5-19-08 Adrian has just launched Font Burner. It’s the easiest way to add great fonts to your website.

After 4+ years Be A Design Group would like to say thank you and good bye. We couldn’t have done it with out everyone’s input and support. We are putting BADG into cryogenic freeze, but unlike Walt Disney, there is the technology to reanimate us.

If you missed the retirement announcement, read here. We will make one more post on this site that we will update with news of our plans, announcements and updates. Look for something big from Adrian in the next month. He won’t even tell me what it is about.

I wrote this over a year ago, but for some reason I never posted it. Since writing this, Creative Suite has been released for Intel Macs along with the Multi-Touch trackpad for the MacBooks.

As I work on my four year old G4 I can’t help but imagine that graphic designers are becoming useless to the likes of Apple and to a certain extent Adobe. I can think of very few software or hardware upgrades that were made in the last couple of years that have made our job significantly faster, better or easier. Sure we will be able to work faster when Adobe comes out with software that is ported for Intel machines, but do we really need anything much faster? When it seems that iTunes takes up about as much processor speed as Photoshop, I realize that it is not designers that are driving the technology anymore. So what industry is driving the market for faster computers? The obvious answer is video.

Drew Davies sent me this picture of a new business across the street from his own. Click to see the larger version and I dare you to find all of the things wrong with this photo.

This is just what Red Bull wants me to do, but oh well. It appears that Red Bull is coming out with a new cola. It isn’t in stores yet, so we will just have to imagine what it is like from their website.

My criticism: Do we need more cola? I heard a stat that said you are twice as likely to get diabetes if you drink one soda every day. The idea of something from Red Bull being “not too sweet” seems a little funny as well.

On the up side, I like the idea of everything being natural. Cola without phosphoric acid and preservatives has to be a good thing, right? We will just have to wait until it comes to a convenience store near you. The real question … . Will it also be ridiculously expensive?

So I will join in the hype. Mainly I wanted to point out the cool pull tab (err … pop top). That and maybe they will send our in-house team a case for ourselves.

The other day I received a letter in the mail informing me that I had something in the newly released Best of Business Card Design 8. It wasn’t until I got the book in the mail this week, that I found out which pieces made the cut. Kind of strange timing to get a two-page spread in a design book in the same month that you are shutting the featured website down (i.e. this site).

I was also pleased to find out that the business cards I did for my wife made it in.

“Freelance Design in Practice,” to be published in Spring 2009 by RotoVision, will be a book for freelance graphic designers who are in it for the long run. I’d like to invite experienced, full-time freelance designers from anywhere in the world to contact me directly for possible interviews. Please contact me at cathy@fishel.com if you have advice, anecdotes and insights to share with peers. Design work will also be shown in the book.

Chapters will include succinct advice and real-life case studies on subjects including:

Logo Design Love Awards is a competition that is going to recognize the best logos in the blogosphere. I was lucky enough to help with the judging, and I thought you guys would enjoy browsing through the logos as much as I did. There are ten categories of blogs and somewhere around 100 logos. Check it out, and cast your vote in the comments of their site.

While we designers talk about new logos, bad kerning, bad business practices, etc., we seldom talk about being a decent and active human being. We tend to celebrate the abrasive celebrity designer that bucks the system and the over-worked people that neglect their family and friends. The design profession also needs to look at what is healthy for the average designer.

The first part of this post speaks of greed and consumsion. After meeting so many designers that are over-consumers it was great to hear some reason from the Stefan’s (Stefan Bucher and Stefan Sagmeister). These two fellows are proof that you can be a nice person and an amazing designer.

I recently went to go hear west coast Stefan (Mr. Bucher) speak at Concordia University and he said some great things that we all need to hear. At one point in his talk he made a quick little recommendation about the new sin of today … DEBT. He talked about staying out of debt so we can remain free to be creative. How can we be creative if we have no choice but to take any and every freelance project that comes our way? We need to be free to make decisions that aren’t completely based on our wallet.

My encounter with east coast Stefan (Mr. Sagmeister) was through his new book. I recommend that any and every designer should get the book, or at least look at Sagmeister’s recent work. It is a great reminder to be a good person (to yourself and others). One phrase in Sagmeister’s book is that “Money doesn’t make me happy”. I’m assuming that with all his success, he knows that from experience. We can all go through life without re-evaluating our priorities. Don’t hesitate to make some course corrections and make some changes in your life.

Stay away from the Creative Center! There are plenty of good design schools in the state, but the Creative Center in Omaha is a horrible way to go. I have friends that went there and they would tell you the same thing. A good deal of professional designers in Nebraska will back me up on this. It is extremely expensive and you come out with some antiquated illustrations, some mediocre designs and a hefty debt. I know several successful designers that came from the Creative Center, but this is only because they learned things outside of school and are very talented and driven people.

I haven’t had a chance to read this book yet, but I wanted to do a little video review before the final goodbye here at BADG. Even without reading the interviews, insight and captions, this is a great collection of Modern Dog’s work. Where would posters be without these people? The book appears to be as irreverent and fun as Robynne and Michael … and if Dr. Figus Upshaw endorses this book, how could it not be good?

What is a design blog without shameless self promotion. I had to get one more in here. Here is a very short video for my wife’s show with good friend Adam Nielsen. If you are in Nebraska this weekend, you should check it out. If there is a message for designers in this post, it would be … Get out and see more art (especially printmaking).

Enjoy the five seconds of artwork!

Many yeas ago, when I was 15 and working in fast food….if you would have told me “Pay Attention!” since I would be learning valuable life lessons, I would not have believed you (to put it mildly). That job was purely income. Not for socializing, not so I could eat the food, not to be popular, just money. Today, many years later, I can see where I learned customer service: back at Dairy Queen.

Customer Service, to me, is one of those areas of work that everyone says “well, duh” it’s important. To really excel at it, translates to a big payoff. You can learn to serve your customers/clients so well that a) at the end of a project, they get what they really wanted, but maybe not what they initially asked for, or b) so happy they will tell their friends and colleagues, or c) so happy they congratulate your manager—and your manager remembers to compensate you accordingly when it’s bonus/raise time (wink wink).

On behalf of designers everywhere, I am writing you this letter with a very simple request. My message isn’t particularly novel — in fact, you may have heard something like it before. But, it’s become clear that it’s time to say it again as clearly as possible.