Jobs remembered being impressed by his father’s focus on craftsmanship. “I thought my dad’s sense of design was pretty good,” he said, “because he knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work with him.” Pg. 6

It’s interesting that at the beginning of Job’s life, we see that one of his biggest influences is not some distant, technical wizard of his time, but rather his own father, his attention to detail, and the fact that he intentionally included Steve in his own projects.

Personally, I have only been a father for just over 2 years now, but I am regularly amazed (and too many times alarmed) at how much influence I have on my kids, for both good and bad.

I hope that fifty years from now my children will also be able to tell, with joy, of the values they learned from me, through both word and deed.

For my children will most definitely learn something from me. The question is, will it be apathy or passion, precision or carelessness, love or hate?

I recently read a few outstanding articles that speak to this issue of 1) owning vs. challenging a brand’s monopoly, and the related issues of 2) embracing what is unique about a company 3) creating a unique and extremely useful shopping experience based off of a unique brand ; and I wanted to pass these along here:

Apple’s unchallenged monopoly
http://kensegall.com/blog/2011/11/ads-apples-unchallenged-monopoly/

Why Jeff Bezos is OK with Amazon being Amazon, and nobody else http://m.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/ff_bezos/all/1

What Ron Johnson learned from building the Apple Store Empire http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/what_i_learned_building_the_ap.html

I thought maybe a few of you might benefit from this list as well, so I’ve included the list below. And as always, if you have something to share, do please leave a comment and a link!

http://cargocollective.com/kreathaus/following
This is not all tablet interface design, and you do have to be careful what you choose to browse, but I have found the cargo collective network to be the best source for the latest and greatest stream of digital design work. Particularly the following two designers:

http://cargocollective.com/bcline

http://cargocollective.com/jonaseriksson

A few others:

http://www.landingpad.org/

http://beautifulpixels.com/

http://app.itize.us/wp/category/ipad

and my gimmebar findings:

https://gimmebar.com/user/jonathanbowden

After receiving the book from Amazon (that story here), I was first suprised by the shear size of the book. This things a monstor, by today’s literary work’s standards. Close to 3″ tall, and it’s not even large print. Isaacson has surely done his homework, not to leave any stone unturned. Which leads me to this post.

I am only a small bit into the book, but I am already enthralled, if you can’t tell, ha. So when I saw that PBS would be airing an hour documentary special on Steve’s live, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two works.

While somewhat informative on a very very high level, I was really suprised how much detail and backstory was left out, compared to the book. Granted, this is to be expected wthen comparing an hour long video production versus an exhaustive literary work, but I was still suprised by just how much was skimmed over.

So as I make my way throught this mountain of a book, I wanted to share my thoughts along the way, in smaller snippets here on my blog.

I will try and keep the post relatively short and to the point, starting with a quote or section from the book. And as always, I would love to see the discussion grow with your own observations.

I am only 23 pages into the work, but my mind is already racing with new insights and observations Walter Isaacson has dug up, to the benefit of us all.

Here’s to the crazy ones.

Fast forward to this past Saturday, when I received an approximately book shaped package. I was giddy, to say the least. I knew the book was set to come out publicly this Monday, but I thought maybe Amazon had picked up some customer “surprise and delight” cues from their recent acquisition of Zappos, and had surprised me with the book a few days earlier than expected.

No go. It was a different book, from a different vendor.

Disappointed, I consoled myself in the fact that I would have the book in just a few days, assuming Amazon’s stellar track record would stay true. Or so I hoped.

Monday morning I awoke to an email not telling me my order had shipped or would be arriving soon, but rather that they needed further information from me to complete the order.

I understand that I supplied incomplete information and therefore partially my fault, but this was over two weeks ago. Disappointed that this had not been addressed much earlier, I completed all that was needed, and then waited for progress.

And I’m still waiting, over 24 hours later. It’s tuesday, yet Order status: shipping soon. With no further details as to why.

You might have surmised this already, but I’m pretty disappointed with this whole user experience. So for what it’s worth, here are a few suggestions. again, mostly from the high expectations I have from my fantastic experiences with Zappos:

1) When a pre-order is placed, handle all necessary paperwork / fulfillment details immediately, so that the order will ship as soon as possible.

2) A customer who goes out of his or her way to pre-order an item should have that item in hand at the same time it is available to all, if not before. Otherwise, I don’t see the use of pre-ordering. For instance, I pre-ordered a book set to come out to the public on this past Monday, and it should have been at my house on Monday, if not earlier. On a side note, kindle customers did receive their copy early. But I will leave the fragmented user experience / company to another post.

3) If the above two options cannot happen, and the item cannot be shipped until the release date, all customers who pre-order a hardback copy should be given a kindle copy until the hardback comes in the mail.

I realize this last suggestion is a big step, as it was questioned on twitter when i originally proposed it, but here is my reasoning: Amazon should do what all of the best business do: play to their unique strengths, in order to create a substantial competitive advantage.

First, Amazon is without a doubt the industry leader in online book retail, and the accompanying fulfillment and delivery system. Nobody else even comes close. Nobody. This is the first strength to play off of.

Second, and not as strongly, Amazon is a major player in the ebook market, though it is seeing major competition from iBooks and others. They have a good platform, and some promising new devices, but they are in a fearce competition, and need something to help them stick out.

If Amazon combined the two strengths, as I have suggested above for pre-order customers, it could create a HUGE competitive advantage, and greatly increase it’s repeat customers for such transactions.

As it stands currently, I went through the extra steps of pre-ordering the Steve Jobs autobiography, and yet I might receive it on 4 days late, on Thursday. Or Friday. who knows really.

I love Amazon’s services. I genuinely hopes this actually spurs changes that help Amazon, whether ones that I have stated, or something different entirely. I just wish Amazon would take a few pointers from Zappos, and their over the top customer service. It sure does pay off, just look at the purchase price they paid for the startup.

Update
I sent an email with these thoughts to Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of amazon, and he responded! Granted it was through his assistant, but that’s understandable. He understood my frustrations, and greatly appreciated that i went beyond just frustration and offered a solution. He is not sure if my ideas are completely feasible, but he has passed the ideas down to the heads of the respective departments. A class act. Well done mr Bezos!

Recently I had the great opportunity to create a custom Youtube Channel for Dell. While there are some handy features in the Youtube admin tool to change out a handfull of properties (essentially CSS classes), I found it a bit time consuming creating a quickly editable PSD mockup.

I spent many hours taking and dissecting screenshots, then creating editable text in these screenshots place, and finally applying new colors to each element. As I expect to create more custom channels in the future, I came up with a system within my PSD to group each corresponding element into it’s respective property, or css like class. After creating this handful of smart objects, I could then just apply a color overlay to each, change out the background and a few images (logo, top banner, thumbnails), and quickly see new color and style options.

After investing this time, I thought “why not give this away and save other designers time as well”, so here it is!

I won’t go into great detail here about how to use the Youtube admin tool , as it’s pretty straightforward (but if you want to learn the basics, check out google’s primer on the subject here). Instead, I will show a screenshot of the admin tool, and then a screenshot of the layers pallete within my template, to show how they correspond.

The “Themes and Colors” section of the Youtube Admin Panel

View full size image

Here you see the handful of properties that you can change, including: Font, Background color, Wrapper color, Wrapper text color, Wrapper link color, Wrapper transparency, Background Image, Background color, Title text color, Link color, Body text color, and Transparency.

PSD Layer Pallete, including corresponding “class” related smart objects

View full size image

Download the Template PSD

Conclusion

I hope you find this template to be helpful and a great time saver. A few thanks: Bacon ipsum for the high quality filler text, Frank Restaraunt and Christian Helms for the swine inspiration, and Wood Type Revival for use of their fine “Concave Tuscan” headline font.

Here are a few of my early favorites, but i’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts as well:

Social Media Cures Cancer and Speaks for Survivor
Speakers: Doug Ullman – CEO of Livestrong, and Julie Shussler – Burson-Marsteller

Agency 2.0: Introducing the Innovation Lab
Speakers: Jamie and Chris Monberg – Hornall Anderson

Design from the Gut: Dangerous or Differentiator?
Speakers: Phil Coffman – Springbox / Method & Craft, Naz Hamid – weightshift, Laurel Hechanova – Apocalypse OK, and tom watson – facebook

OMG Your RFP is Killing Me
Speakers: Joe Rinaldi – Happy Cog, and a panel of others

Humanize the Web: Illustrating for Interactive
Speakers: Gerren Lamson – GSDM, and Reagun Ray – Paravel

The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web?
Speakers: Buzz Andersen – Tumblr, and a panel of others

TenseUp: Creating Positive Tensions In Experiences
Speaker: Matt Walsh – Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Building the Dell app, therapy for a brand.
Speakers: michael kriegshauser – Dell Global Site Design, and a panel of others

Navigating danger in marketing’s in-between times
Speakers: Allison McCarthy, Guthrie Dolin, and Larry Johnson – Odopod

A Brief History of the Complete Redesign of Google
Speakers: Jon Wiley, and a whole panel from Google

Is it better to bring it In-House?
Speakers: John Stevens and Tommy Lynn – Dell Global Creative

Shameless plug for my own panel:
3 creatives. 3 amazing projects. 18 minutes each.
I’ll moderate, and speakers / creatives To Be Determined! maybe you?!

So those are a few of my favorites. What about you?

As I’ve talked about a little bit here on the blog, I had a blast my first time at sxsw this spring, and I want it to be even better next year!

so here’s what I propose, whether your a veteran, a newbie, or have never been to sxsw, let’s band together the collective nerd / design power of the interwebs, and get transparent about what we want to see / present / build up / rip apart at sxsw 2012. let’s stop bemoaning how big / corporate / meh sxsw has become, and let’s blow it out.

and if the thought has ever crossed your mind, “maybe i should submit a panel about (insert whatever your passionate about)”, then yes, you should. we need more PASSION, and less web celebritieness.

with me? alright, let’s procede:

so here’s a few of my prelimenary ideas / topics i would like to either

a) present on / participate on a panel on

or

b) would love to see others present

1. being awesome. i know it sounds completely narcissistic, but hang with me… what if i just moderated a panel and invited four or five designers / creatives / activists / mad scientist / generally awesome people to come and discuss their craft, their lives, and how their using their influence for good.

2. digital dads. i know this isn’t very inclusive, but i’d love to moderate / hear a panel on the daily joys / struggles / opportunities that other dads have experienced.

3. working in house, and killing it. a panel from a handful from some of the world’s leading in house designers / creatives, from large corporations, to startups, to non-profits, and everything in between. @boda , @squaredeye , @keeg , and @soopa are a few possible participants that come to mind.

4. trimming the fat in my creative intake. a panel discussing the growing problem of information overload, particularly with other creatives, and how they balance keeping up with the creative world around them, without getting swamped in blogs / feeds / and general mashahoopla.

5. the remote creative office. this one is a bit more long term aspirations for me, as one day I hope to be able to work remotely as a part of a stellar creative team that is free from the restrictions of a traditional office space / commute. at sxsw 2011 i met a few creatives that are doing this now ( @pws just to name one), and it has inspired me to keep seeking out this possibility. I mean seriously, it’s 2011, and we’re still tied to location??

So these are just a few of the first ideas i have. You might have noticed all of these are panels. After originally proposing a solo presentation last year, and ending up doing a dual presentation, I would highly recommend a panel, or at minimum a dual presentation. Unless your Blake Mycoskie or Majora Carter.

I would love to hear your ideas, no matter how rough they are. Or do any of my ideas sound interesting, need to be tweaked, or should be scrapped, insert your thoughts here.

So don’t hold back, let’s create the future we want to see.

I have a new office, a new team of coworkers, a new bike route, and a new schedule. at my new office, one of the oddest things has been a particular break room not too far from my desk. I’ll try not to ruin your appetite, so just believe me when i tell you that the funky odor vehmenating from this room is one of the weirdest / nastiest / disgusting smells i have ever encountered on a regular basis. i actually walk 50 yards out of my way on a regular basis to avoid it.

and what’s even more strange, it’s almost like i’m the only one who notices it. when i do happen to walk by it, i see people having meetings in it, or eating lunch, or even just hanging out.

What the?? Am i crazy?

So a few weeks into my job, i decided to bring this up with a couple of coworkers. Come to find out, it does really reek, but everyone has gotten used to it. And the nearest break room is a whopping 200 or so yards away, so it makes do. Odd. The out of this world odor is just taken for granted as inevitable. A rarity?

The more I’ve thought about it, the more i realize this rationale is actually the norm far too often.

It’s easy to get in a routine, go through the habits, and lose our sense. Our sense of smell, our sense of wonder, our sense of compassion.

I take for granted that I slept with a roof over my head last night, in an air conditioned home, on an extremely comfortable bed, next to my beautiful wife, with my amazing and healthy daughter in the next room. I take for granted that I was born into the most educated, wealthy, and opportunity rich society the world has ever known. This list could go on, and on, and on…

Most days I don’t need anything else to comfort, entertain, or help me escape the difficulties of life (first world difficulties that is, ha). What I really need is to have my senses / soul awakened to the love, hate, joys, tears, suffering, compassion, pain and beauty that I so often overlook.

And maybe tommorow I’ll bring some clorox and get to work on that break room. I wonder if anyone will notice?

So I wanted to share a few reasons that weighed heavily on my consideration of this opportunity, and hopefully you might find them helpful on your own journey.

Dream no small dreams

In some ways, my career so far could not have gotten off to a better start. I had the honor of working at the top advertising shop in the world, at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, daily mixing it up with some of the brightest minds in the creative industry, and partnering with dream clients that were as generous with the creative reigns as Gordoughs is with the awesomeness. A dream job indeed.

And for the last few years, I was part of the scrappy digital agency, Springbox, learning from some very smart, business minded creative gurus. It was here at Springbox, that I’ve truly started to find that sweetspot, where creative innovation, business goals, and user’s need all meet. Not to mention we had dream clients like Livestrong and Sweet Leaf Tea, and a steady supply of Brooklyn lager in the fridge. Good times.

So when a handful of tempting opportunities came my way, it was my instinct to lean to the hippest, most cutting edge, and overall leaders of the creative / technology industries. All great options, but all in someway easy options. Proven track records, tons of recent success to leverage, and fan bases like the world has never seen before. All of them would have been dream jobs to some degree.

But great stories are never about the easy life, or the luxuries one affords himself (via Donald Miller’s ‘A thousand miles in a million years’). Great stories are always about overcoming great obstacles. The underdog, the one everyone had counted out, who then came back to prove all the naysayers wrong.

I want to live a great story. I want to tell my grandkids of when the chips were down, and we proved them all wrong.

So even as Dell currently has some things going for them (which I’ll get to shortly), I also know that as a brand, they have taken quite a hit with the public perception over the last 5-10 years. There is much work to do. And it will require much blood, sweat and tears, as all great adventures do. And that, has the potential for a great comeback story.

Though dell has seen some rough spots over the last decade, there are many reasons for hope, and I will highlight a few of them next.

Momentum

Over the last year, Dell has been going through a massive and far reaching re-branding, largely led by an in-house team. Far beyond merely a logo, a few colors, and a typeface, this effort is addressing the entire brand prescence. And with a corporation this massive, this has been no small task. I have seen this first hand over the last year, as part of the team at Springbox working in partnership. I will admit that I was a bit skeptical about the rebranding when I first began to see it implemented. Many of us have seen corporations undergo a “rebranding”, while the reality is merely a new coat of paint. Though I thought this may be the case at first, I’m now convinced that I was wrong. There is change happening, and Dell is moving in the right direction. There is a renewed identity and passion in who Dell is as a company, as a force for good. There is a new found focus on design, aesthetics, real world usefulness, user experience, and overall brand perception. There is a good bit of momentum, and with a corporation this large, this is no small feat.

Support from leadership

As I saw the momentum building over the last year, I knew that it had to be a huge team effort, but I also knew that it had to contain a key element often missing from the majority of design / branding / creative changes in corporations: they had the support from leadership. More than just a sign off, change is being driven from both the top down, as well as bottom up. This is huge. Unless the leadership values and desires to see change happen, a million psd files / sketches / and dreams will all go for not.

A stellar team is forming

As I began to tell some fellow creatives about my decision, one of the things that I kept hearing repeatedly was “oh wow, my really talented friend / former coworker just joined the team there”. Though I didn’t know this so much when I accepted the offer, it has been quite reassuring and exciting to hear time and time again. Designers, writers, technologist, interaction designers, producers, and more. The breadth and depth of experience is impressive. Along with having support from leadership, I also believe it’s crucial to have teammates who are both highly skilled and passionate about their craft. I’m excited to join this growing team.

50 years from now, I want to look back over my life and be thankful for the people and teams I had the honor to be a part of, remember the challenges I conquered, and have no regrets about how I invested my God given time, energy, and passion. Here’s to being one step closer.