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The Steets - Blinded By The Lights

I get to the office today and, for some reason, when I was looking at my iTunes library, I went straight to The Streets. There was a time when I played A Grand Don’t Come for Free non-stop. Driving to work, at work, driving home, making dinner.

I haven’t listened to it much in the past few years - I think I overplayed it then - but if I were to have made a ranking of my top albums from the aughts, this would’ve been top 3 without a doubt.

Also, Happy Nerd Christmas!

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MacView. The personal library on the Behance Network

If Apple were to release something like this next week, I would not be disappointed. And that’s saying something after all this hype… (via)

reblogged from jaredigital

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Meet our new dog Logan. Yes, we own a chihuahua. No, I still can’t believe it. If you had me or Alexis make a list of the top 5 dog breeds we didn’t want, chihuahua would’ve been number one on both of our lists. But this little guy, he’s freakin’ crazy. He’s not yappy at all, he doesn’t jump at all, he plays with Great Danes and Golden Labs with no fear. He’s not at all what I thought a chihuahua was and, thus, we brought him home.

He’s from the mean streets of Ft. Wayne, Indiana where he was a stray. He was sent to a kill shelter there and when he was next in line, a rescue here in Detroit picked him up. He’s been living with a foster family since Christmas and now he’s found his forever home with us.

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One of the great things about Detroit is the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). Growing up, my dad and I would always go the final Sunday it was open. We’d be downtown at 8am to miss the crowds. We’d walk through each exhibit checking out the new car models and collecting brochures. We spend a few hours at the show and then grab some lunch on the way home. Once we got home, we’d sit in front of the TV, usually watching the NFL game that was on, and sort through the handouts we collected. This was our tradition. We did it every year.

I remember being constantly amazed and intrigued with the concept cars on display. The Pontiac Sunfire was the car I wanted most in the world (it was a concept car at the time, and I was about 10). I remember almost flipping over a Suzuki Sidekick when I was 15 (my friend who had come with us thought it was the perfect time to show how light the car was). I remember jumping into every car on the floor and imaging myself driving down 96 in it.

Today, these tickets fell into my lap. They are for the black tie event that officially kicks off the Auto Show. Alexis and I will be there tomorrow night, dressed to the nines, drinking champagne, rocking out to The Romantics and viewing the cars of tomorrow. I just hope it can live up to those Sundays I spent with my dad.

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Priori Acute is my early leader for typeface of the year. This could be one of the most interesting faces I’ve seen in a long time.

Priori Acute is the latest addition to the Priori family. It is the result of a series of experiments into three-dimensional letter form design inspired by 19th Century display and artistic printing types. However, instead of simply adding drop shadows or fake relief to create the illusion of depth, the designers at Jonathan Barnbrook’s studio took their cue from such diverse sources as the angles on the Stealth bomber and the visual conceit in the work of the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher.

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Flickr Flow is a color calendar of sorts. It plots the colors of photographs taken on Boston Common. Summer is at the top of this wheel, winter at the bottom (thus all the white and snow).

Using an algorithm developed for the WIRED Anniversary visualization, our software calculated the relative proportions of different colors seen in photos taken in each month of the year, and plotted them on a wheel.

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Anonymous asked: If you were a crayon in a box of 64, what color would you be?

I was always a fan of the yellows since it is my favorite color. Lemon Yellow was great but Sunflower was probably more universal. So let’s go with that… and also, my box of 64 better have the crayon sharpener on the back. Those were the best.

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You've got questions...

…I’ve got answers. And I’m giving them away for free. Hop on this bandwagon people. You don’t want to be left behind.

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Happy Holidays from the wife and I! Since I can’t send you all a card, here’s a digital proof of the one we sent out this year.

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Dear guy who contacted me - and probably 100 other designers - today via Haystack saying you can help get design work,

You were so nice and generous in your email, I’m going to take the time and respond to you in a public forum. Let’s begin shall we?

I want to talk to you maybe today if you’re available about what you do with web design.

Well, I create revolutionary web design. That’s what I “do.” Also, commas are great.

You obviously design phenomenally rich websites for your customers. They employed you for a reason so they can get their name out there and get visible eyes on their site.

Wow! This is such a generic - while still flattering - assessment of my abilities. The websites I design are “phenomenally rich” so thanks for noticing. You probably spent a good amount of time on my company website to come to that conclusion. I bet my customers - or clients as we in the professional design business call them - do have “visible eyes.” Most people have visible eyes. Good assumption.

The next logical step would be to get the right targeted audience to that site.

Wait… which site? The one for my customers with visible eyes?

I think that’s where my Search Engine Marketing company would come in. I use to work at Google and Microsoft before starting this company for 8 years.

It took you 8 years to start your company? Really? It took me a phone conversation with my lawyer and a few John Hancock’s to start mine. Total set up time: 2 hours. Who was your lawyer?

I also appreciate the capitalization of the term “Search Engine Marketing”. It kind of like referring to “God” or “Earth.” It’s simply that important.

Our clients need web work all the time and we would like to refer that business to you. I think that our SEM and Social Media services could provide that right targeted audience to your clients and it would give you an opportunity to have another revenue stream for you and another offer for your clients which will in turn make them happy and keep them around.

I’m going to let the grammatical mistakes in second sentence go. They are too many to actually respond to but I think I get what you’re laying down. By talking to you, I can increase my client base to include your “customers.” Looking at your portfolio, there is some pretty impressive work so, of course, I’m extremely interested in your client base!

We would have a great synergy…

I’ve been looking for some great synergy lately! Maybe we could leverage AJAX and B2B solutions to improve our clickthrus in the blogosphere. Our touch points would incentivize and evangelize our social media consumers, making us thought leaders with our stakeholders. We should take this thorough and well-conceived conversation offline though.

…amongst the two companies since you already have the relationship with the client to promote SEM business that we can mutually benefit, and we have the relationship with our SEM clients that definitely need new site revamps and new site work done.

Ohhh, I get it. I can become a salesman for your company. If I hand over my client rolodex, you’ll send them a well thought-out and personalized email, similar to this one, promoting yourself while dropping my name as a reference. That sounds completely legit.

Seeing as this email was so unique to my own abilities, I fully understand that I will become your “go-to” freelancer… not just one in a stable of hundreds you’ve sent this exact email to. I mean, since I handed over my entire client list and all…