The Girl™ and I spent most of the day re-arranging some items in the household and started honing in on finishing up the bedroom and finally starting to lay down the final configuration of the home studio. Sure, it’s 2+ years later but hey, pieces are hard to come by.

In the midst of it, I was inspired to re-do the facade of the fridge with some of the business cards I’ve collected over the years — some are ones I’ve designed, most from friends, some from acquaintances and a few random ones.

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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Occasionally, things come full circle and I merge two interests or two people or more than two items, matters, things or persons into one small world somehow. This surprisingly happens to me more often than not¹.

Work has these circles too — I managed to combine my love of cycling into various design work for cycling related endeavours and the same might be said for music.

Today however, something really old came full circle for me as I worked on a site that involves skateboarding. My first real “sport” or active interest going back to ’89. More down the line but I found it to be a nice change.

¹ Perhaps as surprising as the number of times I get stopped on the street, greeted and addressed by a strange name only to not be the person the addressor intended it for.  ↩

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.

Patrick D. gave me a lovely used copy¹ of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle for my birthday a few months ago. It’s a book that has been on my periphery for years now, ever since I was a young teenager but have never gotten around to picking up. I was glad to receive it.

It’s an epic of sorts but moves quickly — despite my limited reading time, I’ve managed to get through the book surprisingly fast, perhaps a testament to the readability of the book. While the characters and stories don’t relate to me in any direct way, something resonates and — perhaps the underdog nature of the main protagonist, Toru Okada.

Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few exceptions), they think that the world of life (or whatever) is this place where everything is (or is supposed to be) basically logical and consistent. ... It’s like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you’ve got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can’t tell what’s going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni cheese in the darkness when nobody’s looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it’s natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me that’s just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni cheese.

I’m almost to the end and I know I’ll miss the world this book has created.

¹ I love used books. This is the hardcover edition, with design by Chip Kidd featuring artwork by Chris Ware. ↩

Hi Ian –

I read on The Thought Kitchen about Nau closing down and at first glance I had to ask myself whether or not it was April 1st. Nope.

I’ve been really bummed and upset that you folks are closing up shop. It’s really a shame that in these turbulent times that an excellent company like Nau couldn’t survive past a year. No one else I feel is doing what you folks are doing. From the first time I heard and read about you folks in an issue of Outside — if I recall correctly — I was super excited at what I was seeing — functional outdoor clothing that gasp actually looked sexy, slick, good and that you could wear for a night on the town and no one would be the wiser. As a designer, it filled that void that I thought was missing between fashionable, modern cuts but being completely functional. To me, it’s a match made in heaven.

I put you folks up there along with Rapha, the high end cycling clothing mfg. based in London. I’m sure you’re familiar with them — given the overlap of some of the Portland cycling brethren that you both worked with — Ira Ryan, Dan Sharp, et al.

And now you’re going away. I’ve never felt so emotionally about a company whose values aligned with mine but it’s good to know that at least you were around for a while. I’m happy to have quite a few Nau pieces in the closet and yesterday I called everyone I knew who loved you folks and we all raided the Chicago store. My significant other (Jen Schuetz — I believe she’s also emailing you) and I bought what we could, happy to get our hands on more excellent pieces but not the situation with which we managed to get these items this time around. Bittersweet with with the bitter side being more prominent.

I feel that given another 6 months to a year you folks would really have found your groove and become a lasting company. I’m a fan of other outdoor companies, notably Patagonia but I rarely find anything at Patagonia that I actually buy — the clothes are a bit too drab and I’ve noticed that their sizing has grown a little (contrary to their claim to fit active people first — perhaps adopting some of The North Face populist appeal?).

Nau was my company of choice. If there ever was a company that I believed could change things, it was you folks.

With that, I hope perhaps someday Nau might return, perhaps in another form. I hope you don’t look at this as a failure — if you do, you failed spectacularly and successfully. But like any relationship that leaves a lasting impact, I’m glad you folks were around for as long as you were rather than not at all.

Godspeed and good luck in your future endeavours.

Thanks for everything,
Naz.

Ed: For further, read Treehugger’s wrap-up.

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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My parents instilled a sense of fashion into me as a child. I grew up surrounded by piles of Vogue and more of their ilk. My mother and sister rattle off designer names, as familiar to them as their own family. My father aligns himself with designer names that simply sound aristocratic — Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss, Valentino and their kind.

I resisted their call to fashion, opting instead to embrace the styles of skaters and snowboarders, hip-hop and grunge. Despite disappointing my parents when I’d wear the nice striped shirt and slacks only when I had to attend a function of some kind, I soaked up the magazines and the names and more importantly cultivated the eye for what made clothes look good.

My family would probably chuckle today and be proud. That I’ve finally over the past decade, come to embrace a good cut, a fitted shirt, a proper pair of pants that fit and a shoe collection that women I have known have been surprised to see, almost jealous in some cases.

I like to watch trends. I keep an eye out on what the kids are doing these days — currently, I’m not too happy with the selection of American men’s fashion at the affordable level. The classic brands have remained preppier than ever and the rest are going with some kind of hip-hop indie hybrid comprised of chunky Nike dunks and tight jeans matched up with your father’s blazer on top of either a striped t-shirt (either slanted, horizontal or asymmetrical), a striped sweater or cardigan or some other pattern variant (houndstooth, herringbone, etc).

I’m personally a man of solid colours and clean cuts. The Europeans have long been prescribers of this aesthetic, as well as some of the Asian countries.

Menswear is described by many as hard to do — there’s a limited canvas to seemingly work with — masculinity is measured in finite terms and the clothes, made to match. Very few designers and companies make menswear that I feel push the boundaries even a little bit, re-inventing old classics into new silhouettes and shapes. There are a few I do like though.

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.

Last week, a client contract came my way which required a signature, as well as either the signed document returned via email or fax. Typically in the past, I’ve printed out the contract and faxed it back. However, I dislike wasting paper for things like this (as well as thinking Green these days) and have often wasted money and time on having to head out to Kinko’s to get things faxed. How quaint eh?

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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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As designers become increasingly frustrated with typography on the web, the decision to default to type that most have on their computers or pick a dynamic text replacement method such as SIFR or using PHP is one we fuss over.

This is one issue that plagues me — the choice to use dynamic text replacement or what a user has. I originally intended this site to make use of SIFR but decided against it in the end due to the recent redesign I did of the peripheral blogs (as we call them internally) at Gapers Block. We purchased Archer specifically for this redesign (there are four in all, accessed from the navigation at the very tope) and wanted to make full use of it.

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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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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 recently received the first four copies of Rouleur, the gorgeous black and white cycling quarterly put out by the British cycling gods of style, taste and elegance, Rapha.

Rapha has long held my interest — their aesthetic is exactly what I had been looking for in cycling clothing for a long time. However, their prices have caused some controversy, but I say that you’ll pay for quality anyway so while I can’t quite bring myself to buy most of what they sell, I do appreciate quality when I see it.

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Above, Pinch.

Back in February when the winds were harsh and the temperatures on the wrong side of zero, a few of us went over to Design Within Reach and went to take a look at friends and industrial designers Craig Berman and George Aye’s juried creations in the flesh, Pinch and Perforated.

The set has been posted on Flickr for your perusal.

If you’re a photographer who’s embraced the DSLR, you’ve no doubt heard of or work with RAW files.

I made the switch quite a while ago and have been working with them for some time now. The quality is unsurpassed in manipulating digital images. For a long while however, it seemed that the technology for working with RAW files was shoddy and turned many would-be-RAW-shooters right off. Including myself.

Enter Aperture. Enter Lightroom.

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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.

The web was abuzz yesterday and the day before with the latest product announcement from Motorola: The MOTOFONE. It’s sleek, sexy looks have no doubt won the aesthetic hearts of many but more importantly and as pointed out by Greg Storey, “Finally, a cell phone that’s a phone.”

If you’ve known me for a while, you’ll know that I was reluctant about having a cell phone. For a while I fought against having one, preferring the solid connection of a land line and the privacy that came with not being able to be reached anywhere and anytime. A few years ago, I had a cell phone, gave it up for a year and then got one again, which I’ve had ever since. There are quite a few reasons why I’ve come round to it, some of which are obvious and others not so.

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