I should just write. I should. Stop over-thinking it. Just….do….it. Okay, go. Now. I’m going. I’m starting, picking up the thread not knowing where exactly I left off or how to start or fill you in. Life doesn’t follow such a tidy narrative though, so I guess it’s okay if blogs don’t either. In an email from my friend Kate Singleton of Buy Some Damn Art / Art Hound said, any blog posts are good. Even if they are sputtering and sporadic.

I came down with shingles in August, with my recovery lasting well into September. The only explanation for why, in my case, was months of prolonged stress. While the virus wasn’t terribly painful – I was lucky in that respect, but it did cause 4 days of temporary blindness in my right eye, many doctors visits (thank goodness I have insurance), medicines, and strict orders to take it easy. Very easy. Okay message received, universe: clearly it’s time to make some changes. What changes exactly, I’m still thinking about, but I’m happy to report that I’m physically back-to-normal. After taking a significant break from maintaining any kind of personal work – ie this blog or anything else, I’m finding my way back to it. I get some flickers of inspiration here and there, lukewarm at best, so I know I’m not totally broken. But I knew travel would speed things up, and it just so happened that Chad & I had booked crazy discounted tickets to San Francisco way back in the spring so the timing was perfect.

The biggest reason for the trip was Tony & Kat’s wedding, but there were also self-assigned work: museums, galleries, literature, hiking, a golden visit to the Pacific ocean, a tour of artist Lisa Congdon’s studio, and coffee with Makeshift Society owner, the masterful Rena Tom. Our adventures took us all over the Bay area, on Bart, MUNI, ferry, car, bicycle, streetcar, taxi, and of course on foot. We saw more organic produce at the Berkeley Bowl than I’ve ever seen in one place before (Whole Foods included), drove legendary Highway 1 at sunset, noshed on a late night In-N-Out burger – animal style, dove into rich gourmet bowls of mac ‘n cheese at Homeroom, desserted at Tartine, and marveled at the highly technical event that is parallel parking on SF’s steep hills. And so much art – art, and people doing interesting things it was a feast for my brains too.

Thank you, California friends, new and old. The way you brought us so generously into your lives was all of the soul fuel I could’ve asked for. I’m looking for all the reasons I can to make my return and see some more of you soon.

1. Muir Beach Lookout. 2. Awesome logo on a Bay Ferry boat. 3. San Francisco’s literary festival, LitQuake plays hosts to comedian/novelists, David Handler and Andrew Sean Greer. Recap of the event here by my friend Margaret Edith Maggie who also kindly lodged us for a few nights. 4. I got chills seeing this couple unknowingly mimicking a massive Margaret Kilgallen painting at SFMOMA. 5. Woodland elf? Nope, it’s photographer Ben Speckmann in Muir Woods! 6. Lisa Congdon fans my already major lust for Scandianvia with tales her three week solo trip to Iceland, Sweden, and Copenhagen, and how it’s inspired her work. 7 & 8. Lettering inspiration dialed up to 11 at highly traditional custom sign-painting shop Golden West Sign Arts in Berkeley. 9. The ocean was so cold my toenails turned blue! Ah!!! Okay, not really. Just seeing if you were still paying attention.

All photos by me or Chad on iPhones or the Canon S100.

Turns out saying no to projects, unnecessary obligations, figuring out how to clear the plate, etc, is really hard because it means hitting pause for a second to zoom out to assess the bigger picture. Which can be nerve-wracking and if you’re like me, you’ll find all the excuses you can to avoid looking under the hood. If you know how to take the right approach this process doesn’t have to be overwhelming, but instead will define and shape your pursuits better. I realized this was the talk that I would’ve wanted to hear at WMC Fest, which also meant I had do it myself.

Slowly and with some effort, I offer you this: How to Get your Hustle Straight and your Commitments Sorted.

It has five parts. Just like the hand. Or hand turkey, rather. Why the turkey? Well, turns out people have been using their hands to draw bird shapes since prehistoric times, and you have your hands with you all the time making it harder to forget what your own hand turkey is. And, finally if you think about it, the hand turkey is probably one of the first commissioned project we receive as children from our Kindergarten teachers.

Pinky finger: your brand
What’s your personal brand? Even though brand is such a bizarre, slippery word, we all have one. It’s the code that comes from a deeper place that drives your life and your work. So regularly taking stock of your personal practices, how you want your life to be, and then, key part, make them official in some way that’s meaningful to you. Whatever it is, you have to do something with this knowledge. Then revisit this statement, project, THING that you’ve created for yourself when you’re faced with a prospect that challenges your brand or tried to modify how you work. Sometimes these challenges will be good and useful, but other times it’s not going to be a good fit. Without a strong sense of your brand you will have a harder time telling them apart.

The example I gave on how I first discovered my own brand and my process what my And, the Typeface project which I did in 2009-2010. How it told me something about myself that I recognized as powerful, something I’ve clung to and cultivated as I’ve continued on with my work. You can see more about this project here and here if you like.

And here is the brand statement I’m using to remind myself of myself these days. This changes, all the time, but it’s important to have a working model at hand (pun intended), always:

“I refuse to settle for design as merely decoration. My best work comes when I run my own process with clients & collaborators who foster progressive values and cultural growth that resonates with me. I also require time to maintain a blog because of the empowerment it gives me & my readers.”

Ring finger: the hustle.
You could have the most amazing brand, the most touching origin story, the best sense of where you want to go, but none of it matters unless you’re getting your work and your message in front of the right people. Are you offering it to the right places? How effective are you in getting clients to trust you and your process? Are you working with people who value your time and budgets? Are you leveraging your network enough? Not only in terms of finding new opportunities, but being aware of other people’s skills and strengths, which is something I wasn’t taking into account until recently. It’s much easier to pass on a project if you know exactly the right person who can take it and really make it sing. Knowing the right people to share my workload when it becomes too much is priceless.

Middle finger: Cash money, hoes.
There’s a reason this is the middle finger, because we all hate to talk about the M word. Which is so ridiculous because it owns way more of our lives than we like to admit. And if you’re lacking in the department it’s going to hurt, big time. This is becomes even more key when you’re self-employed, so working on this gradually year by year will only pad your purse further. Obvious things like know what’s coming in the books and what’s going out, but did you know you might actually have to define what a profit is for yourself? I didn’t. This year I called up my Dad, he often advises me on business-y things, and gleefully announced I’d made a profit after filing my taxes with my accountant. He congratulated me and then asked what my profit margin was, what percentage I kept. Pulled up short, I realized I didn’t know how to answer, and what I’d really meant to say was – hey! – I didn’t record a loss this year. Not the same as making a profit, genius. I realized I didn’t even know what kind of profit I wanted to make. You can make 1¢ as profit and it’s still a profit, but I’m sure you’d agree that’s a pretty pitiful goal. In the end, knowing how your financials stack up makes it much easier to not let money dictate which projects to accept and which are no-goes.

This goes hand-in-hand with having well-honed negotiation skills. If you can talk about budgets comfortably it’s a a HUGE trust selling point because it reveals key information on both sides. But you have to practice doing this, practice different scenarios, practice addressing red flags. Till you are blue in the face, I’m not kidding. It sounds cheesy, but find someone to role play it out. A few minutes of private awkwardness will save you, and earn you, so much more dough. Frankly, wheeling and dealing can be fun if you let it.

Pointer finger: time management
This is forever going to be gray area because it’s impossible to account for all the possibilities for loss. Forgotten laptop power cords, traffic, all the admin parts of our days, most email, one more quick revision, surprise last minute meetings. Human-freaking-error. And the more on your plate the more complex your Jenga game is, meaning the harder you have to work to keep everything moving, the trickier it is to rebuild if something shifts or gets held up.

At some point taking on more things means you’ll drop off in other areas. What are you prepared to give up if you bring something new into the mix? Something will drop out guaranteed, and you won’t always know what until it happens, so it’s better to redirect if before even getting to that spot.

Keeping a constant eye on my calendar and my to do lists the only common theme I’ve been able to assess from all of the time management apps and programs out there. However you chose to break up the hours in the day with the tasks you must accomplish, it’s a universal challenge so you better pay attention to what process works for you.

And finally. TAKE TIME OFF. I’m saying this to myself constantly because I find it so hard to allow. Time off is non-negotiable, end of story. Innovation is impossible when you’re exhausted. Your work will never grow if you don’t allow time to just be. I thought I could get by for years on one day off a week, tried for years to make that work, but it’s just not enough. I still don’t always GET a proper weekend, at least not yet, but at least I now I give myself a little bit of a break at some point later on when I can. In short, it’s impossible to work too much without consequences. There will be signs if you’re pushing too hard. Don’t ignore them.

Thumb: the work.
You’d think this would be the first finger, the most important one. Because without the work, the actual products or services you offer, there’s nothing right? And we’d all just love to be doing more of it, because really, it’s why we got into this in the first place right? Well, turns out, it’s influenced so intensely by the other four fingers. If you’re off your brand, you’re going to end up doing work that means nothing to you, if you aren’t working with people who pay you properly, if you have trouble managing your time, etc, these will all cut into your actual time to make things you love. So the more you continue to tinker with your four fingers means the better you’ll get at creating a set-up that makes you the happiest and the most productive.

This my friends, your five fingers, is the Guide to No. It’s meant for you to tailor and adjust to your own specific needs, revising it as you go. If you’re driving on a long road in the dead of night, the Hand Turkey is your headlights, showing the path ahead. If constructed carefully you can use to illuminate the dead ends, the wrong turns, potholes. It may not be quite as exact at having a GPS to use…But honestly? Doing things, doing life perfectly is a bummer. Perfectionism is kind of a jerk, no one wants to invite him to their pool party.

Annnnnd there you have it, or at dispelled version of it anyway. There were a LOT of questions after I finished which is always a great sign, and I know you’re going to have some too. Post in the comments and I will dispense my thoughts.

Otherwise, this year’s greatest hits video of the event just dropped today, feels like it all over again!

{Image credits: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 }

Gush, gush, gush, awesome unicorns and sprinkles, gushing inspiration overload, tasty beer, hot dogs, gush. My brain is a mush of gush. I expected to have a blast of course, but I didn’t expect to be absolved of all my design angst and stress about what I do. I lost all of that and the desire to make took its place, which is priceless. Too bad we can’t go to these things all the time so this feeling never has to wear off! If you go to no other design festivals next year, make it WMC Fest. Come as you are learning & inspiration is the best kind if you ask me. Plus I can’t emphasize the cheap factor enough, best bang for your buck in living memory.

+ Gear, cards, and many Tattlys from the likes Jennifer Daniel, James White, Vaughn Fender, Joseph Hughes, To The Moon Studios, and Tuesday Bassen. Somehow I missed out on the festivale goody bag though, whoops. I did pick up the ticket for it, but I promptly lost it and got distracted by awesomeness at every turn so I never remembered to go back. Ditto for the photo booth too.

+ If you live in the Kent area you have to go to Hollo’s Papercraft. Man, what I wouldn’t give to have a place like this closer to Chicago. Aisles upon aisles of delicious papers, materials, party gear, art supplies at super duper prices. Same goes for Cleveland’s thrifting, I hear it’s some of the finest. We did stop at the used office supply shop on Detroit Avenue near the festival & found a few goodies. That’s where I found the wooden pushpins for $1!

+ Great talks over all, but there were a couple of designers who gave real estate tours of their work. I guess it bears repeating once again, you shouldn’t only show your portfolio when giving a talk. I know how to use google dudes, I can look your work up if I want to. Doing this is a lot like a looking at slides from someone else’s vacation; it’s boring after 10 minutes. Interspersing fart jokes between slides is cute at first, but it’s a crutch and doesn’t add any depth. Up your game. Plus, winging it up there is insulting to the speakers like me who lost more than a little sleep and a few tears while putting our talks together. Bravado is crap on stage. Bring the real, please.

+ Happy Dog has better hot dogs than all of Chicago (ok, almost, Hot Doug’s excluded).

+ I was sad that so many people left early! I know, I know extenuating circumstances blah-de-blah, they do happen. But unless you’re Austin Kleon with a pre-scheduled cross-country book tour or a similar airtight alibi I find it hard to buy other reasons for leaving early. Trekking all the way there only to miss out on learning is like cutting school at recess. Kate Bingaman-Burt’s final keynote brought the house down with a full standing ovation, I wouldn’t have missed that if you paid me. And in fact, I lost billable hours because this meant I had to take Monday off as well, but don’t care, worth it. This holds especially true for speakers & the designers who were displaying work. If you got a free pass to the conference or an honorarium for attending, you better bend over backward to attend everything you can.

+ Cleveland streetwear brand iLTHY blogged some of the street style from the fest, look how we love polka dots!

+ Jen Myers‘ talk on women developers was enlightening. Especially because it stirred quite the rumor mill, which is sign she gave a great talk. Engaging rumors online is a messy business, and generally not worth addressing, but in short, a few bros said her talk was nonsense and women don’t face discrimination when it comes to design or development. OH HA HA HA. HA. HA. Are we still here discussing this? Really? It’s actually probably better that I didn’t hear these things in person because I would not have been able to resist sticking my neck out. I wonder if this was stated in male-only company too. Pfffft. If you can’t or don’t say your opinion in front of the people you’re knocking it means you’re not giving us the chance to refute, and that right there is active discrimination. Congrats on proving that this inequity exists one more time.

+ Other people I got to hang out with who didn’t speak: Veronica & Beth Corzo-Duchardt, Jacqui Oakley & Poly Studio, Caroline Sewell, Jessi Arrington, Jason James, Troy DeShano, Mikey Burton, Fringe Focus, Max Temkin, Nick D, Jana Kinsman, Elaine Chernov, Mig Reyes & Kik McNally and all the rest of amazing Chicago designers who came and offered their support. It gave me much courage seeing so many friends in the audience while I was talking.

+ Finally a HUGE, huge thank you to Joseph Hughes & Jeff Finley for organizing this and giving me the chance to take the stage. You obviously know how to throw it down. It’s no small thing to create so much community motivation. You are the very heart of Cleveland.

+ Now for the trickier next step: recapping my actual talk. I said some important things and I want to make sure that even the people who went get a chance to take it in. Stay tuned!! It’s in the works, hopefully with video.

I have precisely 15 minutes to push out this missive, so I’m just going for it! Here’s what happened in the last month.

Chad & I went to Minnesota to hang out with my fam and do some co-working at Loose Cubes. But we also got a really stellar behind-the-scenes tour of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Designer Dante Carlos showed us their incredible library, archives, design offices, and introduced us to the rest of their design team. It was so incredible! I could have spent the whole afternoon pawing aroung in their library. Dante had the librarian pull some handmade pop-up books by one of my long time favorite artists, Tauba Auerbach. Wow, right? We even made the Walker blog too!

+ I started working with Aeolidia, I’m designing websites with them on the reg now.

+ Personal milestone: I turned 30! Pie-themed party (with requisite pie-eating contest, of course) was held at my co-working space Rational Park. (Semi-related, also designed & built Rational Park’s website with my super hero studiomates this month. Adding this ‘un to my portfolio, yepper.) Even though I’m thrilled to be 30 and enjoyed the heck out of my birthday, this milestone hasn’t come without some challenges, not going to lie. Growing pains as I spent these weeks not only evaluating myself but every aspect of my business, my process. Checking myself trying to make sure I’ve got my goals in focus. It’s exhausting, but man, so worth it. This is definitely to blame for my hard fall off the social media train too. And once you break the habit it’s really hard to get back into it, so I’m a bit breathless as if I were taking up running again. Plus, for the first time I noticed I had stage fright about what to post, which I admit is suuuuper lame, but there you have it. Blogger identity crisis. Progress is being made though, starting in five days, when I’ll be presenting about this exact process, on stage in front of several hundred people at WMC Fest. Either way I’m putting myself out there then, so I might as well bring it to this space too you know?

Bring it, Cleveland. Bring it, internet. Let’s tangle.

I’ve been wanting to explore Detroit for ages and finally there were enough reasons and planning to make it happen two weeks ago over Easter.

At the outset it’s hard to prepare for Detroit’s massive abandonment, decay, and poverty, even though I knew to expect it. To fresh eyes, large swaths of the city look, no jokes, like the leavings of a war zone. It’s pervasive, you can’t go more than a block or two before encountering it. Once opulently designed & crafted buildings are now windowless skeletons, sunken and rotting like forgotten jack-o-lanterns, scrappers having come and gone long ago. A particular image that won’t be leaving my head easily is the sight of the former Packard Motor plant. It’s a carcass that goes on for literal blocks. When Christina from printmaking shop Perfect Laughter showed us around her brand-new printmaking studio in the Corktown neighborhood she told us of the rubberneckers on the hunt for “ruin porn” documenting as if Michigan Central Station were the Acropolis or the Coliseum in Rome. And I can certainly understand that pastime, though it’s not my particular style, because the ruins really are a breathtaking sight to see.

Yet it’s undeniable that there are just as many marvelous things happening despite the sad parts of the city. Everyone we met in Detroit is doing something or working for something, their efforts beautifully poignant in the face of the city’s hard edges.

Culture is also on the rise in Detroit too. Chicagoans would not believe the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) rivals our Art Institute, but you’d be wrong there. It’s every bit as good, if not better. MOCAD, the contemporary art museum, is consistently one of the most creative and innovative contemporary spaces out there. Every visit it’s completely remade new and you can expect to be surprised, that’s for sure. This time around we enjoyed an incredible installation by Joshua White & Gary Panter’s Light Show. The best way I can think of to describe it as a modern fun house, a huge echoing space vibrating with psychedelic rhythm and sound. So intense it’s almost repellent at first, but then little surprises and funny things start appearing and then it’s all smiles if you hang out awhile. It’s like a little mini vacation, and a pretty perfect metaphor for how the city is itself.

We stayed at the adorably rustic yet modern inn, Honor & Folly, run by Meghan McEwen of Designtripper. The space was filled with plenty of handmade and thoughtful cozy touches, just as I imagined when I posted about it before. We made good use of the full kitchen and even hosted a meal with our families who hiked in from the suburbs to hangout.

Every place comes with a story in Detroit. At the Peacock Room, a little boutique near the DIA, the shop owner told me how she tore down the drywall in her space, only to discover it was hiding a 1920′s ballroom with mirrored walls, marble columns and tin ceilings. Talk about hidden treasure, eh? Or Café D’Mongo’s, a former speakeasy which is a feast of 1920′s nostalgia. It only reopened recently, pretty much intact from it’s original heydays. The charming & feisty older lady running the joint seems like she came back to life with the bar too.

We ate really well, plenty of BBQ and soul food, as well as fresh picks from the open air Eastern Market. Lafayette or American for Coney Island Dogs, though I can’t say I can tell the difference between the two places. Maybe the joy of a boiled hot dog in a white bun with chili and mustard is lost on me though. There was also plenty of music, we saw live shows almost everywhere without even trying. Detroit’s got Motown in its blood and that influence is clear. If there wasn’t live music at a venue there was a fatty juke box instead – the real kind – not the cheesy wall-mounted electronic ones with the same 20 songs that are popular in Chicago pubs. One place we went to (The Bronx) even has a bench thoughtfully placed by the juke box so you can get comfy while you rifle through the extensive collection.
 

The Heidelberg Project, while not exactly new (it’s a non-profit art installation that’s been evolving since the 1970′s), is a totally unexpected response to the city’s downfall. There is color and brightness on every possible surface, with bizarre objects in not normal places, it’s like Dr. Seuss came and built landscape with trash. Here it’s okay if nothing makes sense, it’s a nice reminder that chaos can also have beauty and meaning.

For next time: bookbinding classes at Signal Return that come with home-cooked farm-to-table dinner, another visit to the DIA, Belle Isle Park, a closer look at the Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. I’m sure there’s plenty else to do and see, I just hope I get to come back for it soon!

{iPhone photos from Instagram & Banana Camera’s Cross-Process, Wikipedia, and Ina Weise.}

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.