Blog McGuffinanother what, not a who

Seriously? Why is there no outcry? Why is there no uproar from the design community? Why are there not mobs of angry designers in black turtlenecks marching with exactos held high?

Has no one noticed that the Bienfang Commercial art papers, Designer Series, Graphics No. 360 has switched from their beautiful, classic un-coated paper cover to a nasty, thin, fingerprint showing, coated cover?

Where was the survey? Where is the market research on this one? Who’s the genius who is willing to change the comfort of an un-coated cover, which was probably used for sketching some of the most brilliant and thought provoking designs of our time, to the new slick and slimy cover we are forced to touch now? Could it be the same person who added the glare to my new i-mac screen?

While the rest of the world is finally moving to un-coated and natural papers - Bienfang felt it would be a great idea to go high-tech and glossy. Smooth move Bienfang.

This is what happens when yesterday Office Depot mistakenly delivered us a box of clipboards.

McGuffin is featured in this years Print Regional Design Annual for the identity we created for Harvest Kitchen. Nice stuff. We were also quoted in the “State of Design” section for the Midwest - Illinois.

Since the quote was so short, I’m going to expound on the conversation: I believe a lot of the good design is coming from the smaller clients, the tight budgets, and the shops that are willing to take risks.

The beauty of smart design whether in the subtleties of sensitive typography or the emotional quality the texture of a paper has on your fingertips is very hard to quantify in any spread sheet. There are a group of start-up companies who have learned that design is a way that they can stand apart in the daily barrage of marketing we are assaulted with.

So kudos to the little guys and the risk takers out there, keep fighting the good fight.

Don’t get me wrong - Design without concept is only wallpaper but an idea without execution is worth a dime a dozen.

For most people getting basic information on a local restaurant or the best priced stereo equipment is made easier through a quick Google search. The automated nature of Google’s indexing bots reward us all with a (supposedly) unbiased glimpse of information available in, what Kevin Kelly refers to as, The One Machine. Today, this article on the Chicago Tribune Web site (involving a Tribune subsidiary) shows just how apt the term “One Machine” really is.

Whether you’re a Google watcher/embracer/user/optimizer/worrier/detester, we’ve all just caught a glimpse of the speed at which a single story (true, false or outdated) scavenged by Google rips through our information complex. In this case it managed to travel, what one would assume, is a well guarded path from Google to Investor Advisory Firm to Bloomberg to Wall Street, all without anyone (or anything) noticing the publish date of the relevant information. This all concluded with the elimination of nearly $1.2 billion from stockholders portfolios in a little under four hours. While the mistake was eventually clarified, it still took the entire day for markets to adjust/process what had just happened.

At this moment, the stock is still trading down 11% on the day. It will be interesting to piece together what effect automated trading, another layer of integrated information system, had on the situation. Were trading algorithms amplifying the effects of erroneous bad news that hyper-reactive traders without the luxury of hesitation used to get an edge on the market? Was someone’s paper loss made into a real loss by a series of automatic trades continuing to sell as the price dropped? Did anyone actually get wiped out by their own pre-determined trade behavior? Anyone score a fortune in a quick four hours shorting the stock? Anyone thinking about how they can plant a story like this to capitalize on in the future?

On the one hand it’s breathtakingly exciting to witness just how fast information is accessed and distributed compared with a mere decade ago. On the other, it’s chilling that information will travel even faster as the gaps that filter verified information from conspicuous information as it’s fed into the machine become fewer and fewer, thus dumping the noise of sorting out what is true and isn’t on even the most mundane of life situations. While that Google search for a local restaurant may churn out the address and phone number in an instant, can you really trade on the unfiltered reviews posted at the link below that? Did that restaurant really get shut down for having unsanitary conditions, or was that one of their competitors gaming the machine, adding noise to your decision? Did someone really find a rubber glove in their bean burrito six states away, or did that story’s popularity award it top billing in a Google search making it “true”? Even if you are skeptical of everything you read, you may or may not believe the actual story, it has an effect on your perception of the restaurant. Think of it as “reverse branding.” It makes you hesitate.

Often hesitation is enough to push the outcome of an event one way or another. Taken as a whole, Google’s ubiquity and it’s business of essentially collecting, indexing and selling information would force most people to think twice about joining to make it the omnipresent force it is today. Steadily add noise to the internal debate (to “use” or “not to use”) such as free email, free calendars, free applications or cloud computing and the world will hesitate. It will hesitate just long enough to make it all worthwhile.

Get accustomed to that noise and accompanying hesitation, it’s becoming part of every decision made, and it’s only going to get louder. It’s the ultimate irony of The Information Age.

“Mass of humanity” is the first thought that comes to my mind when recalling the Lollapalooza weekend. Where the hell did all these people come from? By Sunday the 75,000 energetic music enthusiasts skipping from show to show on Friday seemed more like 500,000 semi-deranged castaways (or inmates depending on your perspective) hanging onto the laws of polite society by a thread. The walk from stage to stage felt more like a forced migration, slowly rolling from point to point. “You mean we have to go all the way over there to see those guys?… Who’s playing on this stage right here?… Oh, they’re not so bad.”

This year’s Scale Factor seemed to be driven by the size and quantity of headliners. The schedule seemed weighted towards the huge, well orchestrated stage extravaganzas at the end of the day and less like a continuous feed of on-the-brink bands pulling out all the stops to make a name for themselves. Maybe it’s just the people I talked to, but it seemed that these few energetic up-and-comers were slotted early in the day and the rest of the line up was merely adequate filler (no one topping the mid day enthusiasm none other than Billy Idol brought to the fest a couple years ago) to keep everyone occupied until the 8:00pm Big Guns were brandished and fired. That’s not to say it wasn’t fun, wasn’t worth it, wasn’t entertaining or wasn’t a success. It’s just to say that it felt a little more engineered… towards concession sales.

A Lolla-related weekend highlight was a very large Nothern-Irish bartender in Lakeview (imagine Gorgeous George from Snatch) berating a visiting Lolla attendee for meekly requesting a glass of water. “I didn’t go to f#%&ing bar tending school to serve you f#%&ing water!” Those of us that caught the exchange were each rewarded with a couple lethally sized Jaegerbombs for finding this to be the funniest thing we’d seen all weekend… of course the 81 year old woman on the other side of the bar quietly downing Beam & Cokes in the middle of a crowded bar at 2:00am ranked up near the top of the list too.

Did I mention the weather turned out to be quite tolerable despite the predictions? Yeah, really.

“Of (expletive) course…” was the thought waking up this morning. Not only is it supposed to be 90-95° all weekend (hottest of the year) but the dose of rain we got this morning will add a swampy sheen to the weekend’s festivities. Heat and humidity are just the combination you want to avoid when wading into a field of 100,000 people suddenly relieved of the concept of personal space. Heat stroke, dehydration, electrocution and OD-ing on hipster irony are all valid concerns heading into what is supposed to be the largest (surely the most profitable) incarnation of Lollapalooza.

No matter, we blindly charge on.

At the most basic level, the draw to Lolla is a weekend of nothing in particular to do, with no particular time to do it. A weekend in the park with a plentiful supply of frosty beverages and something (anything) to see will do here in Chicago. As it stands four McGuffins will be risking life and limb to take it all in. Expectations are high for some and minimal for others. Monday we’ll piece it all together for you.

My neighbor Gary has been talking about making beer for eight years. Needless to say, until this year no one has tasted a drop of Gary’s beer.

One night, over wine and vodka, Surrey, another neighbor, busts bad on Gary for talking about beer making and it never happening. We get out our calenders - it’s going to happen.

Meanwhile… Joe’s wife Julie is being attacked in her own home by a squirrel who has jumped from her kitchen cabinets onto her head and is now shotgunning around the house like a pinball on crack. From this - Angry Squirrel Ale is born.

Joe did the Squirrel illustration - he’s an amazing guy - check out http://www.joefournierstudios.com/

Marketing Plan: There are just too many laws to be able to sell beer. Therefore, we don’t sell beer, we sell T-shirts. If you buy a t-shirt,  we’ll give you a beer. At the time, this seemed like a perfect plan.

Rule #1: It takes beer to make beer.

Cost Analysis: By far, our largest expense in making beer was the cost of the beer we drank while making beer. The second time we make beer, our expenses will be cut WAY back - we will be able to drink the profits.

After a full day of brewing and three weeks of fermenting, the beer was AMAZING.  The most memorable moment was Gary cleaning his mouth with vodka to back-blow a  clogged syphoning tube.

If there are enough requests, we may even sell hats.

Been a little busy. Been meaning to talk about the HOW conference I went to way back in May (it followed a Vegas trip I took with my brother that that I won’t talk about). Overall the conference was great. Held in Boston, cool town, good people, mostly top-notch speakers (David Baker may be my new Hero). HOW does a great job. I guess there were 4,000 attendants, mostly designers. From this I have two topics to discuss:

side note - I ate a Wrigley Field dog and a Fenway Frank within a 2 day period. Wrigley’s dogs are better.

1. On the first night there was an opening speech given by Jeremy Gutsche, founder of TrendHunter.com, I was running late, finishing off a drink with Mig Reyes, who put together a worth-while blog about the conference. I walk into a packed auditorium, didn’t think I’d get a seat, and start walking forward towards the stage. I then notice that the there are more and more open seats towards the front. It turns out that the first three rows are pretty much empty. Then I put it together, I know most designers are introverted and self reflective - therefore most will do whatever they can to not be noticed without a mighty mouse and strong concept in hand. This of course teaches me that I can grab front row for every speaker throughout the conference, which I do. I can’t sit in the back anymore, I did in Junior High, but now I find too many ways to distract myself: other people talking, e-mail, any shiny things. So if you’re going to a conference with a bunch of designers - the best seats in the house are available.

2. which brings me to: If you are going to a conference to speak:

PLEASE think about what it took for everyone to get there. The cost of travel, the cost of hotel, the cost of being out of the office and  not billing, then multiply it by every single person in your audience. This is what your talk should be worth. Do not misrepresented what your discussion is about. Do not use the stage and every-ones valuable time (read money) to try to further your own cause. Yes. this happened, not often but yes this happened.

Overall - Yes, I’m going back to the HOW conference, and I’m definitely going back to Boston.