The end result is now live on our about page and we couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. This final cut, however, is a big departure from our initial, brew-influenced, concept of the “Digital Lumberjack”. The basic metaphor was we were honest, hard working guys that tackled big problems by chipping away at small tasks. Our studio also resembles a cabin, so there’s that too.

The lumberjack idea didn’t quite pan out but we ended up getting some pretty silly video and it was fun to spend a day in the hills. Here’s a rough cut from the original concept.

Obviously, their product is a unique one; but it’s also difficult to market appropriately because their user base is so vast. It’s literally a “K–PHD” group of people ranging from young children to professional chemists, mathematicians, educators and researchers. It’s a toy, a tool, a culture, an obsession – it’s Zometool. We can’t share too much of what we’re working on right now since it’s still in development but here are a few squished page templates of what’s to come.

Generally, when I hear words like “human resources” or “corporate culture” I immediately have flashbacks of cubicles and emotionless HR personnel with an affinity towards Comic Sans and fuzzy sweaters. I think it’s safe to assume I’m not the only one who feels this way. What’s really cool about RoundPegg, as a brand, is their understanding of people and culture. They use friendly, human elements throughout their site and really focus on keeping things fun and inviting. The awesome video on their homepage is a great example of this. When you go through their site or use their products nothing really feels like “work” it’s just friendly and engaging. Which is precisely the experience you hope to deliver for someone that’s filling out an online company culture survey.

Part of their process is assessing which style best fits a person across three unique segments: culture, personality and communication. RoundPegg developed a clever system to communicate this visually through branded icons that could be used individually or in a group to create a custom badge that would easily identify a users culture, personality and communication style. Culture types are designated with various types of headwear. Personality is displayed through unique shirts and outerwear, and communication is defined by eyewear. All together there are 14 unique icons to represent a users own culture, personality and communication styles.

This was a really fun project and we’re really excited to see these icons in production when RoundPegg launches their redesign later this fall.

What’s really cool about this extension is it’s built for the mobile first design process and prevents mobile devices from downloading desktop assets by using a tiny screen’s stylesheet as its starting point. More on 320 and up at Stuff and Nonsense and the project page.

With only a few months down, 2011 is shaping up to be another significant year with some hefty changes already underway. A few weeks ago my partner and close friend, Brett Duncavage, decided he had grown tired of being independent and wanted to pursue a more stable position as an in-house developer somewhere. Obviously, I was bummed to hear this news. I’ve worked with Brett for years. We’re close friends, our families get together on the weekends every so often for trips and vacations, etc. When it comes down to it, if you aren’t happy with something you should change it. Plain and simple. That’s exactly what Brett has decided to do.

There are no hard feelings between us and I certainly understand where he’s coming from. Running your own business isn’t for everyone. It’s hard work and the ebb and flow of client services can really take a toll on you. Especially when you have an entire family to support. I know I’ve certainly had my fair share of sleepless nights over the years. As of this moment Brett is currently on the prowl for a new job and I wish him the best of luck. I know he will do great things wherever he ends up deciding to go.

With one friend out the door, serendipitously, another close friend has stepped in. Over the past several months my buddy, Dan Weaver, had been planning to leave a full-time position to start his own independent development business. I reached out to Dan shortly after Brett decided to leave and we got together for lunch. We had a couple pints and talked about our experiences and personal goals for our respective businesses and realized we shared many similar ambitions. By the end of our lunch we had reached a mutual conclusion: we needed to join forces and become partners!

I’m happy to report that as of March 1, Dan Weaver has officially joined me as a partner at Hold Fast Creative. Dan is a mean hand at Ruby on Rails and loves getting dirty with front-end development. He’s passionate about client services and he is completely dedicated to his craft. Dan and I share the same goals for this business and I’m really excited to see what we can do together in 2011.

The AuraViva iPhone app lets you login to your existing AuraViva account or register a new account and start your free trial of the AuraViva service. You can access your dashboard, modify or update your profiles, enter your data on the go, setup app notifications for key reminders in your agenda and also track your progress with mobile optimized graph data. If you are interested in losing weight, increasing your energy and performance or simply curious how to incorporate circadian synchrony into your daily life; download the app and give AuraViva a go!

What’s that you say? It’s not really the cover, it’s only a square inch in the top left corner? It takes talent, determination and a laundry list of professional accolades to be taken seriously? Well I got news for you, Jack! You obviously have never attempted to drink beer whilst wearing a tri-colored Hulkamaniac ’stache at MXoN.

We totally made the cover.
%#&@ YEAH!

Quinn Acoustics, as a brand, represents quality, innovation and value. This was something we kept a close eye on when designing the logo and user interface of the website. Designing the Quinn Acoustics logo required some special considerations: not only did the final logo design have to work well online and on various printed collateral; their logo also needed to stand its ground when applied to the physical product by method of sublimation, adhesion or, occasionally, when stamped into rubber moldings.

Once the logo and website design was complete, Be Good Not Bad did all of the front-end and CMS development, launching the site at the beginning of November. If you are in the market for affordable, high-end speakers and subs for your ride, check out quinnacoustics.com.

Wow. I’m pretty pumped right now! I worked with AccuTerra to design the user interface of this award-winning iPhone application and to see it win Best iPhone OS 3.0 Beta App is truly amazing. I can’t say I’m not at all surprised. The fine folks at AccuTerra have developed a stellar application that is truly unlike any other mobile application available today. AccuTerra for the iPhone is a hiking GPS application that works even when your phone doesn’t get a signal. You can learn more about this application at mobile.accuterra.com.

We are absolutely thrilled to be working with AuraViva on this project! They have a great offering, exciting product roadmap and are all around very smart, friendly folks. A dream client by any definition. This large and challenging project will require everything we offer: web design, custom web development, database design, user interface design and mobile application development. Over the next several months Brett and I will be hard at work doing what we love: design and development for web and mobile, and we couldn’t be more excited about it.

Brett Duncavage has been writing code professionally for over 10 years, most recently as a freelance code warrior through his web and mobile development company, X Forward. Along the way he has become well versed in mobile technologies such as BREW, iPhone, Android, and Celltop; and various web technologies such as PHP, Python, Java, and Django. Brett has also been known to crush code for custom Facebook applications as well.

All of this knowledge combines like Voltron so he can provide end-to-end solutions for world-class digital products. Brett becoming an official member of Hold Fast Creative is a major win for the company and our clients, and will greatly enhance our web design, web development, user interface design and mobile application development services.

Sound familiar? I know I’ve muttered those lame ass excuses a time or two before. To be totally honest, I’ve found myself deflecting opportunities to have fun with the excuse of being “too busy” for years now.

At first I didn’t notice. I was too focused with getting my career rolling. Shortly after that I woke up and realized I was married. Then I had a kid. Now there’s two kids, holy shit! I definitely can’t take a break now, I have to work to keep this all afloat. What happened? How did I end up here? You would be amazed how fast life can move sometimes. No matter how hard I worked I never seemed to finally “get there” and resume a normal pace. With every milestone accomplished there was always another to take it’s place. I realized I had become one of those adults who chooses to work their life away. When I was younger I had a name for those types of unhappy people: assholes.

Last month I decided it was time to slow down, get selfish and quit being an asshole. Now this isn’t a quarter-life crisis or anything like that. I adore my family and I love running my own design studio; absolutely! However, those were not the type of things I would day dream about as a kid. What I did fantasize about was making the main event at Washougal and pulling a holeshot at Glen Helen. That’s right, I’m talking about motocross.

I started out racing 80’s when I was 14 and kept at it all the way through college. For me, there isn’t any greater feeling than riding with friends on a sunny afternoon. It’s my thing. It is what I am passionate about. All the reasons for selling my race bikes years ago still exist today: I can’t afford to get hurt right now, I don’t have any time to ride, I should probably save some money, etcetera; but it didn’t matter. Riding has always made me happy. Recently I decided it was time to get back in action and, on a whim, I went out and bought a new race bike.

One month in and I can already see a huge change in my life. I’m not stressed out when I am at home with my family. My creativity and productivity have skyrocketed at the office and most importantly, I’m happy. So if you shelved a personal passion for whatever reason, it’s time to put it back in your life. Don’t wait another day. Dust off your cleats, get the band back together. Do whatever it is you used to do and remember what it’s like to have fun again.

The amount of available panels to check out on any given day is absolutely overwhelming. The mobile web application, Sitby.us, that was created by Naz Hamid of Weightshift was a huge help. I was able to sift through the available panels for every time block of every day and mark anything of interest to my personal schedule. This was especially handy for figuring out where to go at 9:30am after retiring from a Hampton Inn second floor balcony whiskeython™ at 5:00am.

Of all the panels I attended at SXSW this year, there was one in particular that really excited me; HTML5: Tales From the Development Trenches by Bruce Lawson. Bruce gave a great broad stroke review on the events that led up to the creation of HTML5, what exactly HTML5 aims to achieve and who is making it happen. For anyone involved in any aspect of creating anything for the internet, you really should read up on what Mr. Lawson has been writing about. A powerful and truly device agnostic internet really is just around the corner and we should all get busy with making this happen!

Outside of taking in presentations, I spent a fair amount of time exploring the city, meeting up with old friends and making a few new ones as well. I’m normally rather shy when it comes to meeting new people. If I don’t have a friend to make an introduction, I will generally stick to the sidelines and then spend the rest of the night regretting a missed opportunity to share a pint with a personal design hero. This year I made a conscious effort to break out of my shell and get social. I was pleasantly surprised that everyone I spoke with was extremely friendly and welcoming to conversation; even those snooty, elitist rock star designers everyone’s always complaining about.

The ExpressionEngine community was out in full force as well. I was blown away with how engaging everyone was at the EECI party. It seemed everyone there was hellbent on making connections, sharing advice on EE, business and methods to succeed with running an agency. I met a ton of really nice and talented folks and it really made me appreciate being a part of the ExpressionEngine community.

Speaking of nice and talented folks, I would like to call out one individual who takes the cake: Mathew Hoy. I had the pleasure of meeting Mathew for the first time this year and he is an absolute machine! I’m certain he is capable of transcending space and time because he attended just about every panel, conducted multiple interviews for his podcast on a daily basis; and still managed to find time to attend parties and then blog about everything, every day! I should also point out that Mr. Hoy is a Canadian and likes to give ‘er!

I would say that SXSW met my expectations and definitely lived up to the hype. I made it back home with a renewed excitement for getting back to work and focusing on being a better designer and developer. Thanks to all of you responsible for making this trip to Austin so much fun!

This particular campaign, as is any campaign on the 90999 short code, was made possible by the good folks over at mGive. I worked with the founders of mGive a couple years ago and helped design their logo and website, and remember the simple utility in what they were hoping to create: The easiest way to raise money for a cause. If you stop and think about it, it’s amazing that SMS donations are not more popular in the United States. Everyone has a mobile phone that requires some method of payment for monthly use. Everyone uses SMS to communicate and receive notifications and alerts. People are comfortable texting to short codes for acquiring mobile content to their handsets. Why not use SMS as a donation platform?

This is exactly what mGive has created, an SMS donation platform that enables qualified 501c3 Non-Profit Organizations with the ability to raise funds for their cause through text messaging. It’s unfortunate that it took a massive tragedy to bring the benefit of SMS donations to the lime light, but through the unified efforts of many people around the world; mobile donations generated more than $25,000,000 in support for Haiti. In a brave new world, it’s comforting to see that all this technology really can make the world a better place.

The new venture started out as planned and it was everything I had hoped it would be. I was working with a lightweight team of ninjas, free to motor away on projects without the constraints of working within a large organization. We were driven, we believed in what we were doing and most of all, we were happy.

I’ll spare the details, but a few things beyond our control changed the focus of our company. We addressed the change head on and were optimistic with the new direction. Bit by bit everything we enjoyed began to slip away and we found ourselves in a very different situation altogether. As much as I tried to keep a brave face and convince myself I was happy, it just became more apparent to my friends and family that this just wasn’t the case.

Today I find myself making the same decision again. I know what makes me happy. I know I’ll be wasting my time if I don’t pursue it. This time I’m not jumping ship to start something new. I’m jumping ship to cut the distractions from what I’ve been doing my entire career: designing. So here’s to saying “fuck it” and taking another chance at being happy.

I’m going the way of the hired gun. Wish me luck.
If you see me selling fruit off I-70 in 6 months, please be kind and buy a bushel.