Wanting to help the independent book seller, I made an announcement of the sale on Twitter and went back to work. Hours latter Mr. Murtaugh asked what books he should buy to take advantage of the sale. Looking through the online store, there were so many that I could not name one or two. And thus ensued a quick burst of recommendations. And there were many, perhaps too many to post in such rapid succession for most @brilliantcrank follower's patience, but it's not often that I turn the fire hose on so, deal with it.

Many Twitter friends asked to collect the suggestions on Airbag. And that is what this is, a list of really great books to add to your library, sale of no sale. Keep in mind there is no referral money being made here. No under the table arrangements between shifty design book collectors. I love good books and good book stores, and I'll always try to help them when I can, especially the ones that expose readers to volumes you'll never find in a big box chain.

For those of you who were first-hand witness to the Brilliantcrank Twitter Storm of Ninteen February there is something new for you and the end of this list. I guarantee that you're not going to want to pass it up.

Otherwise, here it is, the list of books I recommend buying from William Stout.

Design

Online

Wayfinding

Typography

Stephen Coles, editor of Typographica and Type Director at FontShop pointed out that Stout's sale only includes books that are in stock and that he had first hand knowledge that they were, in fact, currently out of stock. I asked if the good people at FontShop could match the offer (who looks out for you people, huh?) and he replied with a different idea.

The Airbag Exclusive FontShop Special
From now until 28 February, Airbag readers get fifteen percent off FontBook, the must have tome for any serious designer and/or typography fanboy, and Made with FontFont, Erik Spiekermann's fabulously designed salute to FontFont's fantastic type collection. Act fast and spread the word. It's not every day these volumes are offered at a discount.

To get the special price use code AIRBAGGERY when purchasing FontBook and code AIRBAGFF when purchasing Made with FontFont.

And that's it, I am spent. Perhaps one day I shall make my own Uncrate for things related to online design so that this kind of excitement happens all year. For now I shall retire my clerks apron and get back to work in the mines.

Sure, apologies won't fix what's wrong, they can't change the past, but it sure is nice to see men of power own up to their mistakes. Humble apologies go a long way. If only the captains of the American banking industry had the courage to face their nation and do the same.

President Obama, it seems to me that we ought not to close down Guantanamo Bay so fast. Let's turn it into a destination resort for American bank executives who haven't demonstrated an ounce of personal shame from the destruction they have wrought.

Prepare to have your mind blown, in seven ways

You people have been served
This is where I'm supposed to bring seven more people into this Madoff trivia scam.

That is all. Perhaps, after leaving an insightful comment, you should go learn more about liberal arts and how it has entered the Ajax Age or browse through last Friday's tennis match (the serve totally owned).

Macon Phillips (former online strategist for Blue State Digital—the folks behind the Obama '08 campaign Internet endeavors), the Director of New Media for the White House says there are three priorities for the new website: Communication, transparency, and participation. The first two have, in some fashion, been a part of Whitehouse.gov for a number of years. It's the third initiative that should raise a few eyebrows.

I'm going to assume this means more than just turning on the ability to post comments and I look forward to seeing how this idea executed, maintained, and used by the President's office. I hope there will be a time when we'll get a chance to look behind the curtain and see how responses are collected, parsed, turned into reports, and how that information is used in the President's decision making process.

Meanwhile, anyone who is looking to succeed using the Internet as a main channel for talking to clients, customers, and constituents should follow closely the work Macon and his team are doing. The model they are following is one that can certainly be used beyond government work.

There were enough lights on that would indicate to anyone with an IQ higher than baloney that I was not asleep, but active and awake. And yet while I was working away, Sergeant Numbnut sat in his Patrol One Patrol Car, carefully took down all my vehicle information, ripped the White Copy away from the triplicate form, walked into my garage, and laid this document on my vehicle.

Meanwhile I was on the other side of the garage wall, working through the wee hours of the morning, oblivious to both my community appearance infraction but more importantly the guf-fah I had made to my own personal safety.

So it was this morning I was surprised to learn that I had left the garage door open and felt rather stupid about the whole thing. That is, until I saw 984's handiwork, laid carefully on the top of my car. Livid is the word I would use to best describe my reaction as I read through this carefully penned notice. Instead of walking fifteen paces to my front door, ringing the door bell (or knocking), so as to gain my attention and suggest that if I wish to avoid being the victim of some type of crime I might consider closing the largest entrance to my house for the night, this moron walked into an extension of my home and left a note to say the obvious. Why tomorrow, I expect to see a note that says, "You're awake now." Or, "the sun will rise today." Or, "Obama Won."

I don't exactly know what the hiring practices at Patrol One are but from my own personal experience I'd have to guess that full-time employment requires a fourth grade education and the ability to use a ink-ball pen. Eye sight (20/20 or significantly lower) and rational thinking is preferred, but not required. Free clothes provided.

With big stories like that, it's hard not to get excited about what the future holds.

And then I started to receive news of friends and colleagues who were laid off in the days leading up to Christmas and the new year. It wasn't their fault, they were simply collateral damage from an upper management campaign to save the company (or their own salary, benefits, and bonus—hard to tell these days). It's one thing to lose your job because you weren't meeting the exceptions of your employers. It's another to come to work and find out that your position was considered expendable to day-to-day operations and overall success of the company you've worked so hard for.

Though I can not say this from personal experience (knock on wood), nothing is worse than being let go due to circumstances way, way beyond your control.

During Christmas season travel it occurred to me that the larger problems we, as an industry, have to work around right now are not all financial. More of our friends and colleagues may lose their jobs in the coming months, and it's our shared responsibility to help them whenever possible. In this new year, it is simply not going to be enough to just meet your bottom line, but to help others who may not be in a position to be so entrepreneurial or carefree.

To those who own their own business: I challenge you to push harder. If you need $50k to keep your family under house and home then do everything you can to bring in $150k. Chances are you won't make the larger goal, but you'll do far better than selling yourself short and it's likely that you'll need extra resources to finish all the work, help from people who are looking to supplement lost income. I'm not talking about going through the process and stress of actually hiring more people (there is a good reason why the IRS created the 1099 form). Don't turn away any work that comes through your door. Get it. Grab it. Take it—as much as you can— and network with the people who are ready and willing and have the skills you need. Team up, and conquer.

To the designers and developers, the employees and the freelancers, your challenge is to do your best to get work done in a speedy way that does not sacrifice quality. Time really is money, be smart about your efforts and spend it wisely. Don't leave anything to chance or undone in a way that will cause further stress and anxiety for your employer as they are likely already significant pressure to keep the work coming through the door. Working smarter will not only make business more successful but ensure that clients are impressed, thankful, and very willing to sing your praises to everyone they know. Good teamwork means never letting anyone on the team fail. If you work by those mantras then nothing should ever get in your way to being very, very successful.

To the persons who support the entire team, make sure everyone (clients, management, workers, everyone) is communicating always. Poor communication causes anxiety which leads to uncertainty and eventually a breakdown in trust. It's likely that you are on the frontline between an awkward alliance of those with money and those who need money—an amalgam of personalities who are trying to get work done on time, on budget without sacrificing quality and ingenuity. The best way to win the day is to ensure that everyone is speaking clearly and openly. Leave no phone call or email unanswered, no meeting or appointment unattended. Remember that the level of customer service is always remember by those who pay the bill.

To the vendors who support us all, don't leave your customers and, ultimately, their clients waiting. Respond to sales calls and support tickets with gusto. Our symbiotic relationship requires a certain sense of urgency. One day waiting for a response is a production day lost forever. Just as important, be frank and let us know how we can improve our relationship and business practices. Too often the picture is clear from your viewpoint while we're sitting inside the box.

Let's not go into this next year with blind enthusiasm or crushing anxiety, but with a great sense of kinsmanship and and eager promise. Let us all work together to do what we can to grow our network into a future titan of industry. One that contributes to the community and the economy, global and local.

Good luck to all of us in this coming year. If you have any questions or concerns, or you're looking for good people to do great work let me know. I'll do what I can to help out.

Ah, if only more leaders were strong enough to consider a point of view that may not jibe with their own. Not just political leaders, all of them.

I have worked for persons who didn't like the idea of debate in the workplace, even when it was conducted in the interest of delivering a smarter and better result. After a while my existence at these organizations became absolutely pointless and I quickly lost interest in the work and ultimately employment. Not because I feel the need to fight each and every little battle. It's just that we don't live long enough on this Earth to go through life jumping off bridges or drinking instant grape beverage each and every time we're asked to do so.

My mentor in college, Jim Avery, once told me, "If two people think alike all the time, one of them is redundant." From the many pieces of advice I received in college that line will always remain in active memory (the other piece of advice: "Get out of Alaska as soon as you can." Well, I'm almost ten years Alaska-sober now and haven't touched an ulu in fifteen). The more you live and work around people who rarely present a different viewpoint, the softer your brain gets, the more complacent you become, and before you know it Wilford Bradley is the only one who makes any sense in the world.

This morning a man was trampled to death by consumers racing to buy items priced considerably lower than their normal cost. The same mob ran over a pregnant woman who then lost her unborn child to the violent frenzy. Frugal shoppers—people who are commonly referred to as being smart and wise with their money—killed a human being in their lust to obtain lifeless items priced to entice the highest to the lowest income. Two hundred people, ran past and on top of a fellow human beings who could not move, who could not breathe, who lost their lives. They killed two humans in their pursuit to obtain something that they otherwise would likely not be able to afford.

Executives from Wall Street, financial institutions, and the federal government have all been assigned varied degrees of responsibility for the failure in the American economy but somehow one very red-handed and dangerous culprit has been left out: Consumers. The same people who would knock down a pregnant women to the curb for a few hundred bucks. The same people who will trample the life out of fellow human being so they can have something previously unavailable to them are just as responsible for the condition of our economy.

It's convenient to point to the people who sit at the top and place all the blame on them but it's the face in the mirror that will ensure this FUBAR situation will happen again and again and again because laws and rules, no matter from how high they are handed down, can never hold back that level of kill-to-own kind of greed.

I hope those who are responsible, all two-hundred of them, are charged with double homicide and sentenced accordingly. This event is so sick and it is so, so wrong, but I doubt nothing will happen. My guess is that this story will focus on how the store owners allowed this to happen rather than why these people were so infatuated with obtaining a flat panel television that they could not notice a dying man or a pregnant woman in peril. We'll feel bad for them and go on as if nothing happened and go back to buying things no one really needs or wants.

Also: Avoid death, shop online.

Keith, I didn't know that you hung out with Sean Pean. Huh.

Ardent Obama supporters need to learn quickly that if there is to be "hope" and "change" it's going to have to come from their actions just as much as it does from the president elect. And that starts with being open to listen to others who may not think a like. The "for me or against me" mentality stinks just as much coming from left leaning persons as it does from those who are bent to the right.

Alec Baldwin—I know, I know, bear with me here—had a very good point on this matter:

Obama is likely to turn out to be a better President than Bush (with Shrub's approval ratings of late who couldn't, but it's a tad too early to say that with absolute certainty) but that doesn't mean we're not allowed to call into question his administration's policies. Especially the important ones.

Change.org
Last April, we were contracted to help redesign Change.org to be a better, more engaging place for people to stay informed on social issues and get involved with causes and related non-profits. The new site features a complete makeover, including a design system that enables the cause spaces to hold up on their own. Through this project we have had the fortune of developing a strong friendship with Ben Rattray (CEO) and we've already started the next phase of design and development work that will make Change.org stronger, smarter, and more effective. While Stephen did almost all of the heavy lifting for this project we had the absolute pleasure of working with Meagan Fisher, who crafted the look and feel of ten of the causes included in the launch.

Red 5 Studios
Airbag has been at Red 5's side going on four years now. We were there to help formulate ideas and deliverables for the much talked about Golden Ticket Campaign and then moved forward by creating a new site that represents and facilitates the company's growth in people, creativity and innovation. The new site features artwork from their amazing in-house design department and a better publishing system with the capacity to display content in multiple languages. Ethan and Ryan deserve a lot of credit on this project as they did a lot of the work to get the site to where it is today. Mr Irelan built the site using Radiant—at the client's request—and a fair amount of custom development work.

School of Visual Arts: Interaction
Star of An Event Apart: San Francisco, Liz Danzico chose Team Airbag to help create the website for the new and exciting interactive program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. When I heard there was a need for print work, I suggested hiring Heads of State and then we could use their work as the art direction for the website. I've always wanted to work with/near those guys and this turned out to be a great opportunity and I'm happy with the results. Once again, Ethan and I collaborated on the design, while he and Ryan developed and shipped the site.

Clinician1
It's not every day that you're asked to architect, design, develop and deploy a small social community. So we jumped at the chance to create Clinician1 from the ground up. Stephen, Drew, Ethan, and Ryan worked together to create a new community space for Nurse Practitioners. We were having so much fun that we invited Brian Warren to join the party and help Ryan with the heavy lifting on the site's construction. The finished product looks a tad different from what we came up with but all-in-all it was a great project to add to the book and another first for Team Airbag.

Welton Investment Corporation
While we can not and will not take any credit for the design work, we will jump up and down when asked, "who built this handsome site?" Welton has been a really good client and since helping them develop and deploy their new site, we have already made several new additions under the hood. Ryan continues to do most of the heavy lifting while getting Stephen to lend a hand from time to time.

Peels Prairie Provinces
Wicked Worn is well represented here. Seems like just yesterday when we handed over the design and templates to the good folks at the University of Alberta. I love that we were given free reign to create the look and feel for this online collection of historical work. The worn look runs through our veins and it was great to go nuts and have almost all of our efforts approved with flying colors. Unfortunately this project was over too quickly and I hope we get to work with our friends up north again. As Drew is from Canada and he often missed his homeland I gave him the honor of pushing pixels. Nice job, eh? Once again we tapped into the Airbag Brotherhood of Web Workers Local 415 and brought Tim Murtaugh in to make web standards like with the HTML and CSS.

W3C
Yep. We did this thing. Well, it's not up yet but just keep reading. Debuted during Ethan's much praised presentation at An Event Apart: Boston, Airbag designed a completely new website for the W3C. It's smart, clean, blue, different. Needless to say we're very eager to see this work go live (hopefully in tact) as it will be a shiny, yellowish, new beacon of hope for the future of the Internet. Ethan took this one and ran with it right form the start and from time to time the rest of the Airbag Design Strike Team chimed in to offer support and backup, Yo Joe Style.

That's it for now, there will be more later. In the meantime we currently have openings for projects starting in late '08 to early '09. If you're smart and looking for other smart people to make your Internet dreams come true then give us a jingle.

"Orange County," I would reply.

"Oh, where the choppers are made!" I'll swear to Congress that's what they said each time. Three-different-people, on three-different-occasions.

"No," I shot back which produced a very puzzled look on their face.

"But they're in Orange County..." they stated, looking as if they were starting to piece facts together for their cross examination. Before they could finish laying out a chain of logic, I would cut-in and tell them that Orange County Choppers operates in upstate New York, not lower California.

This confused each inquisitors even more while they silently mouthed the words "orange" and "county."

"That I know of," I continued while they seemingly rang their index finger in the air, across an invisible globe, "there are three Orange Counties in the United States. One is in California, another in New York, and the third is located in Florida."

"Oh..." and the conversation would end after they added something about not knowing our country had so many Orange Counties and that they always assumed it was in southern California. To end the vocal water boarding I finished with a short monologue on the fact that in more than a handful of episodes of American Chopper, snow makes a big, big appearance. And that for that kind of weather to happen in Southern California is likely a meteorological impossibility in (Although earlier this decade we had a freak rain storm that produced a lot of hail in Santa Ana. The quantity and ferocity allowed for the frozen precipitation to collect on the ground and if you looked at it from the SkyChopper 5 Live-Feed, it looked like snow. This was enough for the inner-city youth to lie on the ground in front a local 7-11 to make what the reporter lady called "snow angels". I called it "sadness").

Anyway, lets repeat the lesson learned here. The popular dysfunctional family that makes hot rod motor bikes on television does so from their facilities located somewhere between Yonkers and Buffalo, not between San Diego and where OJ killed those people.

Please pass this information along to your friends, family, co-workers, and maybe that awkward guy on the train. Last thing we need during these times of crisis is for our fellow citizens to be confused about where the best choppers on the planet are born.

New Orleans, Louisiana.

Of course this doesn't happen for every RFP received in the Fall but I bet I've described more than half the RFPs floating around from late September to early November. The whole situation is a bit awkward, frustrating yet rewarding in that everyone could use more practice with interviewing for a job.

This is all to say that if you have a project of any size and you're seriously ready to get started now is the time to get that job on the boards. To help with your endeavor, Cameron Moll has given Airbag readers a 30% discount off listings of any kind over at Authentic Jobs. To receive this discount use promotion code AIRBAG31 at the time of checkout. As always each job posted is backed by a money-back guarantee:

Offer expires at the end of the month.

Now, if you're really looking for an All Star Team of Giant Talent and Small Egos then by all means please tell us about your project. We love working with good, smart people.

Such a person walked up to Dan, introduced himself and began a conversation with a question. Pretty standard conference party chit chat soon turned into hard core questions pertaining to development, validation, and strict adherence to both. Given the company I was in I figured these topics were standard faire—though trying to discuss such matters at 10PM in a art gallery turned into quasi-cool flat party doesn't provide a best setting. Still, Dan, being the very decent citizen he is, kept his focus on the visitor and did his best to engage him in a manner befit his reputation for being a really nice guy.

Hard of hearing in a crowded place I'm not sure exactly what was said but the guy became irate and his discourse took a harsh tone. The conversation turned into accusations. Apparently this person was upset that Mr. Bulletproof did not take strict adherence to web standards as seriously as he should. And (pardon me if I don't have this exactly word-for-word) that considering his position and influence he was preaching the gospel too askew for the greater good of the world.

It was at this point that Dorny put his drink down, stealthily slipped in-between the two and masterfully inserted himself as the primary target. A minute later Dan quietly backed away from the trio, looking like he had just been through a minor traffic accident. It wasn't long after that Luke and his new friend were onto another topic less stressful and animated (knowing Dorny that means they were talking about beer, 1960's European Poster design, Volkswagens, or all three).

There are a few lessons to be learned from this observed encounter.

A "perfectionist" and a "purist" are not the same person. The perfectionist seeks to do everything to the best of their ability against standards that are often set higher than average. The purist, on the other hand, seeks to adhere to some set of rules that are written for conditions in a world wherein Tom Cruise is taller and a lot less creepy, and every morning the box of Trix is full and fresh without all those lame crumb particles at the bottom of the box.

In the time that I have known him Dan is a perfectionist. This is partially why he has attained his rank and stature within our community (it also helps that he's a fantastic designer, author, and presenter). More importantly, this attribute is why clients pay him money to create work for them. They know that while he will earnestly try to craft things using methods that are pure and as by-the-book as possible, he won't seek a strict path that will end up causing delays or over run a project budget.

Clients, supervisors, vice presidents, and so forth—they don't want the purist. Purists freak them out. While they might make for interesting subjects on the Discovery Channel, purists aren't the best fit in the business world. Purity costs money and dedication to a path that often leads to even more unwanted or unnecessary expenditures.

Duct Tape is a business tool. It's not one that anyone wants to use but it's there for when perfection has run it's course and it's time to move on to other pursuits. Purity has no duct tape—only devotion.

Lastly, when you want to talk to someone who you admire for one reason or another it's probably best not to verbally attack them for problems that aren't their fault. If you want to be religious go to church.