Last night I attended the Speak Up seriouSeries No. 3 and got to hear and meet some of the designers I've admired for years. The event was held at the studio shared by Coudal Partners and 37 Signals. And what a cool studio it was... late 90's dot com era cliche. Inside an old meat storage warehouse, the open loft space included an Apple 23" cinema display on all workstations, a foosball table, etc.

Those who spoke at the event included:

• Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners


• Jason Fried of 37 Signals


• Naz Hamid of Gapers Block


• Jake Nickell, Jacob DeHart and Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Skinnycorp

[Naz posted a photo of the rest of the panel]

Each talked about their various online businesses -- how they were created and how they tie into each other.

The guys from Skinnycorp also run Threadless, an online t-shirt store and YayHooray!, an online design community. Threadless, which accepts design submissions from their audience and prints shirts based on the public's voting, was their initial venture. After Jake and Jacob met on the now defunt Dreamless community, they hatched the idea of selling t-shirts online based on the designs submitted to them. As the business took off, they used the profits generated from that to fund the launch of Skinnycorp, which is their web design business. YayHooray! is basically their attempt to experiment with different technology and build a community. It's gone under a number of iterations and will soon be relaunching again with some changes.

Jim Coudal discussed the creation of Jewelboxing, their small batch DVD/CD packaging kit which includes high quality DVD cases, pre-cut blanks and templates for all major design programs. The development of Jewelboxing came out of a need to package some DVD's for a friend who was submitting them to BBC for consideration as a series. Not liking the options offered at Staples, etc. they reused some nice cases they'd gotten with Stock Photo CDs with some hand-made covers. Wanting more of these cases, they tracked down the Dutch company who made them and their California distributor. Having to buy a huge quantity, they stumbled upon the idea of putting together a kit, figuring that other creative-types would need and want a similar product. Another cool fact about Jim Coudal I learned is that he used to handle the White Sox marketing and is the one who created their "Good guys wear black!" campaign they ran for a number of years in the late 90's and early 00's.

Naz Hamid discussed the creation of Gapers Block, which is a Chicago-centric group weblog. The idea was hatched by a group of Chicago-area bloggers and designers who met through the Yahoo Chicago Bloggers group. After meeting up in person a couple times and becomming friends, the group decided to launch th GB site. Naz along with Andrew Huff--whom I also met last night--started the site and now have about 20 others contributing. All involved in GB have day jobs, and the site is simply a labor of love and a way to foster community in Chicago.

The last to speak was Jason Fried of 37 Signals. He discussed their web shop's history and how it was among the first to put usability before eye candy, and how they've used their Signal vs. Noise blog to develop their business by establishing a knowledge base and comfort level within the web design community and potential clients. This audience has also allowed them to develop and sell some other products, such as their 37Express one page redesign package and Basecamp, their new online project management tool. Like Coudal's Jewelboxing, Basecamp came from an internal need that they figured others in the industry would need, too. Jason discussed how they put extra effort to make it as intuitive and easy as possible, both to increase the user experience but also to keep down the time their 3-man show would need to spend on customer support. Jason also mentioned how they have decided to go with constant updates rather than versioned releases--one of the benefits to it being a web app version traditional software. He also mentioned how, because of it's ease of use and flexibility, he's found out that it's being used for less-traditional project management tasks like home remodeling and wedding planning.

After the presentations, I got a chance to talk to Jason Fried for about 10 minutes. We started talking cars, because he just ordered a new Audi S4 and we seems to have about identical tastes in cars -- European, high performance yet stealth looks... I asked him how they started up and how he decided to go out on his own, especially since he did so with no formal design or programming background and only 6 months out of school. I also learned that a number of their people have actually been remote, and how those relationships worked. Got me to thinking that maybe we should set up our own agency...

One week from today, the Chicago Bears open the new Soldier Field on Monday Night Football against the Green Bay Packers. Unfortunately, the only thing uglier than the Bears' on-field performance is the new stadium. Even Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin cannot refrain from calling it crashed spaceship (login: lipsmancom/lipsmancom).

This analogy is especially apt for the west side of the stadium, where a curved silver mass hovers over the once grand colonnades. The project was supposed to modernize a grand old stadium, but in effect all they did was shoehorn a modern stadium within the confines of the old stadium's outter wall. There is no continuity to the designs and the architects didn't even make an effort to match colors--the warm sandstone and the cold steel and glass stand in stark contrast.

While the city is busy railing against the stadium's exterior, the interior has received much praise for the doubling of concession stands and restrooms, as well as the intimate feel of the stadium. It should feel intimate, considering that the new stadium seats 5,000 less than the old one did! So in a football town, where people have packed the stadium in below zero wind chills to watch a horrible team, they decide to make do with less seating. And don't think that they accomplished that by reducing the number of luxury suites or club seats. Nope, it's the average fan who will now have an even more difficult time getting inside the new stadium.

I've posted some photos I took at Taliesen, Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

Maserati released the first official pictures of their upcoming Quattroporte sedan. As are most Italian cars, it's a true work of beauty. Now I just have to figure out how I could afford a car that'll likely cost upwards of $90,000.

The U.S. Treasury unveiled the redesigned $20 bill today, which incorporates more color among the added security features.

Rather then the ususal green and black bills of the present, the new bills are... green. Well the background is now green, too, as well as peach. And there's some blue and yellow, too.

I still think the new bills are too conservative in their approach to make them more user friendly and more difficult to counterfeit.

Take a look at the new Euro bills. Bold colors to immediately differentiate the bills. The colors on the new U.S. bills are so subtle that those who are color blind may not even notice.

The European bills also incorporate special features for the visually impaired. As our population ages, this becomes increasingly more important.

While I commend the U.S. Treasury's efforts, I think that they are too tied to the look of the past, which has existed since at least the mid 1800's. In fact the bills had hardly changed between 1914 and 1996, when they implemented the larger portraits. I think our paper currency still has a long way to go in terms of maximizing usabilty.

UPS has unveiled a new logo. The new logo replaced the original Paul Rand designed logo.

My first thoughts of the new logo are not very positive, including:

1. It doesn't say anything about what UPS does. The old logo included a wrapped parcel which said something about their business
   
2. It seems too trendy, with the bevel and all. Looks like web site navigation from Gateway, Citysearch, etc. This look may work for a web site that will most likely last a year or two before being redesigned, but does will it have much of a shelf life? The old logo has lasted 40 years? What will we think about this one in 5?
   Posted by blipsman at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)

The guys at 37 Signals have started an interesting discussion about coining a new phrase for making change, which quickly transitioned into a more general discusssion of ATM usability in addition to the terminology discussion.

I was just having a discussion recently with some friends about how annoying it is that ATMs only give out $20 bills...some give $10, too. But invariably at any group outing, everybody whips out $20's (or as some call them, I learned, Yuppie Food Stamps) and then it's the complicated game of trying to sort out each person's portion of the bill without asking for change.

But would it really be that hard for ATMs to give the last $20 broken out into change? And how much more effecient would restaurants and bars be if the waitstaff wasn't contantly tracking down change and if tables each cleared 5 minutes earlier because people weren't doing calculus to figure out the bill? Maybe this is why 90% of restaurants fail?

Kottke points to a great tutorial for creating a Lomo effect in Photoshop. I've been wanting a Lomo for quite a while, but maybe this will save me $150...

Here's my first attempt:

NASA launches a new Web site. Nice, clean design. A first for a government agency, at least that I've seen. One interesting omission, as I see it, is that while they do a great job of directing different user constituancies (students, press, etc.) to the appropriate section there's no link for Scientists/Researchers.

Let's just hope the backend is as well thought out as the front end because this weekend's unfortunate tragedy will undoubtedly test the new site. (via Kottke)

According to this Ananova story, the EU may get new 'bar-code' logo designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. The design incorporates all the colors of all member states. Oh, say 45 colors or so. The resulting design looks a lot like a rainbow barcode.

Grasshoppa critiques the design on a number of issues, including the cost of reproduce such a flag with its dozens of colors. However, I am not so sure of that... I'm pretty sure IKEA has a sheet and comforter set with the same pattern, and we all know how they like to keep costs down.

I just want to know how they decided which bars are what width. Is it based on population? Geopolitical power? And what will they do when additional states joing the EU.

The NASDAQ redesigned their site a few weeks ago, and I think they dropped the ball on one section in particular. It take lot longer now to check the most active stocks since their redesign.

In the old days, one clicked on a link on the left navigation on homepage, and was taken to a page listing the Most Actice, Biggest % Gainers, and Biggest % Decliners all on one page. Click a text link and you're able to view the same on the NYSE. Click another link and there's the AMEX info.

Now, one must navigate the slow expanding DHTML cascading menu to get taken to a page with only the NASDAQ Most Active. Then one has to choose the exchange and category and click the GO button to view the next set of data. To view all the data, this has to be repeated 8 times. And one has to wait for the page to load each time.

So what once took 3 mouse actions to view now takes a minimum of 17 mouse actions and a lot more loading time.

I sent an email to the site's Webmaster a couple days after the site re-launch, and his answer for the change was that it reduced the amount of scrolling people had to perform on the pages. Don't know about you, but I'd much rather scroll a bit that have to navigate though all the steps required now to view the same amount of info.

As had been widely suspected if one reads as many car mags as I do, VW annouced that the Microbus is coming back. I think it's pretty cool VW finally annouced they are putting the new bus into production, but I'd still never driving a minivan, even if it's a neo-hippie van.

I'm really waiting for a new Karmann-Ghia! How cool would that be! I'd trade in my Jetta in an instant for one if they ever made one. or what about a neo-Thing!

Anthony comments on the continuing trend in the auto industry of relying on retro designs to sell cars (but fails to mention the new Mini). I like the retro cars in general but think that it only works in small doses, ie. the new T-Bird is one, fairly limited production car within the Ford line.

There does seem to be a real lack of good new design in the car industry. I mean, the Aztek somehow passed a design review! And the others I can think of might look ok now but could quickly look dated as design tastes change, such as the Cadillac CTS. How long can the hard-edged designs stay fresh?