“It’s been exactly a year since The Items We Carry, a flickr group, was started by designer and photographer Naz Hamid. It’s for photos of the small things we put in our pockets or on our persons — the essentials we need to function daily at a basic level.

This week, we’ve invited Naz to JPG, to run this interesting challenge within our community. So empty your pockets and show us what you have! We’ll play by his rules—if you don’t have pockets and say, are a lady, then your purse may serve as your pockets (no bags otherwise)—and Naz himself will be guest editing this challenge!

If you did this challenge on flickr last year, do it again, and link to your original photo. What’s changed since then?

This challenge will be open for one week and will close on July 30, 2008.”

Do it!

Update: The selections I made have been posted which are also available as a PDF download. Thanks to all who participated.

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. ↩

I spent a decade skating regularly with a good five years skating day in and day out. From the ages of 10-20, I devoted a lot of time to it, competing here and there and being part of a subculture that didn’t know the X-Games yet and before skateboarders like Tony Hawk became skateboarding’s Jordan.

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Much brou-ha-ha was made regarding this recent post from the crew at 37Signals. I don’t agree with it at large but 37Signals works in a different context than I do. Which is why I’d have to stress that it’s important to read the bit where it says “Why we skip Photoshop.” I do however agree with the pseudo-follow-up Web designers should do their own HTML/CSS. I don’t believe it’s necessary in any sort of case as the correct answer to any of these (and life’s questions) should be “It depends.” Context, personal circumstance and experience should always be taken into account. To me, the web is endless possibility, not a place of rules and hardlines.

While this may be Moustache May and ‘staches¹ are de rigeur these days, I’ve often pondered how they look in the current revival. My reactions range from Selleck-ian genius to creeped-the-hell-out but here are a few reasons why growing a ‘stache may not be a good idea:

1. You’re not Burt Reynolds and you certainly are NOT Tom Selleck.
2. There is a very, very, very fine line between looking hipster cool and looking like a child molester.
3. The above goes double if you sport glasses, especially those that fall in the emo-hipster vein — thick-rimmed, black, et al.
4. Hitler sported a mini ‘stache.
5. It’s not the 70’s.
6. It’s also not the 80’s.
7. Straight up ‘staches from the above decades are boring — handlebar and Frenchy ‘staches are the way to go. The curlier and pointier, the better. Cole Maness is a good example and if you sport a shaved head like him, even better.
8. The ‘stache’s alter ego as “_______ tickler” is a falsehood perpetrated by the Royal Order of Moustachios to get more men to sport them when no women I know like them.

The plush moustache in the thumbnail above is sold by friend Shawn of Shawnimals. He makes good stuff.

¹ And I applaud all of those in the name of great moustache wearers i.e. Tom Selleck.  ↩

Jim Coudal kindly asked if I’d like to be guest editor for Fresh Signals for the month of May over at Coudal. Who could say no to that? Expect the usual items of fancy, delight and wonder. And perhaps a WTF or two.

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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Already a huge success, if the grapevine on the internet is anything to judge it by, Justin Ouellette’s Muxtape is a wonderful idea executed simply and concisely. There are a few quirks (the uploading process is a bit clunky) but otherwise, it’s dead simple to use.

I’ve made a muxtape myself, which spans some current favourites as well as all-time favourite songs, which it leans towards. There’s a definite flow to the mix as I’m particular about that sort of thing from old days of being obsessed with making mixtapes. It starts out a bit brash then gets into a bit of a dance groove then back into moody territory and mellows out. Start strong, build up, chill out.

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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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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Earlier this week, Trent Reznor released Ghosts I-IV, a 36 track (or a traditional split of 4 albums) collection of instrumental music. It forms a soundscape of moods, atmosphere, moments and volume. It’s a highly interesting experiment in regards to Reznor pulling a Radiohead but how good is the actual music? And how does this set the tone for distribution?

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When Yahoo! Pipes launched in early 2007, I didn’t quite understand what it was right off the bat. A bit more investigation and seeing examples helped me with that but I didn’t think about building anything until late last year. I had come across something (I forget what) and someone had mentioned that they wished they had a feed for some of my combined output.

I went back to Pipes and played around with it some. It’s remarkably simple to use especially if you’re a visual person. It takes XML/RSS feeds and puts them together or creates mash-ups of data, which is actually a lot of fun. I don’t see it being used as often enough perhaps but now that I’ve played with it, I wish it were.

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When Andrew heard and subsequently saw me working on this site, he asked “Why?” A good question indeed. Why another site when I have a few as it is? I tend to shuffle things around to some degree. Part of it is pure fancy and desire and another part of it has to be a search for some kind of balance. Also, holding onto domains, blurs the line between what I do with them and what I want to do with them.

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There’s a growing feeling that I’ve had and shared with my peers in numerous conversations lately. It’s a desire to see another dot-com bust of sorts. A mini-bust if you will. I don’t mean this with any menace — rather, a desire to see the fat get trimmed, the cruft erased and for there to be more of a lean and mean Internet.

The fact is, my friends, there’s gluttony going around.

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Towards the latter half of January I “announced” my solo musical project, Murders & Mysteries. Judging from the comments on Flickr and from the friend requests and comments on Virb, it’s been modestly (and surprisingly) well-received for which I’m really grateful and humbled by. I really do enjoy working on music — something which I’ve always been interested in but have never wanted to pursue as a real career or make a living off of.

All that aside, after returning from San Francisco yesterday, I wanted to put something new out there. And so I have. I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This is up on Virb. It’s not officially going to be on the EP I intend on putting out at some point, but it may end up being some kind of bonus track. The title is a quote from a sci-fi franchise. I’m sure you know who said it and what movie it was in. It’s a work in progress at this point but I like how it’s shaping up.

Today is the official launch of Patternclash, the site of photographer Francesca Tallone. We’ve been working together on the site in bits and pieces over the summer and amidst a few domain and host issues, have everything sorted out.

Francesca has in the last year, been featured as part of Surface Magazine’s Avant Guardian portfolio — a selection of stateside photographers who are recognized as pushing the boundaries of commercial photography.

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I’m back from my excursion to Key West, Florida. A few days before I left, I made a photo containing items I use and carry on a daily basis — the essentials to function. I made the photo with the intention to use it for the redesign I’m working on for Weightshift but did use it as a splash page for the temporary studio closure.

I had an inkling that it might be a decent group but it wasn’t until my SF brethen Daniel Dent and Gareth Spor proposed the idea in public that I decided why not?

The Items We Carry was born.

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The still-fresh, brand spankin’ new relaunch of AIGA.org has had a lot of well-deserved press around the web. The Happy Cog crew did a hell of a job.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have now been involved in the design processes of two major AIGA redesigns in different capacities. The first time around when Flat redesigned the national website, I worked under Behavior with Khoi Vinh to come up with designs for the Design Forum. This time around, I was again, fortunate to be pulled in to work on the AIGA redesign, but not on the public-facing website, but rather under the hood and behind the scenes on AIGA.org’s CMS interface.

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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.