We got a funny T-shirt, microwave popcorn and a press release today from the folks at Agency Fusion, about their new mock-u-mercial at MakeMyLogoBiggerCream.com. (If you want to catch an editor's eye, send a funny T-shirt.) We're planning to pop and watch this afternoon.

The Savannah College of Art and Design has a great online store full of gifts for the designers in your life. One of my faves is a series of melamine plates, designed by the school's Working Class Studio, that are great for parties or outdoor dining.

Posted by Megan

The Art Center College of Design just announced the lineup for its 2008 Conference, Serious Play, which will explore the essential role of play in business, the arts, science, storytelling, technology, etc. Speakers include Paula Scher, John Maeda, Michael Bierut and more.

Posted by Megan

Picking up from this report, a bit more info from HOW's Mind Your Own Business Conference in San Diego, which wrapped up yesterday (November 4).

The big highlight of Day 3 -- and of the conference overall -- was Deborah Dawton, CEO of London's Design Business Association. Our peers across the pond are beginning to get their collective heads around the massive challenge of measuring (really!) the bottom-line value of design. Like, in terms of goods sold, or dollars saved, or reputation enhanced, or effectiveness increased. Dawton didn't have all the answers, but she DID have all the questions: specifically, the questions designers must ask their clients in order to measure design's effectiveness and, in turn, to define their work's worth.

She noted that "The businesses you work for aren't all that different from the businesses you work in" -- in other words, the very same business challenges a design firm faces (profitability, staffing, efficiency, differentiation) are the ones the client faces, just on a larger scale. So it's imperative for designers to understand their OWN businesses as well as their clients'.

The first step to measuring design's value, she noted, is to determine the client's current business state before the project begins -- it's impossible to peg increased sales to a brochure design when you don't know what sales were before the brochure. And it's critical to then define, "How will we know if this project is successful?" and, finally, to get as much information from your client about business results. Afraid they won't give you that info? Ya gotta ask.

After some late-night discussions and early morning roundtables, the conference wrapped up on Sunday with "Crucial Conversations," in which Ron McMillan outlined some tools to use when we're engaged in touch conversations where emotions, stakes and differences of opinion run high.

Thanks to all the principals who participated this year!

I just found out that the HOW book Dear Future Me got a mention late last week on USA Today's pop culture blog, Pop Candy. Here's what blogger Whitney Matheson had to say:

But one thing I'm also reading is this cool book called Dear Future Me: Hopes, Fears, Secrets, Resolutions (F+W Publications, $16.99). It's a compilation of letters to FutureMe.org, where you can go and submit and e-mail that will be sent to you sometime in the future. The letters are funny, poignant, revealing, heartbreaking ... I think fans of Found and PostSecret might get into it.

Posted by Megan

Poking around the P22 site today, I came across these two very inviting welcome mats. Designed by Dard Hunter Studios the mats sell for $39.95 each.

Posted by Megan

When Debbie Millman was here judging the International Design Competition, she kindly gave me a copy of her new book How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer. I figured I'd get around to reading it someday, but after skimming the first few pages, I was totally hooked. I sat there and read the whole darn thing! It's amazing how honest the superstar designers in the book are. They reveal their fears and struggles, dreams and desires. I came to realize that the people I idolize in this industry are only human and, in the end, it made me love them even more.

Posted by Megan

Here in (now) sunny San Diego, we're with 300 design-firm principals who are super-focused on sessions geared toward improving their business success. It's a pretty intense group; people are deep in discussion in between sessions and during breakfast.

One underpinning (and unintentional) theme of this year's MYOB conference is differentiating your firm with a unique, distinctive positioning. As an editor who sees a ton of capabilities packages from design firms of all stripes throughout the country, I'm continually amazed at how, well, the same all of them are. In fact, opening keynote speaker Tim Williams read positioning statements from real agencies, and the audience chuckled at how cliche and lame they all were. Clearly, designers need to turn the mirror on themselves and define their own brands.

The same kind of discussion continued today, when Brent Hodgins started his presentation by acting out a typical pitch presentation, and again the audience laughed at how silly it all sounded. In what's become a tradition at MYOB, conference partner David Baker conducted a real-world, live business analysis with a principal who volunteered his firm as a case study. Fascinating.

Almost like snowflakes, car rims come in huge variety of patterns. And, as it turns out, the shapes are gorgeous when screen printed onto round cards. The Memowheel game, created by German designer Jakob Straub, lets you match 32 pairs of rims to test your visual memory.

Posted by Megan

The Graphic Imperative is a select retrospective of forty years of international sociopolitical posters, 111 in all. Themes include dissent, liberation, racism, sexism, human rights, civil rights, environmental and health concerns, AIDS, war, literacy and tolerance, collectively providing a window to an age of great change. The exibit is on view at The Luckman Fine Arts Complex in Los Angeles now, but you can see all the posters on The Graphic Imperative website.


Steff Geissbuhler, 1985

Posted by Megan