+ Today’s gorgeous artwork provided by Gabi Piserchia, available for purchase on Society 6.

+ Randomizer.org picked entrant number 8, Brendan Beale from Australia, as the winner of the Sonnenzimmer poster! Congrats, Brendan! Sonnenzimmer & I are so grateful to all who entered.

+ What it Means to be a Geek offers the freedom to devour your interests with all the enthusiasm you can muster. Screw cool, care instead. I wish I’d read this when I was in high school or college.

+ Had a chuckle over the World’s Longest Invoice that’s been making the rounds this week. Currently the deadbeat clients of the world owe over 10 million to the freelancers who worked with them.

+ 37signals founder Jason Fried wrote an excellent article for Inc. Magazine on why most business writing is awful. Finally someone is stepping up to the plate and explaining the difference between compelling business writing and the watered down jargon-y crap we’re so used to seeing. Also makes an excellent case for using a more informal, conversational tone for online writing, thank goodness, I’ve been pushing for this for years.

+ MOXIE Conference tomorrow! I’m hitting the stage to do a mock-negotiation scenario with financial advisor Linda McCauley on how to wheel and deal like a boss. If you’re going, please say hello!!

Happy weekend! On the dock for next week: co-working tales & behind-the-scenes tour of ze Walker Art Center.

Other than the thinly-veiled hint or two, I’ve neglected to properly mention that (spoiler alert) I’m speaking at Weapons of Mass Creation in Cleveland this June. Further details about the event are still pretty murky at the moment, like uh, what exactly is going to come out of my mouth for the duration of 30 minutes (my vote’s on puppies!). And/or how Chad & I are getting there…At the moment it’s hard to say much else other than, hell yes, this is happening. And I’m really excited and trying my very best not to think about just how many awesome people are coming. (Real talk: it’s enough to make my brain melt. Go look at the line-up if you need more convincing.)

Every year there’s a fresh crop of conferences and seminars all touting to be the Awesomest Event to End All Events (at least since last year!). Most seem a bit grandiose like a traveling circus Freak Show promising thrills of the the century. It’s sometimes hard to believe they’ll really be so amazing, especially since most of them come with price tags that would make the world’s fattest lady seem small. That’s what’s so special about WMC Fest though, it’s as grassroots as they come. Huge effort has been poured into making it one of the most diverse design conferences around (did you check the line-up yet?) making it the type of high brow event that also manages to be come-as-you-are.

WMC takes this grassroots idea to genius with a sponsorship campaign on Kickstarter. It’s nicely produced and doesn’t feel sales-y. It’s just giving people another way to share in event, a small sense of ownership, even if they can’t go. Crowd-sourcing at its best right there, more funds for the funs. Might as well back the project if you’re thinking of going. Pledging $50 comes with the 3-day festival pass. You just bought your ticket in and made some people really freaking happy in the process, WIN!

If you’re already going, speak up and say hey would you! I can’t promise to bring puppies, but there are promises of awesome anyway, that I do know.

+ Been mulling over Jessica Comingore’s post, In Transition. It’s about the struggle between balancing your own business and maintaining an active blog. And while I could fill my own post on this topic alone, it’s also 6pm on Friday and my mind is clearly mush, you should just go read Jessica’s instead. It’s as if she wrote this directly from my own brain anyway, ha.

+ Clever photography series, Things Granny Never Told You About the Internet.

+ How one design conference made itself less of a bro-fest. (Related, I’ll be there. Ahem.)

+ Been jamming to this week’s Mykind Mix from Design For Mankind. Classic Hip Hop, a few new sounds, very danceable and good for general upbeat-ed-ness (shh, that’s totally a word). I’ve started a similar playlist on my Spotify if you want more like this.

+ Typefight: another fun typographic blog pits two custom letterforms against each other & readers get to vote on the winner. Excellent source for unusual typography.

+ Artwork supplied by Australia’s Andrew Frazier.

+ Buy Some Damn Art got a new design! Aw yeah, good work as always, Ghostly Ferns! Artwork is by Kate Pugsley and is the most recent to be showcased on BSDA. So buy some damn art, would ya? Cause prints are great, but originals are better.

+ I’m giving a BIG speech in the coming months and I’m already prepping (gulp!). Scott Berkun’s speaker’s checklist is exhaustive and will prove to be quite useful no doubt. His point about making sure to get directions not just to the venue, but also within the office-park insanity, and within-building insanity made me chuckle. Nothing worse than arriving a few minutes early only to discover you took the wrong elevator and end up tearing through the building to make it to the room on time. (Not that I’ve done that, ahem.) Via Nickd.

+ Wired on why being sleepy or less than sober are good for creativity. Excellently reasoned article, in short it says our brains are able to free-associate more readily during these states which makes total sense to me. There is, obviously, diminishing returns on this phenomena so get it while the getting’s good I guess.

I didn’t think Pinterest was for me until one of my oldest friends, one who knows me better than almost anybody, called me out for not using it. As in, you’re crazy for not taking advantage of this resource…

That was six weeks ago and already it’s grown my traffic by a measurable amount (thanks, analytics). Better still, Pinterest – currently one of the fastest growing sites in the world – ranks as my #3 traffic source, right after organic google searches and direct visits. Pinterest is also ad-free at the moment, though there is the occasional and unintrusive sponsored/for sale pin. On Pinterest, there isn’t obsessive self-broadcasting and self-documentation; it’s just about curating and collecting cool stuff. The tone is more “isn’t this awesome?” rather than “look what I had for lunch.”

My friend, she was right.

Yet, I can’t unplug my brain from the rest of the negativity surrounding Pinterest. Snide pie charts mocking women who use Pinterest, wisecracks and reassertions against Pinterest are regularly cropping up in my feeds, and tech analysts and the media (Reuters + AOL, MSN Money) sure as heck don’t know what to make of the women flocking to this tool. And, as we know about online culture, these types of things can easily trigger and rapidly escalate to a place that is counterproductive. I’ve been watching this unravel, doing nothing with the hope it will blow over. I’m not doing nothing now.

Scoping out Pinterest’s home page, I totally understand the backlash. The topic is the day’s most popular content, pulled out of the context of that user’s particular stream. There’s no theme or structure otherwise. Individually, they aren’t inherently bothersome and most likely represent only a fraction of a user’s tastes. But put them together and collectively they are a hot mess of confusion, which doesn’t reflect the real experience of actually using the site, nor the amount of depth it offers. Instead it reads like a Barbie doll or a Cathy comic: exaggerated, out of proportion, and not indicative of reality. This makes it all too easy for the casual visitor to swiftly make their exit without need of return. Ew, indeed.

Still, every social network has its turn-offs. None is perfect; all have flaws and breakages. But it’s as though Pinterest must be bulletproof in order for it to be taken seriously. Which is silly. If any start-up waited until they were fully formed to launch and build users, there wouldn’t be any of them! That’s simply not how start-up culture works.

All of this boils down to the core idea that the site is somehow less worthwhile because women got to it first. It’s as if Pinterest needs a tagline: “No, really, it’s NOT just for women!” This conversation wouldn’t be happening if Pinterest’s early adopters were dudes, no doubt. Who knows if it would even still exist if Ben Silbermann & his team hadn’t decided to offer the first batch of invites to female design bloggers. Yet, he did and – stop the presses – it’s a big stinking deal because it’s never occurred to the world that a group of women can be early adopters of a technology. And as history tells us, women-folk bucking trends always seems to ruffle feathers.

Sure, Pinterest is dominated by women’s interests right now. Who says the site can’t grow and change? Who says there aren’t some open-minded guys out there who are willing to wade past the make-up tutorials and cupcake food porn to balance the playing field? Curating and sharing content is clearly not a behavior that will go away anytime soon, who knows, maybe Pinterest will fade into the background as similar sites like Gimme Bar and Dropmark emerge. (Both are still in beta, which means they are exclusive, still developing features, and can’t even begin to touch Pinterest’s growth yet.)

I don’t even really care how it plays out, I just don’t want it to be segregated and I don’t want to feel like I have to justify using a tool that is so obviously working for me & many others. Use it or don’t use it, but ragging on what doesn’t work for you is pretty declassé if you ask me. Capisce? Good. Now, how’s about we get back to getting inspired, making stuff, and sharing stuff shall we?

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Like the eye candy? Well, there’s plenty more, I don’t think I need to tell you where. #1 is Tangerine Dream by Jim Lambie, pinned by Chloé Douglas of Plenty of Color, #2 is a vintage tattoo, pinned by My Love For You, #3 is vintage buttons pinned by Christen Carter.

Thanks to Elizabeth Giorgi at The Mary Sue for inspiring this and supplying many of the sources. And also to Kate Singleton for directing my attention to this in the first place. Hugs + high fives, sisters.

It’s baaaaaaack!

I apologize to the non-locals for this post, but Chicago, you are going to this right? Yes, the Show ‘N Tell Show is the world’s only design-improv-talk-n-rock show. With plenty of variety and even the occasional Muppet, it’s guaranteed fun, promises. Come designers, photographers, musicians, comic book heads, style mavens, font lovers, code monkeys, and poster boys. Thursday’s guests will wow you, they’re some of my personal faves: The INDO Projects, Letterform, Paul Octavious, Paul Koob, and a top secret mystery vistor!

Feb 23rd @ Lincoln Hall, $5
8pm, 21+

And, okay, so if you can’t come you should watch this bonus video instead. If you’ve ever been to a design conference, you should also watch this video. If you look closely, you can catch yours truly briefly at 1:45. (Gah, video is so awkward…like hearing yourself on an 80′s answering machine!)