1. Handmade, custom-painted axes* from Best Made Co.
2. The gorgeous PF Bodoni Script Pro typeface family
3. Shrimp, a handy URL shortener for ExpressionEngine from Dan Benjamin
4. Brand New’s Why Do You Sketch Logos? article (and comments)
5. The Facebook username countdown

*I have a birthday coming up this month. The Flashman or Jim Dandy will do.

1. The aforementioned 30th birthday
2. The Spooners move to The SC
3. My nephew Bear turns 5
4. The Armstrong Family Circus stops by our casa for a few days
5. Anywhere from 0—5 site designs I’ve been working on for clients go live

1. This one
2. Or this one
3. This one, too
4. And this one
5. Also, this one

1. My iPhone is not in any way connected with AT&T
2. My iPhone projects movies on the wall and connects to speakers via Airport
3. My iPhone remotely unlocks my house
4. My iPhone is a flying car
5. My iPhone pays off my student loans

1. Cheese
2. Printers
3. Dress Shoes
4. Hitmen
5. Kitchen Knives

1. Preparing for Mrs. Blankenship’s return (in other words, house projects)
2. Preparing for this weekend’s final interview with a potential web dev for NewSpring
3. Finishing this drawing
4. Finishing some HUGE Prom Night Fist Fight style vinyl wall graphics
5. Trying, and failing, to keep up with email

1. John Romita Jr. era Daredevil
2. Gustav Doré
3. Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body
4. Shinobi
5. Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations in Stephen King’s The Stand

1. Endlessly curating the Museum of Macro Flower Photography
2. Your wardrobe only consists of too-short t-shirts
3. Your wardrobe only consists of Too $hort t-shirts
4. Cubicles
5. Your car stereo plays Vitas non-stop

1. Being gifted a Paul McCobb coffee table
2. Driving Zac’s Audi, sunroof open, on long, curvy country roads
3. Finally finishing The West Wing, which we started watching in Boston in July of ‘07
4. Watching some of the NCAA Wrestling National Championships
5. Hearing Iowa wrestler Brent Metcalf respond to an interviewer’s statement “Your opponent was content to sit back…” with “My opponent was content to lose by three points.”

1. Slept for 12 hours
2. Perused faithful reader Danielle Hartland’s notes from our comm/web strategy breakout
3. Watched Reality Bites, an episode of Heroes, and a hat trick of The West Wing
4. Read through Ken Wilson’s notes from his video/motion graphics breakout
5. Agreed to teach at the Dirt Conference in November

1. Ben Harper
2. Slayer
3. Guster
4. Ben Folds
5. Iron & Wine

1. The Unleash Conference day-of website
2. A long overdue blog design for Perry Noble
3. A complete identity rollout for J. Windsor’s Salon
4. A blog redesign for Wordpress guru Nathan Rice
5. An online home for Mrs. Blankenship

Bonus: Furniture, fixtures, and layout for my team’s new workspace, affectionately dubbed The Taj Mahawesome

1. Noah Stokes
2. Joshua Longbrake
3. Chris Glass
4. Jim Renaud
5. Phil Coffman

1. Consistency in the little details begets consistency in the overall impact.
2. Wayfinding arrows should never point to the text.
3. Sweat the kerning on your type, or it’ll eventually drive you crazy when it’s physical.
4. Scale matters, especially with signage, so do your homework.
5. Design is more about thought process than implementation. Think before you computer.

1. You can make it pretty as pretty can be, but if it doesn’t work or people can’t use it, you lose.
2. Don’t hire until it hurts; you can do more than you think you can.
3. Don’t overdo it; dedicated time for fun-having makes work time better.
4. Hard seasons separate the hirelings from the People Who Get It.
5. Working out consistently is amazing, and well worth the sleep and money traded for it.

1. Jazz Impressions Of New York - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
2. Hold Time - M. Ward
3. Swordfish Trombones - Tom Waits
4. The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion - The Black Crowes
5. Noble Beast - Andrew Bird

1. Sam Sparro — Sam Sparro
2. For Emma, Forever Ago — Bon Iver
3. Sycamore Meadows — Butch Walker
4. Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust — Sigur Rós
5. Nine Inch Nails — The Slip

I wanted to love Jim by Jamie Lidell, but I just didn’t.

1. Human Resources
2. Understanding personality types on teams
3. Behind-the-scenes design process
4. Amazing steak recipes
5. How to discover and then appropriately dress for your body type/size

1. Fly to Oklahoma with NewSpring friends to hang out with other friends
2. Miss my wife. A lot.
3. Work on her new website
4. Give the new InCase Backpack the Does-It-Annoy-Me-While-Traveling? road test
5. Deal with my MacBook Pro’s recently recurrent sleep/energy/battery life issues

1. “I have no belief in the virtue or durability of official philosophies, and when it comes to state religions, I have always thought that, though they may perhaps sometimes momentarily serve the interests of political power, they are always sooner or later fatal for the church.” — Alexis de Tocqueville

2. “Language. It’s all about Language. You want me help you with your marketing, you have to be willing to talk to me about Language.” — Hugh MacLeod

3. “If you have momentum and you don’t know why—you are one stupid decision away from killing it.” — Andy Stanley

4. “He raised a half a billion online…I don’t believe that Obama would have ever been able to become president in the era before the Internet. And I don’t believe the implications of that have yet to fully sink in.” — Andrew Sullivan

5. “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.” — Joseph Priestly

1. Opera
2. The World of Coca-Cola
3. Atlantic Station
4. Design Within Reach
5. Loca Luna