Hey! I don’t have much time to chat about today’s comic — other than it is based on real-life experiences and will continue this week on Wednesday and possibly Friday. Happy Monday everyone. Enjoy —
–nv–
Hey! I don’t have much time to chat about today’s comic — other than it is based on real-life experiences and will continue this week on Wednesday and possibly Friday. Happy Monday everyone. Enjoy —
–nv–
In my twitter-life I often seek out advice for my real, independent-professional-designer life in the form of articles and lists linked and retweeted up the mountain that must surely contain the sweet nectar of the divine — new business. Often I am shocked at how valueless these lists are. Not that they all suffer from some massive dearth of actual content, but that the content they share usually has little to do with how to find new clients, or establishing new connections, and falls more along the lines of: 1. You should get some new clients, and 2. You need to establish new connections. As helpful as a 12-year-old may find that advice, to struggling indies it hold little value. But the Twitterverse loves its lists, and so my search goes on.
Then there are advice columns from the über-stars, or mega-designers, or, I don’t know, graphic design world-devourers where the advice seems to be like that of a parent admonishing their child for doing the exact same thing they themselves once did all the time. Like they’ve forgotten what it means to be starting out. It’s easy, they say, just invite the VPs of Marketing from the top four employers in your city to golf at your private country club. Oh yes, I forgot, it is that easy. How silly of us all.
Almost forgot — big thanks to superstar designer Drew Davies for essentially writing this strip in an iChat last Friday and Prescott Perez-Fox for our design megastar’s nom de guerre.
Hey. Logo contests are bad alright? And by bad I mean totally awesome bad. I’ve always felt like there’s some serious untapped potential for mayhem in those, and I feel it’s our duty as professional designer to… wait, I just said “dooty.” LOLZ.
Sorry for a low count on comics this week — my brother was even giving me a hard time about my launch schedule yesterday — planning to get back on track next week. And, for you Reflex Blue Show listeners, we just lined up a great interview for next week’s show that we’re really excited about. Not sure HOW we managed it (wicked-awesome pun win!!), but be sure you tune next Thursday!
Update: If you want to know how I really feel, check out this article on Vossome.com.
I’d be lying if I tried to tell you I do not covet the Winterhouse writing award. I do. Like Boromir, I fear this desire will destroy me, or at least drive me to beat up Elijah Wood, which is something I really wouldn’t want to do.
Every year Design Observer puts out the call for entries and that amazing $10,000 prize taunts me like Mohammed Ali, letting me know that as much writing and commentary as I produce on design on a weekly basis, it is not worth $10,000. This could be a false assumption, because I do believe the first prize went to a girl who obsessively dissected emoticons. And that seems to be it: like most of the over-long and painfully dull (re:non-Bierut & Heller) articles on DO, you have to write obsessively about something nobody cares about. Like coffee-filter packaging or something. I’m sure somewhere right now there’s some obsessive-compulsive design writer putting together a three-part thesis on coffee-filter packaging and that’s probably going to take the 2010 prize.
I was looking through the 70 (if you count the one currently-produced Special) strips I’ve got here and feel pretty good about a few of them and the medium’s ability to comment on design, and then the rule set of the Winterhouse took over and I remembered the part about everything needing to be set in Courier. This, by the way, is basically designers removing the design from their papers, and I get it. It’s supposed to remove any typographic context. Maybe the judges have a hard-on for mono-spaced fonts, I don’t know.
With a relatively low entry fee (only $25), I am still considering entering the strip, if only to piss off the judges. However, I think I will wait for next year, in all seriousness, when my journals of milk-cap sticker designs and their impact on the American consciousness are completed.
Monday, April 13, 2009. That’s the day design Twitters everywhere heard and repeated the news. Speak Up was being closed. Since 2002, Speak Up had been THE online place for designers to discuss their passion in real-time. There have been other blogs, other commentary sites and podcasts, but Speak Up was the place for conversation. The articles were simply the starting point to get the talking started. Since then, parts of Speak Up have been spun-off onto their own sites like Brand New, Quipsologies and Word It. What’s next? Well, we spoke to Armin Vit, co-owner of Under Consideration about the rise and fall of Speak Up Monday afternoon to find out.
Download The Reflex Blue Show with Nate Voss and Donovan Beery, Season 2 Episode 3 (22 meg) or click here to subscribe to The Reflex Blue Show from the iTunes Music Store.
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