Variety is a blessing. Here at Happy Cog, each and every design project is radically different. Show me the day when any two client design challenges are exactly the same and I’ll turn in my font library, ergonomic chair, and scribble-filled Field Notes. Retirement at 34? Sounds good. Now, where’s my fishing pole…
In my apprentice days, I worked for Marvin Honig, a Hall of Fame copywriter who created indelible commercials for Alka-Seltzer, Cracker Jack, and Volkswagen during the 1960s and 1970s, and who assumed creative leadership of Doyle Dane Bernbach upon legendary founder Bill Bernbach’s death. It was not one of those bloody successions that stain the pages of history and advertising. Bill chose Marvin to carry on in his place.
A month ago, after drinking a few Sundowns in celebration of turning forty years of age, I bought myself a pair of Old Gringos. They are a worn-in light brown and are adorned with a fierce phoenix stitched in the front of each boot. For those who know me, they’re thinking that this purchase was completely influenced by a tequila fueled mid-life crisis, but they would be mostly wrong. For you see, I acquired this tall footwear after being advised that you can’t do business in Texas without a pair of cowboy boots.
If you run a creative services business and haven’t seen Mike Monteiro’s F*ck You. Pay Me. talk, take 40 minutes and watch it. In his ever-so-subtle style, Mike provides a real world overview of the red flags that result in you not getting paid for your work. A lot of the talk focuses on the importance of having a sound contract and a lawyer’s ear, both of which are crucial. While Mike’s talk hit on the big points, there are also some smaller details that can a make big difference. For example, how you invoice.
“Whether the type is set in hard metal by hand, or in softer metal by machine, or in digital form on paper or film, every comma, every parenthesis, every e and in context even every empty space, has style as well as bald symbolic value. Letters are microscopic works of art as well as useful symbols. They mean what they are as well as what they say.”
— Robert Bringhurst The Elements of Typographic Style
I think I started holding down jobs when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. It started simple—a newspaper route in glorious Mark, Illinois, population somewhere around 250-300. Believe it or not, there were two paper routes in this little village. Mark had lots of hills, but also lots of great people—and even a couple of first generation Italian immigrants—who made the route worthwhile. It wasn’t just about the cash money to buy Atari 2600 cartridges and fireworks I received from them; it was often about those homemade lemon cookies made from a recipe that probably never existed on paper.
Last week, Happy Cog was nominated for two Webby awards for our work with Zappos.com. I know some people don’t like awards, but as someone who didn’t grow up in an era when “everyone gets a trophy,” I still think they’re pretty rad. Seriously though, I think of a nomination like this as a recognition of doing great collaborative work with our clients. When I heard about the nominations, I was chatting with one of my coworkers who wondered, “can we really take the credit for this work?” As I typed the words, “shut your stupid face hole,” and considered whether to press enter, I thought about his question for a moment and the life of our work after we hand it over to our clients.
Viewing source has gotten pretty rad these days! Looking around the web, a good command + u (yes, I use Firefox/Mac) can provide an afternoon of exciting show and tell. One thing I like to look into is at which DTD table everyone is sitting these days. When the HTML5 doctype was introduced, some folks grabbed it and never looked back to the land of system identifiers again; others were cool with rocking a doctype that has been working for them for the last decade or so. This has caused some separation between those who see the choice as the past versus those who see it as the future. The cool table versus the lame table.
I have the very great fortune to review and discuss some amazing client projects in my role with Happy Cog. In my short time here, I’ve seen some truly ambitious community-based initiatives proposed. Across the board, they each seem to identify an interesting need in the market; but the projects that stand out are those that have thought through cultivating the community they hope to build. A community without members is sad.
Hello.
My name is S. Gif. Pronounced like the peanut butter (it’s French). My friends call me Spacer.
I’m looking for work.
Early in my career, I was just sitting around doing nothing. Just a ghost in the machine, really. You could see right through me.
Last Monday, Happy Cog’s Greg Hoy led a SXSW session about company culture. I wasn’t able to attend SXSW this year, but Leslie Camacho wrote up a detailed summary of the session. Of particular interest to me was the discussion about working remotely.
In the movie business when an actor plays the same role over and over, he is considered “typecast.” A word that carries negative connotations and general disdain. The typecast label implies actors only play one role well, emoting the same expressions throughout projects, and presenting the same personality no matter the situation. Generally, being typecast is not something an actor strives for.
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