I am happy to report that my good friend and colleague Adam Spooner has a lovely new website. He likes to read, think, work and write, which essentially means he’s one of my favorite types of people. I trust your mind will be expanded by reading along. (Also, you should look at his web development work and hire him. I approve of his craftsmanship 2,763%.)

So lately I link to less, write about more, and do both less frequently than you may have become accustomed to at this URL. One of my New Year’s Aspirations (more on that concept later) is “quality over quantity.” I hope you find the former and don’t miss the latter.

There is a difference between being arrogant about yourself as a person and being confident that your work has some value…Some people respond to the one as if it were the other. Don’t confuse them.
—Jeffrey Zeldman, On Self-Promotion

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.
—James Cameron

To put it another way, if you try something extraordinary and fail, you likely learned more than your peers who are unwilling to risk. You become acclimated to a place your peers still fear to tread. Risk is the secret sauce of extraordinary work.

Don’t get me wrong, skill building and knowledge accumulation are vitally important. You need a foundation. But skill and knowledge are freely available to anyone who will put in the hours. Anyone. You have to take your skill and knowledge and do something with it.

Risk, try, act, move.

Most people don’t have enough time to interact with their kids, let alone your brand. Respect that.
—@leeclowsbeard

I’ve already written about this topic (see: Copying Doesn’t Hurt Me, It Hurts You) but I want to look at it from a different angle.

Our church website is copied a lot. I’m not saying that in a prideful manner, but simply as a stated fact. I get a “hey, this looks familiar” email at least once a week. As a Christian and a church staffer, I’m mostly on board with it—”same team” we often say. There’s no competitive advantage for us to have a unique website, because this isn’t the marketplace; we’re not competing with other churches. We want to see them succeed. But as a designer, as someone who is passionate about clear communications, it makes me sad.

When you copy an existing site you probably get a decent end-product, but you don’t know why. This is about more than copying design/visual cues, it concerns me to see churches borrowing copywriting style and information architecture. Why? Because you’re borrowing a voice and thought process that isn’t you. When I see a site with the same user flow as ours, all I can think is, “you don’t know why we did that. Your people are probably different.” The way we’re structured, the way we communicate and plan events, the kind of things our communicator(s) say, they’re all different than you. Not better, just different.

But if you homogenize the end-product without understanding the process that led to the original, your website will reflect who you actually are less and less. You’ll keep being you in person, because you can’t help it. But your website will be someone else. And that dissonance is eventually perceivable. A website is the first impression most people have of you; will their physical interactions with your brand feel like the same thing?

Just be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde

By all means, look at others to learn. Ask questions. But ask the right questions. Ask why something is the way it is, don’t just accept it as globally good. Don’t just look at our website (or anyone else’s) and copy it. They’re not you. And being you at every touchpoint is far more valuable than having a slick website.

A very happy Monday, from the Montage Blankenships to you! (These are inspired by Kevin Meredith’s awesome portrait montages on Flickr.)

I do not know they key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
—Bill Cosby

I wrote an article called Creating Controversy for its own Sake (and How Humility is a Rare Bird Indeed These Days) on one of my other sites. It manages to discuss web design, blogging, humility, UX, the purpose of shareholder-owned companies, and a few other things in around 700 hopefully coherent words.

Great article on Building a Culture of Employee Appreciation from Inc.com (which you should read, if you’re into business/workplace stuff.) Plaques and gift cards make people feel like cogs in a big machine. Small, personal gestures, committed consistently over time make people feel valued and appreciated.

One of the things I love about Whiskerino is how daily it makes photography for me. Call it a framework, or a compulsion, but I’m just more aware of a “need” to create content. This one was an outtake I didn’t use for Day 4, but I like it.

I’ve been getting the itch to do some creative projects that have little or nothing to do with the computer/internet, and Zach Klein’s cheeseboard from milled driftwood has pushed me over the edge. I want a table saw for Christmas.

Whiskerino 2009 has begun. I am quite happy to be participating this year and be able to give back to an undoubtably wonderful time with friends old and new.