I’m all signed up for An Event Apart, Seattle. By far my favorite part of conference-going is meeting other people who get excited by the same things I do. I’ll be traveling with 9ruler, and “celebrity blogger” Brian Warren. An Event Apart will coincide with the official launch of our new consortium, so we wanted to throw a small event of our own.

Our group has been working together now for almost 5 months, and it’s been quite an experience. Big changes are in the wind:

- CSS freak of nature Brian Warren has officially gone solo.
- We’ve launched our first collaborative project. Some good stories there, and when we have a place to write about them, we’ll do just that.
- Vincent Thome has also officially said goodbye to his temporary cubicle job. I think he wants to become a blogger when he grows up.

So, we’re inviting anyone… ...(more)

Holistic Web Design and Design Eye for the List Guy, were two among several panels that got a group of us really excited about starting a collaborative design group. Even 4 weeks after SXSW, we’re still all hopped up on Jim Coudal and Jason Fried’s opening remarks (listen, listen, listen!) about starting a business on-the-side.

We see several examples of collaborative business models already - Neubix, Happy Cog, Pixelworthy and the like. All successful studio arrangements. But we wanted to tie together a band of full-time designers, developers, and creatives, who could work together from time to time on special projects; collaborating from great distances.

MethodArts.com is an “open source” creative consortium. A virtual studio consisting of 4 Principals and any number of contributing members. Membership is by invitation only. The site will function as a group portfolio for projects we collaborate on, a group blog about… ...(more)

Thank you to everyone who’s given feedback, and endured my excitement over this project. And a special thanks to the guy who discretely accused me via email (and not in my comments) of being a ‘big fat name dropper’. 1,000% guilty!

Now, an update. After a few more rounds with ‘he who shall not be named’, we arrived at the following design. There were 2 or 3 color iterations before these, but What’s-his-face and I agree, Airbag really comes through here. Working with the worn look in Illustrator is wicked fun, and quite different than with Photoshop. Still a little left to do, but wanted to share these in progress.

Make sure you harass Old so-and-so at SXSW for a new business card. They feature these designs and are quite nifty!

And if you haven’t checked out Nick “I’ve never called Mark Bixby on the telephone” Bantock’s work yet, I highly recommend a book called… ...(more)

I’m working with Greg Storey on a new zeppelin design for Airbag Industries LLC. This is significant because four months ago I was sitting in a cubicle managing the marketing department for an Embedded Systems company. Four weeks ago I was publishing my first post on my own “homemade” blog. Today I’m self-employed, drawing dirigibles.

How this happened is a true testament to the power of blogging as a business tool, and it all started with some Kool-aid® I drank at last year’s Blog Business Summit in San Francisco, CA. Having been moderately burned out on web marketing for several years, the conference was exactly what I needed to get excited about interactive design all over again. With technologies like weblogs and RSS, the Internet is finally starting to resemble the communications tool we’d all been promised.

Completely sold on the connecting power of these technologies, and with a little weekly inspiration from the guys over at The Cubicle Escape Pod,… ...(more)

MyMicrobots Brand Robots™ are only “robots” in the sense that pet rocks were “pets”. Still, they’re pretty fun to look at under a microscope.

HT Micro, a precision fabrication company in Albuquerque New Mexico, needed to showcase their ability to make really small things. As is the case with most start-ups, there was no budget for costly demos, buying ad space in trade publications, or shotgun direct mail campaigns. And there in resided the challenge.

Create an engaging campaign that showcases a one-of-a-kind technology, and appeals to a niche market of engineers (geeks with microscopes). Oh, and uh… it can’t cost anything. The microfabrication space still suffers from stigmas associated with nanotechnology. Investors are scarce after having been burned by the big hype over all things small.

I still remember the conversation (nearly 2 years ago) with my creative partner in crime Vincent Thome. While it remains unclear who said it first, the phrase “Pet Robots” was uttered, and the rest was history… ...(more)