yep, seven years, three states, and 35,892 psd files later, I’m finally staring down the joy of taking part in the sxsw interactive festival this year. oh joy.

so to give this monumentous event the care and energy it deserves, I will be sharing a bit of my preparation on the blog here, with a desire to facilitate a conversation, more than prescribe a plan of attack for others. if 2011 will be your first year attending as well, welcome fellow newby! or maybe your a veteran and could recite the last ten years keynotes in your speech. if so, i would love to hear tips and advice, as well as what your looking forward to as this year’s shindig. or maybe your in the same boat as i have been up until this point, and you can’t make it to tehas this year. even so, i’d love to hear your thought on the topics and have you join in from afar!

Enough preamble, here’s a rough look at the topics I want to cover in this series of posts:

Topics I’m interested in

Reading list in preperation for #sxswi

People I’d like to share a pint with

hidden gems to find while in Austin

daily thougths (during the conference)

post-conference wrap up

I hope you join me in my preparation. And as always, if you have any thoughts, suggestions, or gems of wisdom to contribute here, share away!

also, here is the only update that might require your attention at the moment:

I’ve updated the rss feed, to http://feeds.feedburner.com/thekreathausblog

So, just in case you had subscribed via the old feed, please update in your reader!

thanks! and enjoi your monday!

to be honest, i was a bit disappointed with it. if asked, i would admit that. it’s not very playful. it’s not stretching the company visually or conceptually. but alas, it’s not really my place to blast this well established / successful brand.

so i moved on and kept working through the rest of the day.

but it didn’t stop there. just the next day the bonfire of one liners and full on blasts have now grown into a forest fire. everybody has an opinon. and there all ripping this work to shreds. just like they did to the itunes 10 logo / interface a few weeks back.

ripping it apart as if they have their own pedestal of a proven portfolio of work from which to stand on.

some of these critics do good work, but the majority of them have never invested the time, sweat, and blood to make a internationally successful brand.

so, as i alluded to earlier in the week in a tweet:

Don’t criticize someone else’s identity / website unless your own is stellar.

and even then, only do it if it is helpful.

It’s so much easier to tear down every one else around us, than to invest the time and energy into building something great. I’ll be the first to admit this.

I may not be as vocal as some, but i catch myself all the time mentally throwing stones at the latest agency.com redesign, or identity rework. it’s easy to play down someone else’s hard work, guts, and or brilliance.

I heard it a few days before the whole gap hoopla, with a recent agency’s .com redesign. i overheard two guys talking about it, and how meh it was, when they’re very own agency’s site is 4 years old, aging, and in really bad need of a rework.

the monologue usually goes something like this:

“it’s not bad… but…

they’re working with _______ brand, so they can do that…

or

it’s been done before..

or

if only i worked with clients that had that type of budget..

or

it’s kind of predictable…

and the list goes on and on.

It’s time to stop. Stop the crap. Stop the excuses.

Lay down the stones. Turn off twitter. Close out the latest hysterical rant about the hideous redesign of ___________ .

Let’s pick up the chisel. let’s get to work. and let’s make something beautiful.

PS. i realize the irony in writing a post, critiquing the critics. but i had to get this off my chest. please forgive me for having a log in my own eye.

by alex bogusky and john windsor

If advertising is not your chosen profession in life, why the heck would you want to read a book written by two of the top leaders in the advertising world? (alex bogusky, @bogusky , longtime creative director at crispin porter + bogusky; and John Winsor, @jtwinsor , former head of product innovation & cognitive research at cp+b)

Because I believe the authors are on to something. And it’s not advertising. I want to say it’s way past advertising, but it’s actually pre advertsing.

What?? Sound confusing? Let’s jump into the meat of the book.

Though I passionately disagree with both authors on the value and practice of crowdsourcing, here are a few of their points from @bakedin that stuck with me:

+ Let’s cut the crap of lying and false promises about products, and instead design a useful & beautiful product / experience that meets the users exact needs & wants.

+ Stop spending 3,4, or 8 years in r & d, and instead prototype and test early, and revise what works and throw away the rest.

+ Listen to and know your audience, and make a product that fits, instead making a mediocre product and then trying to advertise the crap out of it.

+ Incrementally changing a mediocre product each year to be (slightly) new & improved is a flawed business plan. Let’s innovate! Let’s create something new! Let’s create something beautiful! Let’s create something useful!!

So if you have any interest in providing a useful / beautiful / wow product or service, do your future self a favor and pick this book up!

Also, a big thanks to @jtwinsor for sending me a copy of the book to review!

if you know me, you know any talk of government bailouts makes me sick, but after having this reaction, i then began to think of this whole notion of mediocrity, laziness, and an unwillingness for a company / industry to change to meet the market’s demands.

so i naturally thought about my industry: web design. while i can easily point out the big three’s faults, it gets much touchier when i took a closer look at web design & development, the state of the industry in the U.S., and my own work aptitude.

If you look around our industry much, you will see that much like the auto industry, their are now many cheap, international web design players / shops popping up every day. if your like me, you might be thinking ‘yeah, there are alternatives, but they don’t speak english, or the western world’s cultural and visible language, so therefore nobody will ever use them’.

but i argue not so fast. I / we can’t get lazy. the big 3 never thought toyota, honda, or hyundai could ever produce a viable product for the american people. obviously, they were wrong. and they got lazy. they stopped innovating. and they assumed america would just accept whatever crap they produced. oh how they were wrong.

so true, i believe we are still along way off from the international market taking over the U.S. web design sphere, but we can’t lie to ourselves and believe it’s unthinkable. it’s almost as if we’re in the 1983 state of the auto industry. we’ve done a lot of great things in the near past (muscle cars / gorgeous flash experiences), but we can’t sit on our butts and be proud of ourselves.

the world is changing, people are consuming and creating content in new formats, in new ways, and with new expectations.

if we / i don’t lead the way, someone else will.

the choice is ours. everyday, with every project, and every client relationship.

we can do the comfortable, predictable solution. or we can stretch ourselves beyond what we thought was possible. or 20 years from now we can write a sappy country song bemoaning the fact that our industry has passed us by.

i’ll choose to fight. it’s the american way. innovation. grit. and hard work.

and besides, it’s more fun to be the leader anyway.

if you were looking for the latest bowden family happenings, brittany and myself will keep that blog going, at
http://www.kreathaus.com . Or you could just get the rss subscription to both blogs. Just an idea.

enjoi your stay!