If you've been considering how to give back to your community or the world through design, check out the Sappi Ideas That Matter grant. The paper company awards more than a million dollars every year to designers with great ideas and they're accepting entries for the North American awards now through May 31.

Posted by Megan

Brightest Young Things is a website covering everything cool in Washington, D.C. So, naturally, friend of HOW John Foster recently contributed a fun interview with illustrator Jessie LeDoux about a recent show he staged in the nation's capitol.

Posted by Megan

I was busy filling my brain at SXSW this weekend, so I missed the launch party for 100 Days of Monsters. Of course, Stefan blogged the whole thing and it looks like it was a blast. What could be better than getting your picture taken with a giant monster?

4 days of SXSW 2008 + 1 ICHC panel + 3 days in the Texas hill country + 1 visit to an Alpaca farm + a new digital camera + the first day back in the office =

Posted by Megan

We'd like to know how the design community connects with the various aspects of the HOW brand, so we can develop new ideas to help you be more creative and more successful. Please take our short survey and you'll be entered to win a free subscription to HOW (if you already subscribe, we'll extend your subscription for one year).

The 15-question survey should only take about 5 to 7 minutes to complete. Please be assured that your responses will be treated in absolute confidence and used only in combination with those of other readers. For official sweepstakes rules, visit www.howdesign.com/SurveySweepstakesRules.

Thanks for taking the survey and giving your input!

Ah, swissmiss, you're finding all kinds of fun things for us today. Like this Flickr pool of song charts.

This strikes me as being simply brilliant: chalkboard napking rings. At MoMA. Via swissmiss.

Perhaps we shouldn't admit this, but there are times when we'll view a design project that's come into HOW HQ and think, "Hm. This person really shouldn't be using Photoshop. Like, really, really, REALLY shouldn't be using Photoshop." You've all seen them: the scary photo retouching, the weird tangets between combined elements, the godawful compositions. Now there's a place to share and celebrate these testaments to the adage, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should:" Photoshop Disasters.

It's sort of like The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotations, which we writers find similarly amusing-slash-horrifying.

via Core77.com

That awesome Stefan Bucher, he's just all over the place sketching monsters and talking about his terrific new book, 100 Days of Monsters. Go here to learn more about the book and all the buzz about it; go here to learn about Stefan's session at the upcoming HOW Design Conference, "Arriving at Creativity."

This week, he's on The Reflex Blue Show, hosted by Nate Voss and Donovan Beery. They've posted a short documentary about Stefan's monster creations, plus a podcast of their interview with him. Plus, Stefan created a new monster just for the occasion, with is being auctioned this week (all proceeds go to the American Red Cross).

ARG? Huh? Until yesterday, I didn't know that ARG means Alternate Reality Game, but now I do and I'm ready to play. ARGs are games that mix the real and virtual worlds together to create a rich experience. ARG expert Jane McGonigal explained how happiness is the new capital and that game designers are in a great position to deliver happiness-generating experiences to their audiences. I'd argue that lots of designers are in the position to deliver such experiences. Jane cited some findings from the new field of happiness studies to explain what really makes people happy:

1. Satisfying work to do
2. A sense of being good at something
3. Time spent with people we like
4. A change to be part of something bigger

While it's obvious how these things can be delivered by games, they could also be delivered by a well-designed retail experience, for example. Do your design projects make their intended audiences happy? Maybe they should.

Posted by Megan

While I enjoyed many of the sessions, the most valuable one was presented by Adaptive Path, a San Francisco-based user experience firm, about managing creatives. It was so good, I'm going to look into bringing them to a future HOW Conference. Bryan Mason and Sarah Nelson interviewed creative managers from other industries to discover how they manage their teams. They talked to chefs, stage-managers, conductors and more and distilled the lessons into 10 tips.

What was really interesting was how many of the tips are employed by the HOW staff itself. I'll share a couple:

Tip #2 Rotate Creative Leadership

There's a lot to be said for empowering every member of a team by allowing them to take charge of a project. At HOW, we take turns planning the issues and writing the editor's letter. The planning process is still a collaboration, but one of us leads the way. It's proven very effective in giving us all a sense of ownership of the magazine.

Tip #3 Know Your Roles

Even though we have a rather flat hierarchy, we also each have specific areas of responsibility. That allows us to trust and rely on one another. We never have to worry that something will slip through the cracks.

Tip #8 Leadership is a Service

Whether she knows it not, this is exactly how Bryn manages the HOW staff. She engages the team as a facilitator rather than as a dictator. She gives us the space to do our best work, but is always there to support us when we need help. (Thanks, Bryn.)

Posted by Megan

The Monday afternoon keynote blew me away. Frank Warren of PostSecret fame shared the story of how a small art project turned into a big website and a whole series of books.



Frank quoted Picasso saying, "There's an artist born in all of us." That's a theme that's run through the conference. Everyone has something to say and now, because of the internet, they have the means to say it. So if there's something you need to say, consider writing it on a postcard and sending out into the world. "Sometimes when we think we're keeping a secret, it's keeping us."

Posted by Megan

On the Notes on Design blog, writer Chris Costello wrote a recent post praising the work of in-house designers, and the design competitions that recognize it. Chris notes that competitions like HOW's place corporate work in context and help those creative teams bolster their profile within their companies. He writes:

I am very thankful that these types of competitions are growing in popularity because they give in-house designers a chance to compete in their own arena. Winners are rewarded with a sense of legitimacy and well-deserved respect from their coworkers and the design community as a whole. The ability to quantify the success of a design can be obscured in some of the broader competitions that tend to focus primarily on cutting-edge visuals or clever advertising concepts. In-house design competitions also help acknowledge the utilitarian nature of the work submitted.

Chris writes that he wishes HOW's February issue included more winners from our In-HOWse Design Awards -- stay tuned for a bigger crop in next year's annual. If you want to see a few winners from this year, check out the online gallery. And see the In-HOWse Design Awards Best of Show winner here.

VeryShortList.com sent us word today about a new site (currently in Beta) for TV fanatics called, appropriately enough, Fancast.com. Watch free episodes (we're weighing what to watch during our lunch hour today: "Major Dad," "24" ... nope, "WKRP in Cincinnati" it is), and see what's on the real thing tonight. Plus, the interface is surprisingly clean and helpful, given the obviously commercial nature of the site.

For a look at some of what the best of the web has to offer, check out the winners of the 11th Annual SXSW Web Awards:

Activism

Green and Non-profit websites that are striving to make the world a better place.
World Without Oil

Amusement
Humor, memes, plus all the stuff that is too weird for words.
Elf Yourself

Art
From traditional photography to untraditional performances, this category focuses on web-based collections of life, society and culture.
Viscosity

Blog
Sites that revolutionize the power of publishing by providing regularly updated content of a personal or professional nature.
Passive-Aggressive Notes

Business
Sites devoted to the promotional needs, functions and services of for-profit businesses.
Wikinvest

CSS
This category showcases sites that push the boundaries of CSS coding technology.
Ficlets

Classic
While the SXSW Web Awards focus on the best new internet destinations, this category is devoted to sites that launched before January 1, 2007.
Wired

Community
Sites and wikis that have quickly developed an extraordinarily active multi-user community and an exceptional following of users who assist with content development.
Flock

Educational Resource
From elementary school learning to advanced technology-related tips, these are sites that help you learn.
The Story of Stuff

Experimental
These are cutting-edge and trend-setting destinations that are pushing the envelope and challenging our perceptions of the web.
MetaNotes

Film/TV
Sites related to actors, television, films and the film industry, as well as destinations that offer streaming video content.
Animoto Productions

Games
The online destinations that help make your life a lot more fun.
Launchball

Mobile
Sites optimized for handheld and portable devices.
Mosio

Motion Graphics
Animations, cartoons, and other intriguing content built using applications such as Adobe/Macromedia Flash.
HL2

Music
Sites related to musicians, bands, and the music industry, as well online radio and other destinations that offer streaming audio content.
Minuit

Personal Portfolio
The portfolios, pet projects and personal collections of individuals who are displaying their work and passions online.
JLern Design

Student
This category is devoted exclusively to the student web designers who are refreshing this industry with new talent and new ideas.
Paper Critters

Technical Achievement
These are the sites that are re-inventing and re-defining the technical parameters of our online experience.
Twiddla!

People's Choice Award
The online public's favorite finalist from the competition.
Kongregate

Best of Show
The judges' favorite finalist from the competition.
Launchball

Posted by Megan

One of the best panels I've seen so far was called "Make It So: Learning from SciFi Interfaces" presented by Chris Noessel and Nathan Shedroff. They've been watching a ton of science fiction movies and mapping the ways in which they've influenced the design of real things and the ways in which design has influenced science fiction.

One of the big lessons I took away from the panel is the power and danger of anthropomorphism. Using human characteristics can aid learning and make people feel more comfortable, especially when it comes to new technology. The power is that even simple things like sound can anthropomorphize something. For example, in Star Wars, R2D2 is endearing because of the little sighs and bleeps he makes. Human-like behavior can allow be effective. The Amazon One-Click system is like a waiter who remembers what you like order.

The danger of anthropomorphism is that it raises the expectations of the user as to the sophistication of the system and the user will be more disappointed if the functionality isn't not there.

But what really blew my mind was the last session of the day called "LOLWUT? Why Do I Keep Coming Back to This Website?" presented by Ben Huh and Eric Nakagawa of icanhascheezburger.com. What in the world is I Can Has Cheezburger, you ask? It's a growing collection of funny pictures (mostly of cats) with silly captions.



What's so mind-blowing about that? This just-for-fun blog has become a real business with 9 employees and a growing fan base. The internets are a weird and wonderful place!

Posted by Megan

It was tough to get out of Cincinnati this weekend, but I made it to South by Southwest Interactive in one piece. From a blizzard to a balmy day in a matter of hours, Austin is a world away, especially during SXSW. Here, everyone is focused on the future and how creatives are going to shape it.



Designer Jim Coudal tried to define the essence of creativity in a semi-mathematical formula. His idea is that all acts of creativity start by making associations in the brain between a constant and a variable, the known and the unknown. As a simple example, he pointed to a game from his website called Booking Bands. Try to combine a book title with a band name into something funny. You have to start with a constant like “Of Mice and Men”, then run through all the bands you can think of until you come up with Men at Work and you get Of Mice and Men at Work.

After you've made that association between the constant and the variable, if it's good, it will be amplified by passion, the energy to refine the idea and see it through to creation. The final step in the process is "Like" to the third power. Like as in metaphor, summary and aesthetic judgement.

So this is Jim's creative process, but his larger point was that we each need to define our own process to help us put a real value on our work and know what to charge. If we don't have a process to work through, some ideas will be easy and some will be like pulling teeth (but try explaining to a client that your fee will be more because the brainstorming was hard!)

By the time Saturday ended, I was exhausted from a day of travel and heavy thinking. But by Sunday morning, I was ready to go again. I gleaned one particularly valuable lesson from a session about presenting work to clients. When you’re showing them a final design or choice of designs, don’t try to solve problems on the spot. Instead, carefully record everyone’s worries, thoughts and suggestions. Take that back to the office with you and address all the issues, taking your time to find appropriate solutions. When you re-present the work, be sure to go over your list of issues and explain how you found a solution for each one. This kind of careful attention to detail will help prevent you from making promises to clients that end up compromising the design.

Posted by Megan