interviewer, and someone who could aim for deeper questions about design. If I ever gained any competency at this gig, I owe it to Debbie’s subtle nudges and the amazing example she set.

Best Guest Podcaster: Mig Reyes

Mig Reyes, along with the next name on this list, is one of my favorite I-knew-him-when friends. Mig, for an entire season (Season 2), took over our student tip section of the show and made it his own. Every two weeks we’d get an email with an audio file attached, and there would be Mig, going way more in depth than we ever would, getting the word out to young designers about how to make it. Each and every Mig Tip was filled with energy, intelligence, and integrity. There was never a tip on how to cheat the system or cut to get ahead, just great, honest advice on how to grow as a professional and put yourself where you would like to go. We even cut his own theme song for it. Mig is one of the very best examples you can find in this world of the power of passion + positivity.

Best Friend of the Show: Steve Gordon

Steve was on the show so much that I consider him our honorary 3rd man. If this had ever been a paying gig I’m sure I would have made the offer to make it official. Steve started out sending us clips for the show from the HOW Conference that eventually became the format for all of our event coverage; grew into a frequent guest host and interviewer; and eventually into someone we were able to interview himself, about his books, clothing line and other projects. Steve’s infectious energy and never-say-die attitude gave every episode he was on a heartbeat that could be heard for miles, and when I think of the best times I had doing the podcast, Steve is intrinsically linked to almost all of them.

Best Co-Host: Donovan Beery

And I only say “co-host” in the form of  “Nate and Donovan are co-hosts of The Reflex Blue Show.” Aside from having the driest sense of humor ever recorded, and an ability to drive me absolutely insane whenever we’d do a show without ever actually making me mad, Donovan’s behind-the-scenes work for our shows would be legendary if people knew how much work he puts into it. Memory fails me here, but I’m not sure I ever set up an interview for this show, and we’ve done dozens. That was all Donovan Beery.

Donovan makes the site go, and manages our RSS feeds. Donovan schedules appointments and keeps schedules on track. Donovan is the reason we occasionally get invited places and is definitely the reason we make it there alive. Donovan is how we have had so many amazing guests on our shows, because he calls them himself. Donovan is the reason we know it’s easier to get Sagmeister on the phone than some of our friends. The show works because Donovan works.

Donovan has simply been an incredible companion on this journey, and I am lucky to count him as a true friend.

Lastly, I just want to thank those of you, who sometimes seem so preciously few, who listen and enjoy our podcast. It will continue, and it will grow into something new and better, I am sure. Thank you for everything.

—nv—

First, we’d like to thank everyone who’s shown their support to 36 Point for the past year and a half. Second, we’d like to blow your minds with our exciting announcement that we’re transitioning to an all-hobo format over here. Beginning this morning with our first Hobo-Designer-1PT.Rule, and continuing soon with only-on-the-train-tracks recordings of future Reflex Blue Shows, we’re sure you’ll be as excited for this change as we are.

To celebrate and make it official, we commissioned leading logo and identity designer Drew Davies of Oxide Design to create our new mark. “Knocking it out of the park” would be an understatement. “Everyone said Cooper Black was dead, and look at it now,” Davies said of the redesign project. “Hobo is here to stay.”

Drew Davies’ work has appeared in Logo Lounge 2, 3, 4 and 5, as well as two upcoming Master Library books from that series, Communication Arts (six times), AIGA 365 (twice), Print’s Regional Design Annual, HOW Magazine, and he has served as a judge to many regional and national design competitions, including the Communication Arts Design Annual in 2004, and serves as the Design Director for AIGA’s Design for Democracy.

To celebrate our love and friendship with all creatives, 36 Point is pleased to bring you our newest desktop wallpaper design. Featuring the popular Hobo Designers characters from the never-bitter 1PT.Rule, we think you’ll agree that this is the hap-hap-happiest wallpaper around!

Head on over to our downloads section for this and much, much more!

NEXT STOP: Sgt. Peffer’s, Tuesday, September 8, 5:30 p.m. Map? Website. Well known for being directly across the street from the legendary Omaha bar, The Homy Inn, Sgt. Peffer’s is the default choice of many a mid-town pizza eater and drunkard. It was here we dined last Spring with Justin Ahrens, Steve Hartman, and Christine Taylor, on the craziest party night in my recent life. Perhaps a repeat?

Also, as promised, after the jump I’ve collected all of the Zio’s Reviews from our previous outing.

Zio’s Pizza (132nd and Center) Reviews:

Donovan Beery:
I love that Zio’s serves broccoli, so this is what I ordered for my topping. Unfortunately, that was the highlight of my slices. The dough was bad that night, and to be fair to the other places we plan to review, that night is all I will base my opinion on. 2 stars out of 5 is the best I can do. Disappointment and no desire to return for the season.

Craig Hughes:
I had a slice of four-large-animals-died-to-give-you-this-much-meat pizza and a slice of pineapple and pesto pizza (in an attempt to find something to rival Yia-Yia’s Pacific pizza). The crust itself tended to be either a little soggy, a little burnt, or somehow both at the same time. The crust is relatively thin New-York style, but somewhere in the middle they’ve squeezed an edible rubber product. It’s nearly impossible to slice through with a fork and knife, and you don’t dare pick it up with your hands lest the whole soggy mess fall in your lap. While I love me some eccentric pizza, I can’t say that any magic was captured with Zio’s pesto+pineapple. I think the crust made any grandeur of the toppings essentially moot.

The meat-plant pizza was literally a chore. I’m not exaggerating at all when I say it took me a half-hour to eat the single slice. Not because it was a lot of food (it wasn’t), but because it was just a labor to eat. Separating a bite from the rubber crust while still keeping the cheese and meat in a centralized location was essentially impossible. My plate was littered with messy pizza guts. Even accounting for our semi-large group (14…maybe?), customer service left MUCH to be desired. Definitely wouldn’t come back with a group of friends. Single or double-date? Maybe.

For some people pizza is about the cheese, for others it’s the crust or the sauce. In my opinion, its the overall culmination of flavors, textures and visual presentation of the slice. And while we all know, any pizza joint in the beef capitol of the world can kick out a really awesome hamburger pizza, I thought the real test would come when the establishments are tested against their rendition of the veggie.

Jessie Long:
Zios boasts their toppings as “always fresh and bountiful” and indeed my veggie request came piled with sliced mushrooms, spinach leaves, white onions, green peppers and broccoli florets. This was covered with a perfectly tanned mozzarella and topped with glistening artichoke hearts. Definitely one to approach with a fork and knife. The first bite was deliciously warm with the meaty taste of mushrooms and the perfectly blanched crispness of the broccoli. As the sun shone bright on the patio, I knew this glorious veggie would trump all others.

But as glorious as the first bite was, it was quickly overshadowed as the Omaha breeze placed the darkening rainclouds over our patio. As I progressed on the slice, I found the mozzarella, when baked over fresh, water infused veggies formed a dome that, when heated, left the moisture to go nowhere but through the crust. In turn, this caused what little of the sauce that remained to run right off the slice before it was served. So now, well into the slice I was eating fresh produce on a soggy new-york style crust. Great veggies, but not glorious pizza.

So the questions remain. Would I order it again? Would I recommend it to a friend? I would order it again, but only sans spinach and onions. Recommendations might be a little more difficult to pull off at this point, since I wouldn’t order it straight off menu.

Zios rating for veggie slice: Meh. I’ve experienced better. (2)

Tony Montgomery:
Well, I have to say, I am a bit of a traditionalist. I went with the pepperoni and garlic. I wasn’t expecting something magical, just a slice of pizza that would satisfy my growling belly. After drinking plenty of free water, I started to wonder if I would ever see this pizza that I had ordered so long ago…

tick… tick… tick… still nothing.

The entertainment at Zio’s consisted of Nate Voss fighting a table umbrella in his desperate attempt to avoid the intense blinding light of the sun. We admired the cool shoes that Bob Hankin and Donovan Beery were sporting, and dodged the spatter of raindrops that would soon remove us from our tables. … and then it showed up. One beautifully arranged slice of pepperoni and garlic pizza. Definitely not match for my girlfriend’s artichoke chicken pizza, but I’m simple like that. It tasted good. I probably wouldn’t brag about the quality of the pizza, but it satisfied my angry stomach and served it’s purpose. Sadly, I would have to say that I’ve had better. No hard feelings Zio’s, it’s not you… it’s me. No wait… it’s you. 2/5 

Me: 

I went in calling Zio’s the best pizza in four states and man if they didn’t do everything in their power to disprove this. I went with a 4-topper of pepperoni, green pepper, pineapple, and onion, and it was, as best, okay. I don’t know much about rating pizzas, but it was a bit soggy for my tastes, and unfortunately a little bland. It was, overall, a fine meal to be sure, and on any other night I would even call it enjoyable, but when you go out specifically to be wowed by pizza, and you get what I got, you can’t help but come away a little disappointed.
2 1/2 Stars.

Tropicana = FAIL. Via our man Prescott Perez Fox, via the Times itself. Now that is design entertainment.

Friday is a very big day for me. I am excited.

I first met Debbie Millman years ago in Cincinnati. Superb Owl guest-host Tom Nemitz and I were in town for an AIGA retreat and on the first night, along with two other people whom I have no memory of, Debbie was presenting her work to a local event. We were invited to sit in. I was awestruck, watching as she presented the Burger King logo — which, by the way, everyone failed at but her team — followed by the Hershey’s wrapper, and a few other products of note. What struck me more than anything was how young she seemed for the depth of knowledge she possessed and the power she wielded over brands that shaped American consumer culture. Following her presentation I joined the crowd dogging her every move with questions and blurted out something along of the lines of “how have you gotten so far, so fast?”

I have no idea how she answered and believe it was somewhere along the lines of “work hard and become an intelligent person.”

I was also struck by how personable and down to earth she was. My blueprint at the time for a successful woman in graphic design’s upper echelon was Paula Scher, a hard-hitting New Yorker from head to toe (an appearance drawn for me from her tales of battling the glass ceiling in Make It Bigger), so Debbie’s warmth and openness came as quite a surprise.

A year or so later at yet another AIGA retreat I had the brief chance to see Debbie a second time in St. Louis. She was hosting a breakout session on the AIGA mentorship program, and showed a great many slides and told tales of her own mentoring experience as a plea to get other chapters to start programs of their own. I was interested in the program but my chapter of AIGA was struggling through tough times and I knew it wouldn’t get off the ground. That didn’t stop me from pretending it would just so I could say “hello.”

At this point I more or less considered Debbie to be one of my favorite designers and studied her work the way young designers often study the work of Sagmeister, Glaser, or whomever. I loved when the opportunity would arise in the checkout aisle to tell my family “I’ve met the woman who did that” when picking up a Hershey’s bar, or driving through a BK and doing the same as I passed drinks to my friends in the backseat. It was more a novelty than anything.

Then we started the Be A Design Cast. This was a few weeks after iTunes integrated podcasts to their music store and Design Matters was still a weekly live broadcast, but not yet available for downloading. We started our show to fill that specific void, and in fact during test recording we tried to mimic the Design Matters format and came off sounding like a bunch of children attempting to sound like adults. We settled, after a few shows, on sounding like children trying to sound like children. We did topic shows until we stumbled upon a few great interviews (including Joe Duffy), and by the time we reached San Francisco the following summer we were lined up to spend an afternoon chatting with the three partners of Pentagram.

So the third time I met Debbie Millman, during that San Francisco trip, I actually had something to talk with her about. We each had shows that covered the same industry (though they compare only in the way that 60 Minutes compares to The Daily Show), and found a common link. After that, she became much less Debbie Millman, superstar designer and host of the most amazing talkshow on design, and much more “Debbie” a friend of mine who just happens to live half a country away. We talked occasionally and would run into each other at design events, one here, another there. She graced the Be A Design Cast with two appearances, for which we are still very grateful.

It was some time ago that Debbie asked me if I would be interested in hosting an episode of Design Matters. I was originally shocked by the question, standing outside in the cold Denver air while the AIGA Next conference roared from inside, but my mouth went ahead and said “yes” quick enough that my brain could not argue. And it was some time ago that I wondered for the first time (but not for the last) how on Earth I could possibly fill her shoes, even for an hour. The simple answer is, I cannot.

There’s a part of me, however, that has been enjoying the idea that there must be some people scratching their heads on this one.

“Debbie Millman brought in who to guest host?”

That thought always puts a smile, or at least a smirk, on my face. The rest is just working hard, and trying to make myself into an intelligent person.

I hope you listen in Design Matters this Friday. It will be an adventure, one way or another.

–nv–

In 2008, Donovan Beery and I sat down with AIGA President Sean Adams in Omaha, Nebraska, where Sean was attending the AIGA Leadership Retreat. During our visit with Sean, he was incredibly gracious and cordial, and often disarming with his humor. We met Sean in a large but decidedly un-decadent hotel room and discussed the formation of Adams Morioka, what makes designers take the plunge into self-employment, and the perks of sharing an office building with Larry Flint. (The full interview can be heard on The Reflex Blue Show, available for download here.)

Originally conducted for The Reflex Blue Show by Nate Voss with Donovan Beery
June, 2008

36 Point:  How are you today?

Sean Adams:  I’m very happy to be here.

36: As I was doing my research, I found you studied at Cal Arts — you did not go to Harvard?

SA: I did not. I was one of the few in my family who didn’t.

36: Why not?

SA: Because they didn’t have a design program. Of course my parents and my grandparents were shocked beyond belief and terrified. You can imagine, you say “I’m not going to Harvard, I’m going to art school.” I did go through the process — I did my interview, I got accepted, I did everything I was supposed to do– but when it boiled down to it, it was Harvard Art Center or Cal Arts. And I thought, “hm, I’ll go to Cal Arts.” Giant mistake! I admit it now. Huge mistake. My parents should have shoved me into Harvard! [Laughs]

36: It kind of worked out for you, though.

SA: But just imagine — if I’d gone to Harvard I could be a Senator by now!

36: Yes, but who wants to do that? And you met Noreen through tennis?

SA: Yes, we met through tennis. We met at Cal Arts at registration. She was the only person there who wasn’t totally insane-looking — wearing strange clothes and clown outfits and you know, tattoos — and she was wearing pink pedal-pushers, so I said “Well, I can talk to her,” so I walked over to her. And we were the only two people at Cal Arts to ever use the tennis courts for anything other that pot-smoking.

36: Did you ever get into scuffles about that? ‘Hey man, we’re trying to smoke our weed over here?’

SA: You know the great thing about people who are stoners is that they’re kind of laid back. So we’d say “Hey we’re going to play tennis” and they’d say “oh man, fine, we’ll go sit over here instead.” You know, they were fine with it. So we played tennis together for a couple of years.

36: How did that transition? You guys were friends at school, then you went to New York and she went to Japan. When you found yourselves coming back to LA, how did you meet up and say “This is the way we’re going to do it — let’s start our own thing?”

SA: I came back and right off the bat I started working with Lorraine Wild on some books. So she and I did a couple of books together. And I got this kind of triumvirate of famous women designers with me. I worked with Lorraine for a while and then Sheila de Bretteville asked me to help her with a magazine that was being started, so I worked on that for a while. Then April Greiman called me and asked if I could come on board as a design director, so I went to work for April. When I was at April’s, after a couple of years we needed a senior designer and I knew Noreen was getting a little tired of Japan, so I called her and said “Hey, is there any chance we can drag you back here to come work with us?” She accepted, so she and I worked at April’s together for a few years.

And then,  I think I was at that point in everyone’s life, I was 28, 29, you’re reaching almost 30, and you realize “Okay, it’s now or never.”

36: I know what that’s like!

SA: You know? Because there’s this line you cross, I think, where at a certain age you just have to resign yourself. “Well, this is my career. I will always now work for someone else, and yeah I’ll do a great job, and be in a position of responsibility,” — or you say “I’m going to be an entrepreneur, I’m going to strike out and do my own thing and follow my path.” And both are valid.

I remember someone once telling me, “Look, working for yourself or working for someone else, it’s all the same thing. You’re either an entrepreneur or you’re not.” That’s all there is to it. If you are: yes, you’re going to go work for yourself. It’s a hellish job, it’s relentless, you’re always having to find work and keep it rolling. Or you’re going to work for someone else, and that’s great: they’re taking care of getting the work, paying the paycheck, but at the same time you can get fired at any minute. So there’s ups and downs of both sides, and it’s just your nature.

36: So you’re saying it chose you, not the other way around?

SA: I don’t think we had a choice. And also I think Noreen and I had really specific ideas about design and what design should be. And it seemed for us to be able to do that, we just had to go out and do our own thing.

36: And those ideas would be Clarity, Purity, and Resonance?

SA: Exactly. Yeah, it almost seemed baroque to me. It was like there was layer upon layer upon layer upon layer and filter on filter on filter and varnish and varnish and varnish! We always used this analogy, we’d say “you know there’s starving children in the world? This is obscene. Can we do this simply, and plainly, and speak in clear language that everyone can understand? And do it efficiently? Let’s use less resources, let’s do it the smart way.” And we were pretty sure the only clients we would get would be a couple of banks — some financial institutions that wanted boring, conservative work.

36: That’s a good, positive spin!

SA: I know, we had high hopes! [laughs] But as it turned out, strangely enough, I think the world was kind for ready for a shift, and we started getting interesting design clients. I remember the head of creative at A&M Records back then, which was still alive, called us and said “I heard about you guys. You’re doing that new kind of cool ‘clean’ stuff.”

36: Nice.

SA: Which was amazing to us! Because it’s not new, but if you want to think it is, okay, fine by me. But I don’t think we had a choice. It’s the way we think. We try — believe me there have been times where we’ve said “Let’s try to do this, let’s be a little more on edge,” we’ll try something a little denser, and then we put it together and it all comes out. “There’s too much stuff on that page. Get rid of it, get rid of it!”

36: Following that initial period of a couple of years, there was an attempted merger which backfired very badly.

SA: Very badly, yeah.

36: The merger lasted only for about six months. We can understand if you don’t want to reveal it, but we could never find out who it was with?

SA:  We have never revealed it. [Laughs] There were some terms that were set after it, yeah.

36: Was that when you were in the Larry Flint [of Hustler Magazine] building? Was it possibly with the…

SA: With the Flint people? No no, unfortunately.

36: Do you have any good Flint stories?

SA: We do see Larry every once in a while. He has a gold wheelchair.

36: He seems like the type that would.

SA: It’s amazing. I’ve never been up to his office, but Terry, who works with us, had taken her class up to their offices once. She said it’s like Vegas. It’s like big, fancy-framed paintings and velvet draperies. It’s this incredible, opulent space.

36: Exactly the same as we would assume your office would be?

SA: Exactly the same, yes.

36: Back to the merger, one thing that was very forward-thinking of you was that you kept the lease on your old space, and you still had the phone number.

SA: Yes, clearly we were not jumping into this all the way.

36: You had a bit of backup plan, but you still – at that time — felt like you were starting over from scratch. At the end of the day, it’s worked out. Now you get a tremendous amount of media coverage, interviews, you pop up in magazines and you obviously do a lot of speaking engagements…

SA: Not self-motivated, by any means. People always think that’s we’re out there
, spinning like crazy, but honestly, we’re just responding.

36: It all seems like from Day One it’s been nothing but sunshine and roses, but that’s not necessarily the case; you guys have been through some pretty harrowing times. When you look at the period before the merger, and compare it to the kind of business you’ve had after that, what changed? How much maturity did you gain from it?

SA: The great part about understanding what went wrong with our aborted merger is that we came out understanding who we wanted to work with: people we liked, and people we respected. And we walked away saying, “if we end up being the most expensive drawing studio in the world, that’s what it is, because I’m not going to work with people I don’t like. I’m not going to work with people who treat me badly, I deserve respect. And if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I don’t want my last few minutes on Earth to be doing a job I hate.”

So that was a big lesson to learn. And we also learned that we don’t want to have 25 people working for us. We don’t want to be dragging in every job we can just to pay the bills.

36: How big is the studio now?

SA: It’s like eight. We keep it small, so that we actually can choose to not take jobs if we don’t want them. So that was a great lesson to learn, and just… You know, spend time doing things life you like doing. Don’t waste time doing things you don’t like to do. And that was really important.

Right afterwards, it was definitely hard. We’d lost all of our clients, they’d all pretty much walked away, and we had to start all over again. It worked fine, within a couple of months we were back up and running, but you know, I was still having to go out there and do speaking engagements. And you’re out there talking about how great things are, and “wow it’s a great profession.” You don’t want to go to a speaking engagement and come out feeling horrible — “why in god’s name am I doing this?” — hopefully you’re going to inspire someone in the audience and they’re going to feel like, “okay, I like my job. I want to try harder.” Maybe they get a little inspired. I sort of felt like a fraud because I thought my own life was so hard. But you can’t go out and complain about your own life, no one wants to hear that. You’re not doing them a service at that point.

36: You certainly wouldn’t get invited back! One of my favorite quotes of yours, describing working at Adams Morioka, is ‘People come to work for us and they think it’s going to be like and episode of the Monkees. Lots of dancing, jokes, and 60′s surf music playing.’ I’m disappointed to find that’s not the case, because that perfectly encapsulates exactly the way I picture your office. For a new designer on staff, what is that first week like?

SA: We always joke and say it’s not Beach Boys and dancing on the tables, it’s more like Satan’s workshop, but in reality it probably isn’t. When I talk to the designers who are just starting out, they do say “this is a radically different place than I have ever worked before.” And we do keep it light — work is supposed to be fun, right? We’re not accountants, it’s supposed to be fun. So it’s kept light, we spend a lot of effort making sure the designers are protected from any issues that may be happening with clients, so that they feel inspired to do their very best work, and I think they have a good time. No-one works overtime. Now my staff will probably call in and say that’s a complete lie…

36: Sweet. We’ll take those comments at 36point.com!

SA: Yeah! Unless they seriously have to, unless something’s really going on, it’s very rare that someone has to stay late or ever work on a weekend. They work 9:30 – 6:30. We take an hour religiously for lunch.

36: Same time [each day]? Do you guys go out together for lunch?

SA: Pretty much. We try to [go out as a group] whenever possible. So I think it is a fun place to work, and I think it is a fun place because our clients are actually pretty good. Since we’re pretty choosy about the clients we take — and not because we’re fabulously wealthy, but because we’re committed to working only with the people we really want to work with –they get to work on fun things. There’s really no jobs in the office that are horrible, drudgery jobs. No one’s designing the same packaging 50,000 times for someone.

But the part that I don’t think people expect, and the biggest problem people have when they come to work for us, is they think it’s all going to be fun and games. And it is fun, and we try to keep it light, but it is serious, and it is work, and they need to be efficient.

36: And it’s high profile work. Not to downplay my community, but if you’re doing something for the local grocer or the flower shop on the corner in Omaha, Nebraska, and something goes haywire on the job — okay. It might hurt that relationship but ultimately won’t cause too many large-scale problems. But let’s say there was a typo on the VH-1 logo the first time it was broadcast. There would be some pretty serious problems there.

SA: Right, yeah. We work with Mohawk [Paper], and we handle the Via line. When the first asked us, we were looking at the numbers, and it was accounting for a big bulk of Mohawk’s business. And at one point I realized if I screw this up, I will have really hurt a company. Badly. This isn’t like I goofed up a little product here. And fortunately we didn’t mess it up, we increased it dramatically. So that worked out well, but you think, ‘oh, I can’t mess this up.’

And I think sometimes it’s hard for people to understand that you need to work. We do keep it to a small staff, but they have to be efficient. And people are nice who tell us ‘we can’t believe the amount of work you guys churn out of this office with only eight or nine people.’ They’re good. They’re efficient. And we take care of them. That’s how it works.

36: When most people start up their own design companies, they’re thinking about work, autonomy, and being entrepreneurial. They’re not, at that point, thinking about how to make a great environment for the other six people that are eventually going to be their employees.

SA: Well what’s the point in having an office unless you can make a space where other people can come and do great creative work?
]]> http://www.36point.com/archives/2009/01/an-interview-with-sean-adams.html/feed 0 http://www.36point.com/archives/2008/12/social-bookmarks-added.html http://www.36point.com/archives/2008/12/social-bookmarks-added.html#comments Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:44:59 +0000 Nate Voss http://36point.com/wordpress/?p=81

Hey everybody! We’re always hard at work over here adding new things to the site, and from today forward you might notice some links under each post to the social bookmarking site of your choice. If you see an article, comic, or podcast that strikes your fancy and you want to let your friends (or the world at large) know about it, just click one of the icons and it should take you straight away to that site.

As a test I dropped The Big Geek Switch onto my Facebook, and the process was clean and simple. We’re using Byrne Reese’s Promote This plugin on Movable Type, and for someone who knows very little about the engine driving this site I found it very easy work with and integrate into our template. Currently it doesn’t have Twitter support, which I’d like, but it does work with some other sites not listed above, so if there’s a site you use that we don’t have up there let us know and we’ll see about getting that in.

—nv–

There’s something very… monumental in the works. Something primal. I can feel it. A shift.

Earlier this year many people my age and older, some a little younger, finally took the last burden and insult from the once legendary Star Wars, as Clone Wars stumbled out like a long lost friend at your high school reunion who’s gone off the deep end. The one who used you be your best mate, and who, after losing touch, seemed to make an endless stream of brain-dead and baseline-crazy life decisions and now is off in the corner half-dressed and drunk out of his mind, listing off reasons to people of how he’s not really stalking his ex-girlfriend, even though no-one brought it up. You see your old friend and you realize he’s too messed up. He’s too far gone, you think. You walk away from Star Wars. I was one of the last holdouts — Revenge of the Sith is my second-favorite Star Wars movie if I close my eyes and ears during the scenes where Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen talk without shouting.

You can call it Star Wars mourning, if you like. Like a breakup, even a good breakup — a breakup you were prepared for — you need some time to heal. And then, when you’re ready, you can behold the god-damn-awesome-with-fireworks Star Trek trailer that hit the tubes today.

As a die-hard Star Wars fan, never, never in my life have I been excited for a Star Trek movie. Sure, I could enjoy me some STNG, but anything after that — or movies that don’t have KHAAAAAAAAN in them — weren’t worth it when you had Luke and The Force to cheer for. But that’s just it, we don’t have Luke anymore. We don’t have the same Force. We have snippy-padawan-sidekick girl, as well as the word “padawan.” And instead of boring, slow moving ships and non-action, we have god-damn sexy Kirk and Sylar Spock, the hot girl from Curse of the Black Pearl who wasn’t in the sequels, and about ten gallons of screen-busting awesome. It’s almost as if smoldering Eomer “Bones” McCoy walked into the living room where we were going through old photos of Han and Lando on Cloud City, with overflowing buckets of awesome saying “Excuse me, could someone please tell me where to put all of this awesome? I have all of this awesome overflowing here and nowhere to put it down.” Suddenly, the unthinkable has happened. Star Wars is now solidly, completely terrible, and Trek has stepped in to show Wars how it’s done. And people are going to follow. In droves. To me, it’s the strangest thing, how one story got it so wrong when it came back for a second go, and how, on what seems to be it’s third trip around the block, somebody seems to finally be getting the other one right. This is a time in geekdom that people are going to look back on. This is The Big Geek Switch.

A last note. A few months ago I saw my friend Donovan about to toss out or donate a Star Wars Monopoly game. When pressed, he offered it to me instead. When I took it home and opened it, I was amazed. The game was made before the prequel movies ever existed, and seeing it was like seeing an old friend, long gone.

Another last note: Scott Kurtz perfectly nailed a point to this argument in PVP that, yes, I was thinking as I wrote this.

–nv–

Dave Nelson demonstrates yet again why he is one of the most vital designers working out of Nebraska right now with his new site, WhyIAmVotingForObama.com. It’s an honest, earnest look at the candidate through the eyes of a devout Christian, for single-issue (ie: abortion) voters. Dave’s been a guest of our show (and earlier on the Be A Design Cast) and you can see more of his great work here, and at his blog here.

Apparently unleashing the limits of awesomeness upon the cosmos can have some pretty serious karmic-repercussions: The Universe does not want us to record our show on Adobe CS4. In fact you could say at this point the Universe, Karma, Sauron, and possibly even the dark side of the force (remember that movie from the 70′s?) are conspiring against us.

We’ll be back next week with a new show if the solar system hasn’t collapsed into a black hole by then.

–nv–

Just making sure you know we’re still here,

Nate and Donovan

Read on for the official word from HOW.

HOW, the leading creativity, business and technology magazine for graphic designers, issues a Call for Entries for its 10th annual Interactive Design Awards.

The competition is open to all designers from anywhere in the world. Any interactive, interface or motion designs for the web, for kiosks, for broadcast or for use on Macintosh or Windows platforms, including CD-ROMs and DVDs, are eligible. Projects created between January 1, 2007 and July 15, 2008 are eligible. Entries will be accepted in 12 categories including the new In-House category.

The competition’s Best of Show winner will be profiled in HOW’s 2009 International Design Annual and will win a trip to the 2009 HOW Design Conference. All winning entries will be featured in the International Design Annual, and some may be showcased on the HOW website.

Entry fees are as follows: $75 Regular Entry and $50 Student Entry. Entries must be postmarked by July 15, 2008. Late entries will be accepted until August 1, 2008.

For more information, rules and official entry form, visit www.howdesign.com.

Post your entries to the 2008 Chicago International Poster Biennial on Flickr and join our group.

Thousands, perhaps millions of posters will be entered and only 100 will win, so we at 36 Point wanted to showcase as many of the entries as possible to help celebrate poster designers around the world. This gallery is built to house those.tif files that are required of the entry process, so once you send yours off, load them up!

If you don’t have a Flickr account and hate free things that are awesome, post a link to your entry (jpegs please) in our comments and we’ll see that it gets added to the group. Please be sure when adding images to our group, to set their permissions to “public.”

Winners will be announced by the CIPB in the Fall of 2008. Good luck!

As of today I’m entering two posters, which I’m showing here (in finger-hold format) so you can track my probable defeat: 

These posters were produced for an annual student design event, and they’re about all I have for posters. We’ve done a few for the ol’ Be A Design Cast, but those weren’t really what I’d call “CIPB material.” One of them, at least, is too small (smaller than the 16.5″ x 13.4″ minimum) and the rest of my posters were produced before January of 2006. A few people on the comments section of DO have bitched about the minimum size requirement and others, but that just backs up my old theory that stupid 8.5″ x 11″ or 11″ x 17″ posters aren’t posters: they’re flyers. When the Chicago International Flyer Biennial ramps up, those guys can go apeshit.

True story: This one time? I totally got fired on April Fool’s Day. Hilarity ensued.

My first job was an incredible experience from beginning to middle. I started life as a professional designer at a small boutique shop in mid-town Omaha that was dominated by women (I was, and remain to this day, the second-ever man employed there), which informed much of my burgeoning design style. It was fabulous from top to bottom. Days were spent with catty gossip, making things look beautiful, and almost certainly inappropriate jokes about the bombshell designer’s plush beaver toy that sat on her desk.

From middle to end it was a slow decent into madness. After my first year on the job I had decided I had learned everything there ever was to know about design (that’s right: suck it, Milton). This remains true to this day — I suppose everything else I’ve learned on top of what I knew then is probably just filler. My senior colleagues, some with ten to 15 years of experience, begged to differ. And sometimes shouted to differ. Confident that I was God’s gift to the masses, I strode on unabated to my undoing.

I can’t remember precisely what it was that set events into motion, such is often the case with back-breaking pieces of straw, but eventually during a heated conversation with my employer, (an at-her-heart kind and wonderful woman who I worshipped and who never once made an alteration that didn’t result in something looking better) she took a deep breath and drew back the hammer. The Hammer of I’ve Got To Fire Your Ass.

This is where it gets funny.

It was April first. April Fool’s Day, 2004. Earlier that morning — I shit you not — I made a joke over e-mail to a Pre-Superstar Designer® Drew Davies that I should prank being fired. And after the complete mess of the termination, the crushing blow of knowing I had let down a woman I so highly admired, and the humiliating walk out the back door with my tail between my legs, the e-mails started pouring in. And bouncing back.

And for a few hours, that fateful day, while I was wallowing in my misery, my friends thought I was the funniest bastard on the whole planet. “OMG! Nate is bouncing back e-mails like he’s ‘no-longer with the company!’ Hilarious!”

Eventually, the next day, after I had made enough phone calls to snuff out the rumor, these e-mails were politely forwarded to me by my now former employer. At that point, it gave me the first dose of humor I’d had in the preceding 24 hours. There was a string of e-mails, some with multiple recipients, trying to figure out if my prank was so awesome or a horrible coincidence. I’ve always found irony to be the best form of humor, and this was the best ever.

Young brash designer makes a joke about getting fired on April Fool’s Day only to be fired on April Fool’s Day and have no-one believe him. What a gem of a story that will make in exactly 4 years.

Happy anniversary!

–nv–

The illustration created by Stefan in this video will be available for auction Wednesday, March 12. Proceeds will benefit the American Red Cross. Click here for more information.

Yes it is a website. No it is not a design blog. Let that go.

Welcome to 36 Point, which will, gradually and over time, take over the world. Right now, straight up, today, there is not a lot here. A great big, multi-page “coming soon” site. We are working diligently on really ridiculous amounts of incredible for this site. So you’re here: Today. Not much. Tomorrow? More. Day after? Little more. Keep it rolling like that and you’ve got the idea.

Next week we launch The Reflex Blue Show, and you’d better hold on to your hats. And your pants. Big promises from the guys that previously brought you the best show in the world, I know, but egos are running high and it’s been a long day of designering and prgrammering and that’s what you get. The Unbridled Ego of Me.