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22
Apr 08

Earth Day

It’s earth day! At McGuffin we’ve been building up to this day for a few months now with our distribution of green notebooks (100% post consumer waste) and saving a local plant in need “Lisa.”

Lisa, the Dracaena Lisa, was rescued by Kiley O’Brien on the night of March 18 from an uncaring and neglectful home located at 566 W. Adams, Suite #400. As Lisa continues to pump more fresh oxygen into our office we plan to continue our preservation of mother earth. To be honest, we’re not going to do anything different because we’ve been rock stars since the establishment of McGuffin in 2004.

Now is the time when you have to ask yourself a very important question. “What am I doing to harm the earth?”

At McGuffin we believe that one of the worst things that you can do for our environment is to pollute the air with the exhaust from a vehicle. We do our best to minimize the use of any vehicle for transportation to work. Our smart location allows us to walk from place to place and also offers many varieties of public transportation.

We all have legs, and at McGuffin we use them. A little bit of work and common sense never killed anybody.

Love you mother earth -

kiley_tree.jpg


21
Apr 08

Career Day!

Having noted how cool I thought it was for McGuffin to volunteer to speak at Northlake Middle School’s “Career Day” – I involuntarily volunteered myself. I was happy to do it though, after I rolled through my waves of overwhelming anxiety I really got excited. Attempting to remember what it’s like to be in a room full of middle schoolers can create a sense of fear within you like no other, especially since I haven’t been around a tween since I was one myself. But, the students of Northlake couldn’t have given me a warmer welcome.

I spoke about what it is designers do, played a “guess the logo” game with them, and even had a class brainstorming session to begin the design of their Boat Trip Poster and Graduation Program. The students were attentive and really full of energy, it was contagious. I even got a compliment on my dress. All in all, my first day back in a middle school was much, much better than my last.


18
Apr 08

Getting Fresh with AIGA

On Wednesday, April 9, 2008 AIGA Chicago held their annual Fresh Talent event.

Fresh Talent 2008 highlights the work of three young Chicago-based female designers: Sue Daly, Dawn Hancock and Alisa Wolfson. The discussion centers on the city we call home as the three designers publicly reflect on their work and place within Chicago’s design history. Rick Valicenti of Thirst moderates, and asks each designer to begin their presentation by identifying a designer or designers who have come before them and with whose spirit theirs best aligns.

The presenters had much to share about how they came to be where they are now. With over 150 in attendance, many were inspired and set off to continue conversations afterwards. In attendance, as a volunteer for the event, was McGuffin Brendan Shanley.


5
Apr 08

Messages from the shattered iPhone

brick vs iphone

Someone should build an on-line support group for those of us who have shattered the screens of our iPhones. Feelings of guilt, blame, anger and sorrow.

Cool - blogging from the iPhone.

Embarrassing - whipping out the shattered iPhone in public - makes you feel like you could be cool, but in reality are a complete douche.

Greatest fear - drunk blogging


2
Apr 08

Martha Stewart thinks we’re “Amazing”.

Swirlz cupcakes was on the Martha Stewart show this week. If I may quote Martha “the packaging is amazing”… this made McGuffins feel pretty good. As much as we’d love to take all the credit, and I do think that we helped make the packaging pretty (not to mention the logo) I think Martha was referring to the amazing way that swirlz came up with the interior structure for supporting and displaying the cakes.

Nice job swirlz- pbj all the way!


20
Mar 08

For the Kids!

Common Threads

Monday (St. Patrick’s Day) was the annual Common Threads World Festival at the MCA, and we must say it was a pretty swank party. Lots of charitable giving, lots of fun, lots of wine and lots of celebrity chefs. The Top Chef crew were there (Padma Laksmi, Gail Simmons and Tom Coliccio) as well as Rocco DiSpirito, Michael Chiarello, Paula Deen and after party musical guest John Legend. In all, over $377,000 was raised to help support Common Threads’ programs. Top of our design list was the incredibly intricate disposable plates used for the Guinness/Oyster dish, and of course the invites and programs (hmmm, wonder who did those?). Anyway, the whole thing is top shelf and a great event to bring any of your food-obsessed (or charity-obsessed) friends to.

Congrats to the Common Threads team for putting together a great event!


23
Feb 08

Where was McGuffin on 2.22.08?

Benny

Never been allowed in a Sky Box before. The chocolate cart was sick.

Thanks Harris!


20
Feb 08

The Trump Family

So a few people have been asking to hear the Trump story… so here it is. For those who don’t know, Trump International Hotel and Tower had their grand opening a few weeks ago. Got great reviews - I can’t wait to get into the restaurant, Sixteen, great interior. Our friend Mary over at C2 called us two weeks before the opening. Conversation something like this: The Hotel is opening… it’s still being built… the top floors are being built… the bottom floors are opening… there’s a HUGE crane on top of the building… the city of Chicago demanded that they build a protective structure… it’s going to be under construction for a year… it’s opening… they would like to hide the fact that it’s under construction… we need to show ideas immediately. COOL!!! I go home, my mom is visiting, she doesn’t believe that I have a meeting with Ivanka (which I don’t, but I’m hopeful). We present ideas which include wrapping and lighting the interiors of the support structures which will changes colors - would look great from the river.

One night I’m at an event - Mary calls me, she’s on hold with Colm, who’s on hold with The Donald himself who is looking at our ideas. I’m feeling pretty cool. The decision is made that because this is a temporary fix, we’re going to do a smaller version of one of our ideas. Probably a good call considering it needs to withstand an full year of abuse and all that four seasons of Chicago weather can hurl at it. btw: this is all going on while the temperature is somewhere below the North Pole’s. Every meeting is outside the tower’s main entrance and is a test of the humans skin’s endurance to the cold. I missed a conference call that Ivanka was on. Mike, who was leading the construction team, said that he’d sell me the number - I told him my wife would kill me. Construction was completed just in time. Greatest feature was building gray structures around the concrete bases - cleaned up the main site line in one day. Definitely the best bang for the buck. We’ll post some photos once we thaw.

finally thawed :

trump


4
Feb 08

Spam Responses

We thought it would be cool to keep the comments open and available for all to go crazy without anyone having to patrol it. After all, this is an open forum for discussions and opinions. After one weekend of being slammed by spam comments, we had to shut it off. Who are these people? Don’t they have anything better to do than to work on spamming programs? Why don’t they have clothes on? Aren’t they cold? So, I apologize that we now have to patrol the comments - a few bad (and under-clothed) apples ruin it for the rest of us. We’ll try and post as many comments as possible.

Super Bowl stats: I’ve lost the coin toss to Greg 10 years running. This is a 50/50 bet. Shouldn’t be possible. Best commercial: Coke, balloons. Although, it was nice to see Alice Cooper making appearance on the Bridgestone commercial. I have much more respect for Bridgestone now.


28
Jan 08

Getty Party

Thanks out to Getty for the party at Bon V.

I went hungry, with high food expectations.Only chips and salsa to be found. Had to drown my hunger in cold, cold Vodka. A few McGuffins will be on display in a traveling Getty portrait show. Hopefully, we’ll be traveling to Italy, or anywhere with good food.

photo booth