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…

The New York Time food critic ventured out beyond the island of Manhattan to sample some of Hot Doug’s myself this past Friday afternoon and met owner Doug Sohn. I enjoyed an andouille sausage with mustard, grilled and raw onions as well as an order of their world-famous duck fat french fries. If ever there was a gourmet fast food…

This morning, I learned that “Did you know your building is on fire?” is one of those phrases you don’t want to hear while brushing your hair.

Around 8:15 this morning, I was getting ready to leave for work and my cell phone rang. I was a bit puzzled because people don’t ususally call me on my cell phone at 8:15 in the morning. And those most likely to do so are my parents, who were soundly asleep I assume, seeing as they are on vacation in LA.

It was my aunt, who asked where I was. I told her I was in my apartment getting ready for work. She then asked me if I knew that there was a fire in my building.

No, I did not!

Sure enough, I open my living room blinds and I see about a dozen fire trucks, ambulances and police cars and I can only see what’s south of the building. Hmmm… how did those arrive without me hearing them? I guess when I was in the shower! While I live in a 42 story building, I am only on the 3rd floor. Not all that far from the street below. I certainly should have heard the commotion. I did hear voices and walkie-talkie squawks, but there are often maintenance men on the roof of the parking garage below my window…

I also should have heard fire alarms, I thought. Seeing as I didn’t, I’m hoping they are zoned and not broken.

Anyway, seeing as I hadn’t heard any alarms or had any firemen pound on my door, I kind of took my time getting out the door. I poured my coffee, put on my shoes, grabbed my bag and gym bag and headed down the stairs. (First time I’m glad I only live on the 3rd floor!)

Once outside, I ran into some friends who live in the building and who’d been outside for a while. They filled me in. Fire in 1609, contained to that unit but the one unit is pretty bad. A couple people had come out in stretchers and been taken away in ambulances. News crews arrived and even a news helicopter hovered nearby.

Satisfied that everything was under control, I had hoped to leave for work, but the street was blocked by the 3 dozen emergency vehicles. Eventually, they cleared out enough that we could leave…

ESPN gives an interesting look inside the process of creating the brand identity for the Charlotte Bobcats, an expansion NBA team which begins play next season. The article lookes at how they selected the team’s nickname from a long list of submissions and then selected a color palette and logo design.

When the team’s name and logo were initially unveiled last summer, I had discussions with a number of people about the choices. My view, and that of some others I talked with, were a thumbs up with the name. Despite being almost a cliche name in high school and college sports, there are no professional teams in any league with the name.

I think the team also made a good selection with the color palette for the new team by selecting orange and blue. Orange is an under-used color in pro sports, despite its wide use on the college level (Miami, Illinois, Syracuse, Texas, Princeton).

I wasn’t so thrilled when I saw the actual logo, however. I was really hoping that with the retro fashion trends — both in terms of the retro 50’s style t-shirts at Abercrombie & Fitch, etc. as well as the 70’s and 80’s retro jerseys — that they’d go in that direction for the logo. One of the logo designs in the article shows they at least thought about going in that direction.

Instead they decided to follow most redesigned logos, and go with the overused profile view tapering to a point — already used by http://www.panthers.com/, St. Louis Rams, New England Patriots, Nashville Predators, Minnesota Wild, etc.

The Chicago Sun-Times had a wonderful article today about Darren Erman, one of my Zeta Beta Tau brothers from Emory.

Darren chose to give up his career as an attorney a prestigious Chicago law firm to chase his dream of becomming a basketball coach. His journey took him to St. Anthony’s High School in New Jersey, where he coaches under Bob Hurley and teaches environmental science for 1/6 of his former salary. Despite sleeping on an air mattress on a friend’s floor and living out of his car, he loves his new life.

Many of us dream of chasing a dream like this. Few of us have the guts to do so. There are times I’d love to move to Mexico, or go to culinary school. So far, those are only dreams… To those like Darren who take the leap, I wish you good luck!