I'm not sure how much I want to go into the issue at hand, for fear of exposing myself. Let me just say that sometimes in life, things happen, and the best way to deal with them is to share them in three panels.

News of note: 36 Point is going comic-only for a few weeks here while we re-tool the site. We're looking into a lot of what Movable Type 4 offers and seeing what makes sense and what we think you guys would like to use around here (aside from timely comics, drew). I'm picturing an atom-bomb of total awesomeness that will probably amount to a water-balloon of "pretty-good" when it's all said and done, but regardless, we'll give it our best, promise.

Every now and then we decide to get serious - a 2 credit stock photo of a handshake serious - this is one of those times.

On past shows we've covered freelancing, getting your portfolio ready for an interview (still one of our best podcasts), and getting an internship. But sometimes you just need a straight-up job, and that usually takes an interview. To share the perspective of a younger designer in the this process, we bring in the talented Chris Kelly. 

And a special thanks goes out to Mig Reyes for the student tip. When Mig was on the Season 1 finale, he said he'd provide the student tips for Season 2 of the Reflex Blue Show, and he delivered.

We'll be back in a month with Season 3, which will also include daily recaps from the HOW Conference in June.

Download The Reflex Blue Show with Nate Voss and Donovan Beery, Season 2 Episode 22 (31 meg) or click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store. 

So I asked her about it, and she told me "only when I drink on the weekends, and when I win silver medals."

So there. 

I feel like the homepage preview, our tiny little comic that lets new readers know there is, in fact, more content to their posts, kinda gives this one away. So either look at it, really close, or close your eyes and just start clicking like mad.

I've had a few local friends asking me where all the comics have been in 2010. They are here, residing in my brain, waiting to be unleashed. If you would like to help those along in their journey, I would wholeheartedly recommend a trip to our fabulous Zazzle store, to show your support in deep, meaningful ways. I would also like to point our our social-sharing functionality, at the top of this post, above the very words you are reading now. 

I know many of you already utilize these features to their full extent, and I shall thank you and continue shower you with all the gifts I have to give.

...wait. I've said too much. That actually sounds totally awesome.

Watching the accomplishments of these athletes that have trained, in some cases, their entire lives for these moments, it is easy to feel less accomplished. We don't have speed skating, or the the flaming tower of awesome that was Snowboard Cross, we have more complex, yet smaller victories. Yes, we have medals, though they are awarded after a lifetime of great moments, not after one. But it's what we have, so we must take it.

Naw, that's not really how I did it.

Or was it?

Naw. It wasn't.

OR WAS IT?!?!?

It wasn't.

Now, both me and my wife recognized this poster, and not because of out love of terrible movies. But the one point I couldn't grasp was, why on Earth would this poster, after being shunned on the apex of the Photoshop-shunning mountain, be allowed to be manufactured, produced, shipped and displayed near my home? Didn't someone see the post? Here it is again. Same link, but really, I want to be sure you see it. All I can tell you is, anytime I open Photoshop to make some beauty happen, I fear--fear--the results will appear on that site, because I can't imagine staying on somewhere once your boss or your client sees that.

And thus today's comic was born. Yup. That's how I do it, folks. Thaaaaaat's how it's done.

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. 

The game being run is specifically detailed here, and it was run like fast break. As much as I want to hold Adobe up as the bastion of great software design, there are far too many troubles and inconsistencies in it's "suite" of software to do so. It's little things, as it so often is, that are cause for concern. The way a window resizes when you zoom, the default direction of rotating objects. What "transparency" is called, or how to make a dotted line in different programs. I swear you need a Ph.D. in Illustrator to suss out how to make a dotted line if you were never explicitly taught how, and in InDesign you select from a drop-down menu that is always there.

These little inconsistencies between their programs, programs designed to be a family, are so minor that I can deduce not one reason besides apathy and/or hubris that they haven't streamlined the whole package. Illustrator is, of course, the worst offender, and Flash, still holding onto a lot from it's days as a Macromedia application, is a close second.

It's like they just need to put all these teams together in a room, or something. Have an office lunch to say "You know, Illustrator, when you resize a window or turn on your rulers, the page should re-size and re-center, the way it does in InDesign, Photoshop, and everything else." Until then I will always think of Illustrator as the dickhead jock of the group.

Last Saturday, What Cheer was holding an open house to celebrate their new office space. They may not have had a Street Fighter II machine in the lobby like we do, but there was an Elvis pinball (TCB!) machine in the building. They also had a camera set up to automatically take pictures every 10 or 15 seconds, leaving prrof that Nate and I were both there. The evening also gave us a chance to see the new Secret Penguin office next door (still under construction), and talk with the head penguin himself, Dave Nelson.

Dave had previously been a guest on the Be A Design Cast (#28: The Freelance Show) when he was part of Divvy Collective, and a guest of The Reflex Blue Show (#11: Epic Fail) when he shared office space with What Cheer. As Dave is in a two-week limbo between offices, and working out of his house, we figured it was an ideal time to steal an hour of his time to talk about the industry.

The big buzz is all about the iPad (which we had things to say about) and how to get work in this economy (which it ends up we didn't have much to say about, so it's best to just listen to Michael Bierut talk about clients). We end by speaking about what Secret Penguin has been up to lately: getting skateparks in Omaha, an award-winning website for an OB/GYN, and all sorts of Martial Arts.

And of course, Mig Reyes brings us the student tip. And Dave supplied the Red Bull Sugarfree.

Download The Reflex Blue Show with Nate Voss and Donovan Beery, Season 2 Episode 21 (26 meg) or click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store. 

You may be asking why this strip has a certain pink-and-magenta-based holiday at its core, and I will tell you. If you are doing a Valentine's self promotion for your design business, now is the time of making. Not that I'm going to, necessarily. No, my efforts are being put into this contest for the Nebraska AIGA chapter. They do this sort of thing from time to time as a creative exercise and a fundraiser (free to enter, though). Since there's absolutely no rule stating that you must be a Nebraska resident to enter, I highly suggest rocking something out and entering it. I expect my entries to be full of ... character?

That is all. Voss Out.

It was exactly one year ago today that Nate set up the @36Point Twitter account, and told me to use it. That weekend we drove to Fort Smith to help judge the AAF-Fort Smith ADDY show, and documented the travel with regular tweeting. The following week, we decided we'd ask our wonderful show listeners to ask us our take on anything design related via Twitter, and recorded our first Twitter Show (The Reflex Blue Show #26).

A year later, we figured it was time again - a whole show talking about what was sent to us just an hour or so before recording. @nick_merritt, @iKitty, and @notoriouslb3 ask - and we answer.

For those who like a little more detail on what we cover: view Al's very cool Haiti poster, check out some vertically-striped socks, turn ahead the clock, witness the return of a 'hillbilly', love or hate a serif, view a movie, drool over some crowns, dress like a Skywalker, and listen to Mig Reyes tell you how to be successful.

Download The Reflex Blue Show with Nate Voss and Donovan Beery, Season 2 Episode 20 (27 meg) or click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store. 

I admit though, I am very turned-on by the idea of developing a typeface of my own at this point. Something to replace Anime Ace here on the comic would be good. I'm not guaranteeing anything here, but it's something Jeff Smith did for Bone a decade ago and it worked wonders for the lettering-to-art juxtaposition in his work. And based on what Newton's face looks like these days you can bet just about anything that man does is something I want to do.