Last evening, I attended the Field Tested Books: Live in Chicago set of readings (NYC, Monday!) and had a great time. I’m not the biggest fan of readings depending on the pedigree of the reader or readers at hand and there are certainly some who delve into Freebird jam-band territory¹ but last night’s readings were on point.

The material at hand helps: short, brief, concise narratives held together by a common topic with a relatively similar structure. Easily digestible, easily enjoyed and no wankery.

That said, some writers are born to be writers and not readers. Or rather, public speakers — in the sense that there could be some showmanship involved. Years of live music and good showmanship have spoilt me in that regard. There were some definite highlights though: Bryan Bedell’s delivery and humour, John Tolva’s phoning it in from Ghana, Jonathan Messinger and Wendy McClure as always knows how to close a show down.

Much props and love to the Coudal crew as always.

My photos from the event are here on Flickr, as I field tested the rented Nikon 18-200VR lens (which I am decidedly not fond of) and the noise and blurriness get worse as the light gets super low. Apologies. My prime 28mm f1.8 should have been on deck.

¹ A zinester reading a few years ago scarred me when the reader used a candle to emphasize her point by lighting it then diffusing it. Bleah. ↩

The 7:30AM doors open and subsequent 8AM start made me wonder how many people would actually show up for such an early event, let alone, one by me regarding Creative Content for the Web. To my surprise, I was proven quite wrong. People were willing to come out, indeed.

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A quick notice for those in Chicago: I’ll be speaking for the local chapter of AIGA for their Tools of the Trade series of talks. This one is called Creative Content for the Web where I’ll be talking about creating and managing interactive communities and self-initiated projects, as well as some of the basic technology aspects of CMS’s and interface design.

The official blurb: “In 2007, AIGA Chicago introduced Tools of the Trade, a practical business workshop series for designers. Mirroring the Business of Design Series, these events address the hands-on needs of design businesses. Join AIGA Chicago and Naz Hamid as he spreads knowledge on his expertise of interface design and large-scale interactive projects geared to building communities and groups.”

The event happens Thursday, April 24th at the Alliance Francaise at 54 W. Chicago Avenue. Doors are at 7:30am, with the presentation from 8 to 9:30am, with a half hour Q&A session after. Details, registration and cost are here on AIGA Chicago’s site.

Another SXSW related post-post but this pertains to the presentation I gave this year, Design is in the Details. A huge thanks again to all that attended and were curious enough to see what I had to say. It was very nice to see the large crowd that came and I hope it was somewhat useful. But more to the point, I have slides.

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Before heading down to SXSW this year, Aza Raskin, now of Mozilla Labs, got in touch with me to see if I’d be interested in designing some t-shirts for them. Why, yes please.

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The decompression from this year’s SXSW was quick — mostly because time told me that I was there one day too long this year despite being there the same amount of time last year. That idea of time, and a timeline stuck with me and for this year’s SXSW Infographic, I wanted to encapsulate that structure. The look and idea for this one came to me on Monday, if I recall correctly, on the way to the Jackalope on 6th as I explained it to Cinnamon and Andrew.

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Back from Austin and into the flow of life and work. It feels good to be home. A very huge thanks to everyone who attended my presentation — it was very nice to have you all there. Slides will be coming shortly — I need to make a few quick edits and sync up the versions I have here and the one I tweaked while in Austin.

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Judah holds court, undoubtedly telling tales of NAHBS the weekend before. More from SF: Day One.

The Girl and I took a break from the classic winter we’ve been having in Chicago by deciding to hop on a flight to San Francisco from Feb. 14th- 18th for some friend-visiting, bike-riding and general-relaxin’.

SF is like a second home to us. We have as many friends there as we do here and it’s a nice feeling to have. It also makes for a pretty hectic time of trying to see as many people as possible yet at the same time, having time for ourselves. We quickly learned that we needed to step back and slow down the last two days we were there and we did. Photos tell a better tale so I’ll leave it at that. More to come.

I’ve mostly recuperated from the behemoth that is SXSW. I took a lot of notes in my moleskine and decided to do an infographic poster regarding my experience (instead of being lengthy with words — I am a designer, so I should flex the muscles a bit and display information concisely and visually) and some of the smaller details and minutiae of the event. You can see a larger version here or you can download the printable 11×17 PDF poster here.

Some notes:

1. Info is as accurate as I remember, refer or calculate.
2. The blocky typeface for SXSW 2007 is custom and created just for this. I started work on it at SXSW itself.
3. Some of it is humourous. Some of it is serious.
4. The list of people I met obviously resembles a tagcloud — the key should be evident — the larger your name is, the more time I spent with you.

My SXSW photos, all 140 of them are here.