Archive for July, 2008
1. That beaming technology existed (a la Star Trek)
2. That my friend Katie Brock lived closer than Auburn
3. That Mel Gibson would make Mad Max 4: Fury Road
4. That Toyota Forerunners would go over 65mph without shaking violently
5. That wifi was ubiquitous
So awesome/weird to see Stefan’s typeface Black Slabbath being used by The Athlete’s Foot in advertising. Too bad their new logo is no where near as awesome.
I’m loving this poster from illustrator Eric Smith (aka I Draw All Day), who is undergoing cancer treatment and donating the proceeds to the Live Strong Foundation.
The good: after a solid 9-day push of all-nighters, we rolled out the initial version www.NewSpring.cc a few minutes ago. I don’t know what day it is, but i’m fairly certain i’m hungry and my lower back is killing me.
The bad(?): There are a metric ton of Internet Explorer woes to tackle, as well as a big list of design tweaks and type changes mainly pertaining to giving the blog(s) some much needed loving care. There’s more content to add. There’s a Resources section to finish. There’s a slick new video player to rollout (more on that later). There are 3+ years of audio and video to port over to the new site/servers. Lots of IM pats on the back to Mr. Noah Stokes, who handled all the development heavy lifting. There are bloggers to train on a new content management system and strategy meetings to be had about what features should be added where. There are hallway conversations and emails to field. There’s second-guessing to be done and typos to be fixed…
All that to say, there’s always something. Perfection in design is illusory, especially in regards to the web. You strive for it, and walk in the tension between it and productivity, but at some point, you just have to launch the thing and then hit the ground running in the fallout, dodging shrapnel and enjoying the weather.
This is a foundation. An experiment. A process. A series of little victories yet to be had. I’m excited.
P.S. if anyone ever suggests launching a full corporate rebranding and a new website on the same weekend on a roughly 6 month timeline, punch them in the nose and call them silly names, because they are idiots. I’d hit myself in the face for suggesting it to myself (and others!), but I’m too tired to fight.
Can’t get your web app to scale for searching capablities? Just buy the company that did it right for you. The awesomeness formerly-known as Summize now redirects to search.twitter.com.
If the amount of sleep I’ve had in the past few days was the theme of a video, it would be this one.
And if said video doesn’t make you smile, you have no soul and your childhood most likely consisted of pure evil. (Link shamelessly pilfered from Michael Eades)
So, while I’m elbow deep in turbo-nerdy domain switch over stuff for www.newspring.cc, Tony Morgan is announcing the next major phase of our web strategy. Going to be a fun Fall. Are you a PHP developer with front-end skills, too? We should talk.
1. Dogville
2. The Neverending Story
3. National Security
4. Daredevil
5. The Neverending Story II
Normally, this would not affect me, but considering a kind soul gave me an iPhone yesterday, I am pleased to report that iTunes 7.7 is available for download and with it, the ability to download apps to your iPhone from the new Apps Store. Rumor has it the actual update for the iPhone to let you use the apps you buy will be out later today as well.
You can try to outspend the competition. Or you can try to outculture them. Create a place that makes employees feel special. A place that makes them feel like they’re part of a bigger whole. A place where they continually get to learn and evolve. A place where everyone actually likes each other.
If you create a culture like that, who would want to leave? Plus, you’ll get the best minds out there knocking on your door to get in.
— Matt Linderman, excerpted from Pixar’s tightknit culture is its edge
I think Matt hits on something important here. I know for us at NewSpring, it’s essentially impossible to outspend the competition, especially when it comes to skilled professional jobs like designers. We joke about “negotiating your paycut” when you come on staff here. For better or worse, it is what it is — a constraint we work within. We’re a church, and we simply don’t have the resources to “compete” with a company that sells products and makes profits.
But we can outculture them every day of the week. We can offer creative staff permission to fail (big) and have freedom, we can ditch as much bureaucracy as possible and we can push boundaries. Plenty of people work in “dream jobs” that don’t have any of these values.
Besides, after the initial courting process, I don’t worry too much about salary. I mainly think “do I want to go to my job today?” I answer “yes” 99% of the time these days, and I assure you that has nothing to do with my paycheck and everything to do with the culture I walk into everyday.
I’ll have my own commentary to add to this soon, but for now, Ryan Irelan’s Why ExpressionEngine Should Be Your Next CMS is a great read and these EE tutorial videos are fantastic.
In about 20 minutes, we’re having our first meeting to discuss the new visual identity and communications standards with some key staff leaders at NewSpring. Should be fun times.
At some point soon, I’ll make these available as PDF downloads.
Update: download them here
If you stop by fearless leader Tony Morgan’s Mogulus webcast channel today at around 11:00am EST, you’ll get to hear my very sleepy Southern drawl answering (trying to answer?) questions about NewSpring‘s upcoming rebranding and new web strategy. You know, if you’re in to that.
Someone made a 3D sculpture of the Twitter Fail Whale, that cute little illustration from Yiying Lu that greets Twitter users when the site is down (and somehow is supposed to cute overload me into being ok that the site is down, again.)
Music is not a track and field event.
— Billy Ward, drummer
Have you ever worked on a longterm project? As in putting months of days of (long) hours and thought into making something? It’s a surreal process, and it makes things very difficult to look at objectively.
I started working on new identity concepts for NewSpring Church before I even officially accepted the job, so in reality, I’ve been working on this rebranding for close to nine months. Acts of God and/or appeasement of Godzilla aside, we’re launching the rebrand this coming Sunday, July 13th. We’re also launching a new campus in Greenville, a new message series answering some pointed topical questions and, fingers crossed, the foundation for our new website (with some major 2nd, 3rd and 4th phases after the launch.)
All that to say, posting might be sparse this week, along with sleep, sanity, coherence, the ability to process information and form complete sentences, etc. Of course post-July 13th I’ll actually have some work to show off. A lot of work.
Decent trade-off?
Channel 4 Creative Services has a brilliant one-take commercial from the director’s point of view on the (recreated) set of The Shining promoting a series of Stanley Kubrick films they’ll be showing. Details, details, details.
1. Benton Sans
2. Klavika
3. News Gothic
4. Whitney
5. Reservation Wide
Henry Ford practiced an early form of upcycling when he had Model A trucks shipped in crates that became the vehicle’s floorboards when it reached its destination.
— William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Travis and crew at Blackpulp not only have nice design work, they have the best telephone number ever.
