Tag: Design

Isn’t it cool how the words “do” and “doodling” sound very similar? Doodling is doing. For the longest time I’ve wanted to make a webcomic. I have lots of random ideas. They get posted here as blog posts. cool cool.…

Unlikelymoose has pitted pinnacle architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson against each other in a Faceoff Friday. Who will win? My choice is Philip Johnson. To prove my point, I made a collage of all his menacing photos.…

What is your first photo posted to flickr? Here’s all the first flickr photos of my flickr contacts: And my first photo on flickr: I like that it’s a set of stairs that I climb every day. To think those…

Someone asked the following question on the Linked N Chicago group. Fresh Grad Salary Expectations….What are they? You just graduated college… What are you looking for as far as Salary? Would you turn down a salary of 40K? How do…

The Apple Store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago has a 42-inch Panasonic display to show off their Apple TV product. Being curious how flickr photos show up on the Apple TV, I pulled up my Chicago HDR set. I stood…

What’s your choice? Walking up a nice set of granite stairs or up an echoing metal staircase? You couldn’t have more a difference between the two new staircases installed in the Grand red line station. For the commuters from the…

The same artist who did the Chicago Bean (Cloudgate) is designing this super huge sculpture for London and their Olympics in 2012. (via the Guardian) The structure will officially be called the ArcelorMittal Orbit, after steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, the…

Your first name. It’s yours. But it also belongs to millions of other people. Who is the most famous person with your first name? Here’s how to find out. You could just google your name, but then you get a…

My twin brother is going to start spelling the word “gray” as “grey.” I disagree. I’m just not a fan of the spelling of “grey.” Grey eliminates the simplicity of gray. Grey makes gray complicated and stuffy. Gray is simple.…

A few blocks east of Chicago’s hipster neighborhood lies the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse. The Renegade Craft Fair holiday show has been held in this wonderful building the past couple years. It’s so much fun exploring all the rooms. Imagine when…

First Geocities. Eight years later MySpace. What will come next? I’m guessing around 2012 we’ll have another attack of extremely poor design online. But you still have to hand it to Geocities and MySpace. Despite their total ignorance of design,…

Reusable bags are great. No wasted plastic. Reusable bags last. They have a little bit of style. BUT. As a man, I have a hard time finding reusable bags with a color that is not girly. There’s lots of reds,…

Fuzzy Wuzzy, Outer Space, and Bittersweet are just a few of the standard Crayola crayon colors released over the years. These 133 names are considered to be a “core color” by Crayola. Hard to believe that Razzmatazz is considered a…

The U.S. Census Bureau offers free pdf map downloads. Fantastic! I downloaded the county map with the intention of making the county lines thicker than the state lines just to see what would happen if instead of states, we had…

Based in Chicago Half Letter Press publishes and distributes booklets about collaborative and experimental artwork. I recently discovered their shop at halfletterpress.com and ordered a bunch of books–for cheap! Here’s the message I wrote in part of my online order:…

Pilcrow Lit Fest has a lot going on this Saturday May 23. Matilda‚Äôs: 3101 N. Sheffield and Trader Todd‚Äôs: 3216 N. Sheffield, Chicago There‚Äôs a ton of free panels and workshops. http://pilcrowlitfest.com/panels.html For every time slot there are three different…

Here are my notes from the Society of News Design meetup on May 16, 2009. (Pictured above is Theresa Carter, Audarshia Townsend, Whet Moser, Brad Flora, and Jeff Daugherty on the Social Media Roundtable) ———————— Matt Mansfield (president of SND)…

Seven aimbots are standing ready and welcome when you create a new AIM account. It’s a little bizzare to sign onto your new instant message account and you see: ‚Ä¢¬†Gossip, Gossip, Gossip 24-7 ‚Ä¢ Live Greene ‚Ä¢ Moviefone ‚Ä¢ My…

I like how the Millennium Park logo treats the MP letters. My name is Matthew Paul Maldre. I greatly appreciate the MP treatment. That got me curious who has matthewpaul.com. He’s a great web designer. I sent him the following…

AIGA is a great resource for graphic designers. But the annual membership fee is $315. Ouch. $315 a year. I recently wrote a letter to the AIGA asking if they have considered lowering their annual fee. This isn’t an exciting…

Here’s the story of how I captured the 42nd most interesting photo taken on flickr for January 22, 2009. While sitting at work in the Tribune Tower, the TV was tuned into WGN’s coverage of the Inauguration. As I listen…

Image from shutterstock.com Sporting events 2008: Summer Olympics 2009: The second World Baseball Classic, The Women’s Professional Soccer league will debut Winner: 2008. Nothing trumps the summer Olympics Politics 2008: Presidential election 2009: Nothing Winner: 2008. Obama! Chinese Year 2008:…

In high school and college, I made mix tapes from recording the radio. Occasionally there might be a few songs mixed in from albums borrowed from the Oak Lawn Library. For context, I graduated high school in 1993, college in…

Chicago residents get creative with an empty lot by building rock sculptures.

The following question is from Girl: “If understanding was a color what color would it be?” I would say gray for its ability to take on a multitude of colors around it. Gray can take on other ideas surrounding it,…

Someone on reddit linked over to my Biden-Palin word cloud and gave me 4,400 visitors. Interesting that out of the 5,406 views (an addition 1,000 came from places other than reddit), this image has gotten only one favorite. I wonder…

A random snail mail letter was sent to me from a six-year-old thinking I work at the corporate headquarters of McDonalds. He has some incredible ideas for a McDonalds playground design with crazy tubes, slides, and mazes of various levels.…

Let’s say you want to know which of your friends are fans of the tv show “Lost.” Just search for “lost” and hit the “people” tab, and it will bring up all your friends who are fans of Lost. Recently…

Here’s a letter of praise I just wrote to Walgreens: Hi there, I am a HUGE fan of Walgreens. The rebates, the employees, and the general Walgreens love. My comments here touch on these points, and I even offer some…

Facebook retooled their website and totally changed the user experience. Now users have to click through to several pages to read what used to be on one page. You know why? To increase pageviews. The formula for why facebook did…

I’d love to see all the words that have origins in the 20th century. All the entries would be sorted by year. Random House’s little online section is cute, New Words: Sixty years of new words. It lists a handful…