Who Is America?

And how will we know when all our voices have been counted?
What will it look like when all our people are protected?
How will each one of us know we have done our part?
America is so much more than our borders.
We, the people.

So long, 2009!

And hello, 2010!



Let's make it a damn fine decade, shall we?

Happy Thanksgiving to All of You Out There in Internetland

Maine, Ayup.

I just uploaded some photos from my Maine adventure. The Captain was very patient with my obsession of taking useless snaps of signs. You can check out the still-growing Flickr set by clicking here, or on the images below.

Breakwater

'Eat' by Robert Indiana

Barber Shop

When Second Place (or Third) Means a Win for Graphic Designers Everywhere

Well, the results are in (sort of) for the Cooper Hewitt People's Design Award. My Re-nourish team has actually waited to post anything about the results because we were trying to find out what our final ranking was. Unfortunately, the Cooper Hewitt won't actually give us that information (nor will they release how many votes each nominee received).

Doesn't matter, though. The fact is, we placed in the top three, and we gave some pretty big players a run for their money. And way more important than that is that everyone who supported us sent a message that it's high time the design industry changes how it defines "good design."

Re-nourish believes design has to expand beyond politics, personalities, and mere aesthetics, and address—in real terms—both social and environmental impacts. Please read Re-nourish's full "thank you," because I think it says a lot about why we're doing this in the first place.

And please, let us know what your thoughts are—either here, or over there.

Thank you to everyone who voted, or has otherwise supported us as we continue to bring independent tools and information to working designers everywhere!

Vacation Is Good

This was one of the first gentlemen The Captain and I ran into this morning. Yesterday, we floated by this:

Re-nourish Could Use Your Help

Wow. Re-nourish is currently in the #2 spot for the Cooper Hewitt People's Choice Awards. Having just posted a few weeks ago about how ambivalent I generally am about awards competitions, I have to admit: this is kind of cool.



The truth is, it would really say something if the public boosted Re-nourish to a win. The Cooper Hewitt is pretty fancypants, and sending a message that designers care about this stuff would be pretty hot shit. If you're so inclined, please check out the nominees and vote.

But even cooler than the nomination itself is the growing list of comments. It honestly feels damn good to know that this project has found a place in designers' daily workflow. That it's actually teaching people stuff they didn't yet know. That it's helping designers reduce their own environmental impact, and that of their clients.

So yeah, I (sheepishly) would love to win this one! Feel free to tweet, facebook, and blog about it as you see fit.

Vote for the People's Choice

If I'm ever in Albany

If I ever find myself in Albany, the Hotsy Totsy Club will be my first stop. Tin ceilings, ample pool tables, a free 45-rpm juke, and Old Overholt behind the bar. That's my kind of joint.

Enjoy your weekend, kids. And remember: if you're drinkin', don't drive and if you're drivin', don't drink.

Screen Printing Adventures Part 1: Getting My Sea Legs

I've never screen printed before. Block printing (lino cut), yes. Screen printing, no. Holy heck, it ain't easy. With a new-found respect for print pullers, I figured I would post the process just to give those of you unfamiliar with the art some idea of what goes into it.

My adventures started with a stack of old New York Times Sunday editions in the corner of the apartment and an itch to get back to the good old fashioned art projects I used to do all the time. I figured the newspaper sheets were already poster-sized, so why not put them to good use instead of chucking them into the recycle bin?

I started reading. Asking around. Collecting supplies. Anticipating all the various disaster scenarios that were likely to occur. Screwed some hinge clamps to a board so I could set up shop on the dining room table. And then finally the weekend came.

The Work Area

I knew from the get-go I'd have to run the posters off in (very small) batches, since our lil' space is limited. To start, I screwed a couple of hinge clamps to a 2'x3' board that would serve as the main printing surface. (I made sure to place the hinge clamps just far enough apart that I can use the board for both my larger 16" x 20" screen and a smaller 8" x 10" version should I get the itch for that.) My printing area is nothing more than the kitchen table wrapped in newsprint, which provides ample room to hold the printing board, the ink and squeegee setup, and a stack of newspaper sheets.



Our clothes drying rack and a crapload of binder clips would hold the prints as they came off the table. Of course, that only holds 20 or so newspaper sheets but I figure once I get the hang of things, I can always rig up a couple of temporary clothes lines to hold more.

Getting the system down

The Captain (who was to be my assistant) was called out of town at the last minute to mix the biggest-selling band in Mexico, which left me a nice empty apartment in which to make a mess, curse under my breath at my constant mistakes without hurting anyone's feelings, and play Loretta Lynn just a little too loud in the background (quick aside: this experience afforded me some excellent iPod moments, including moving from the lovely Loretta Lynn straight into Too $hort...whoa).



I'm a planner, so my process was pretty well-coordinated:

1. Set up work area.
2. Prepare newsprint.
   This involved halving the full sheets and ironing them under a pillow case to try and get the creases out. The ironing helped a little, but I half-assed it and most of the sheets were still pretty creased. That shouldn't matter much, though, right? Heh. Wrong.
   
3. Tape off screen.
   So this was a brand new screen and I didn't degrease it. Probably not smart, but I figured this first pass was just going to be a solid block of white ink to create a fresh background for my print, and I'm using a stencil instead of photoemulsion chemicals. So I just used blue painters tape to tape off the screen edges. Clever lady that I am, I ran the squeegee over the tape sans ink to be sure it would travel smoothly. Not so much (the painters tape was too thick, and the squeegee kept catching at the edge). So I slapped some clear packaging tape over the edges to create a smoother surface.
4. Set up my registration.
   In order to keep your design (in my case, a giant white rectangle) in the same place on every sheet, you need to mark where the corners of each sheet should lie on the work surface. I just used a couple scraps of tape to mark the registration. When it comes time to print the actual design, I'll use a more exact system to be described later.
   
5. Mix the paint.
   I wasn't too sure how much paint I'd need, but I'd read a calculation that with water-based paints, one should allow about 1 cup of paint for 75 square feet of coverage. My sheets were about two square feet each, and with 20 sheets that gave me about 40 square feet—or just over a 1/2 cup of paint. I poured that amount of Speedball's standard water-based acrylic into a plastic cup, added a dallop of retarder and a dallop of extender (I wasn't sure if I should just pick one, but I figured it was a life lesson and went for broke), and stirred that sucker up.

And then all of a sudden, I realized I was ready to go.

Pulling the prints

And this it where it all went to hell. Actually, I should be more accurate: it all went incredibly smoothly, but my ink coverage was pretty terrible from start to finish. I'd read a whole lot about technique; what angle to hold the squeegee at (anywhere from 10-45°), how much paint to pour out, how to flood the screen before the actual pull, how hard to push down, et cetera and so forth. Boy was I ready.

I place the first sheet at the registration marks, and pour a thick line of ink along the bottom of the screen. I hadn't left much tape around the top and bottom edges, as the newspaper sheet was pretty tall and I didn't want 6" gaps of articles still visible. So, I lift the screen off the work surface slightly, and run the squeegee over the screen from bottom to top for the first flood stroke. I push down pretty hard to make sure I get full ink coverage across the screen, and it looks good. I drop the screen onto the work surface, and pull from the top down. Completely uneven! Wacky vertical streaks, and one thick horizontal streak where the newspaper was folded through its middle. Oops.




With each subsequent print I tried making little adjustments. I tried more and less paint (didn't seem to make much difference, though I did need to be generally pretty generous with it). I tried pushing harder on the flood. I tried pushing harder on the second pull. I tried adjusting the angle of the squeegee. Nothing completely eliminated the streaks. The best prints, though, were the result of generous ink, an almost completely upright squeegee, a single gentle flood stroke, and single hard second pull.

Troubleshooting

I suspect the terrible coverage was a result of several things, not least of which was the paper choice. Newsprint is thin, and these sheets weren't completely flat. Although I was doing no-contact printing, where the screen rests about 1/8" from the surface of the paper when it's down, I got zero snap-off (which is when the screen lifts itself off the paper after the pull...I think).

But I know I was probably butchering those pull strokes. Had I had an assistant, they would have held the screen up while I pulled the flood, holding the squeegee with both hands for a nice even coat. But I only had one hand, and I suspect my pulls were a little janky. I have arthritis, and this was also a lot harder on my wrists and hands than I expected. Maybe I was pressing too hard on the squeegee, but I can't imagine doing this for much more than the 20 sheets I did.




Finally, I have to wonder if either my ink mixing was off, or if not degreasing the screen was a huge mistake. I suppose I'll have to hit up some pros for input, and adjust on the next run. All said, although my prints are all uneven, I loved the process. Hopefully I'll figure out what I was doing wrong, and the next few runs will be better. My saving grace was that the crease marks were much less visible once the ink dried, and my hope is that subsequent layers will cover them up even more.

So stay tuned for round two, in which I attempt to lay down the first layer of the design.

Sustainable Design Town Hall: Sharing Good Ideas

Collaboration is one of the fundamental pieces of a functional design industry. It also happens to be one of the fundamental pieces of sustainable progress. In order to take positive, measurable steps forward, designers need to come together to identify relevant problems, brainstorm new ideas, and troubleshoot potential solutions. And that's what some of us did last week at Lunar, the hosts of a Designers Accord town hall meeting here in San Francisco.

A huge nod goes to Vanessa and the Lunar crew for creating a really successful, open atmosphere for idea sharing. Five of us spent 5-10 minutes each presenting a different idea to the group of about 20 fellow designers and educators. No specific theme, just idea sharing.

I spent my time mostly asking questions, of course. As I told the group, I'm currently helping a couple of different groups develop certification standards for graphic designers and their projects. I've been tapped by Eric Benson of re-nourish and Yvette Perullo of Rethink Design to provide input on a responsible design protocol. The protocol is a three-tiered certification system (partially modeled on the LEED system), intended to provide designers and clients with a rigorous framework for evaluating print design projects. We're also working on a studio-level version, which is where most of my work is being done. Simultaneously, I'm providing similar recommendations to the San Francisco Green Business Program for their design studio guidelines.

Developing these guidelines poses a significant challenge on many levels, and I'll be discussing those in another post soon enough. But last week's presentation, and the ensuing discussion, allowed me to get valuable input from other working designers, which will only strengthen the final recommendations. Folks raised questions, challenged my assumptions, and provided great ideas for improvement. Most of all, I was surprised by how generally open to certification they were. Perhaps it was the knowledge that such a program was being developed with genuine consideration for the limitations and challenges it will face.

There were some really cool ideas passed around by the other four presenters, too. Throughout this week, I'm going to post about each of them, so be sure to tune in (or subscribe to the email feed).

On the road...

I'm currently hurtling across the western United States, seein' stuff. On my return in early March, I will:

• Launch the new site!
• Post a full recap of Compostmodern '09.

If you'd like an email to let you know when the new site goes live, please sign up for the Roundup in the menu to your left. See you soon!

Truism No. 134*

My own website redesign is, without a doubt, the most heinous undertaking I have undertook to date. And at the very same time, I've needed to experience every tortured moment of it.

Yes, Virginia, there is a website coming. The Captain doesn't believe me, and it's okay if you don't, either. The delay isn't due to indecisiveness, however, or lack of direction. Oddly, it's due to too much of same.

I so know what I want for this new site that I'm hesitant to just settle on good enough. There are a plethora of advocates in the web 2.0 sphere who insist that you should launch first, and tweak later. But that approach just feels wrong, and if there's one lesson my pea brain has picked up on, it's that in business, if it feels wrong it probably is. Why should I go with this gut feel, though? Haven't I built up too much suspense by not just launching design concept #5 or maybe even design concept #12? Haven't I talked it to death?

Well, my answer is no. One reason I'm redesigning this site is to get past good enough. I chose good enough with this current iteration, so why on earth should I do it again? Plus, I'm sick of good enough. I don't accept it for my clients, so there's no reason to accept it for my own projects.

More important than a speedy launch or eye-catching design, though, is my own slow process of repositioning Roughstock. When I got smashed by a car at the end of '07, I decided it was time to stop screwing around and really lay it on the line. I wanted to morph Roughstock from just another freelancer's attempt at a regular job into a conduit for all the seemingly unrelated skills I've picked up over the years. Those skills are good for something, and I'd been using them for that something. I just needed to figure out the best way to explain that.

See, for most of my life I've been terrible at explaining myself. I've been great at explaining things having nothing to do with myself—I get a lot of "you just seem to get us" from my clients —but when it comes to little ol' moi, it's a lot easier to just do what I do and let others connect the dots. I chalk this up to my bartending years: bartenders are damn good listeners, and we tend to listen while keeping our own crap to ourselves. But let's face it: I ain't bartending anymore (much as I pine for it some nights). So when I got smooshed by a red-light runner, I knew I needed to take more control of Roughstock.

The site redesign has been a huge part of that. I've spent a long time cogitating about what it is I really do for my clients. For the record, it's not just graphic design, or copywriting. There's a lot of discovering, and exploring, and nailing down goals, and planning for the future, and all kinds of other good stuff that goes along with the final deliverables. I've also spent a lot of time admitting that I don't want everyone to be my client. Sure, I knew this from the get-go (it's why I run my own business in the first place), but sometimes it takes a high-speed car crash to make you really know it.

So I spent the first half of 2008 recovering from the accident, while simultaneously rethinking my whole schtick (among other things, of course). And every time I thought I had it figured out, I designed a new web site that you never saw. But it hasn't been until the last few months that I've really admitted to myself that it's not about rethinking a damn thing. It's about getting back to the whole reason I started Roughstock: to help folks say what they mean in meaningful ways. Uplifting, isn't it?

And so I persist. I know I'm getting close to a finished site. You don't, but that's alright. If you sign up for either the rss feed or the Roundup newsletter (sign-up form is to the left), you'll know soon enough.




*Randomly selected number intended to communicate the vastness that is any given body of knowledge.

D'oh! A Note to Recent Roundup Subscribers

In case you'd forgotten, I've been furiously redesigning this site (and getting very close to launch, I might add). Among the many changes I'm making is to move the newsletter subscription service to a more flexible platform. No problems there—if you've already received one issue of the Roundup in your email inbox, you don't need to do a thing.

If, however, you've subscribed in the last couple of months (let's say since Thanksgiving), you're going to need to resubscribe. I know, I know. If you'd rather just email me and chew me out for my negligence, I promise not to flinch.

You can subscribe using that same form in the left-hand menu there. Take a glance—yep, that one. I promise, it works now. And it's totally worth re-subscribing, because in the next few weeks you'll be getting a very special announcement.

Thanks for your patience!

Roughstock Hours

We're closed! I'm on vacation through the first, though I may be posting occasionally here. Have an amazing transition into 2009!


Photo by Margaret Sand (mom)

Thanksgiving

Fifty People, One Question:


Fifty People, One Question: New York from Crush & Lovely on Vimeo.

[via SwissMiss]

Thanksgiving Hours

Roughstock's going to be closing up shop for the thanksgiving holiday, so please note our hours:

CLOSED: Wed., Nov. 26 - Fri., Nov. 28

Enjoy your feast!

Beth Schuenemann

A couple of weeks ago I featured several artists whose work I got see at the Art Explosion open studios. Beth was one of them, and she's provided me with some images so I can share her work with you. She does really graphic urban landscapes—the style perfectly captures San Francisco and its architecture in way that photography just can't.












Check out more of Beth's work in her Art Explosion profile.

Proud Overnight

America can breathe a sigh of relief this morning, but still it feels like there's so much work to do. If I see one change over the coming years, I hope it's in our schools. I hope our schools start teaching how to think critically again.

Art Explosion Fall 2008

Twice a year, the Art Explosion Studios in San Francisco open their doors for a mass art show featuring their tenants' work. You get the opportunity to take in a huge variety of art in one place, and to talk to the artists themselves about their work and process. This is a quick recap of just a few of the artists that really stuck with me this weekend.

Keith Gidlund

By far my favorite of the show, but I'm a sucker for black and white photography. And shot with a Holga, no less. Keith was showing a wall full of this work, which focused entirely of natural landscapes. Not only does the circular framing amplify the organic shapes within the frame, it combines with the black and white medium to create an almost scientific specimen-like effect. It's beautiful work, almost breathtaking.





Definitely explore his website, as he has several sets of images that are stylistically very different from each other. His sweeping horizons and transparent collection are worth a look-see.

Ken Hay

I am not typically drawn to work like this, but something about it stopped me in my tracks. This little red house kept making an appearance, often in multiplicities, throughout Ken's work, only to end up in flames in his recent drawings. The meticulous geometry of his pencil lines frame a weird sort of chaos. All in a folk arty, colorful vernacular that normally turns me off but this time around pulled me in.

Artists without Websites

Sophia Antipas: A great eye for outside space, architectural and organic details, color.

Don Ross: Not a lot on display, but my favorite was a large-size drugstore diptych of a young boy (kid) and woman.

Beth Schuenemann: The woman I came to see. Really graphic, colorful paintings of San Francisco buildings. I'll get my hands on some of her work and post it soon.

Britt's Baby: Yes, it's wicked corny, but Beth's coworker Britt had her baby with her and the kid was a work of art. Four weeks old, tiny, and very, very serious. Honestly, she looked a little intense. Like, don't mess with me tense. But in a sweet, new baby way.

Royal Type From 1936

Got my ribbons yesterday for my baby. This is what her keyboard looks like:


No #1 key, didja notice? Gotta use the lowercase L instead. But it's got fractions! There are only two real issues with this machine that I've noticed so far (aside from the fact that I need a slipmat to keep it from jogging across the table): the "w" sticks something fierce, and whatever mechanism that triggers the ribbon spool to reverse (thereby rewinding the ribbon back onto itself for reuse until dry) doesn't seem to work.

Other than that, it's all systems go.

Design Interlude: Recent Book Cover Design

Supermarket facilities management. Sexy stuff, huh? When The Captain's step-father mentioned he was writing the best practices book for his industry, I jumped on it. The coolest thing about this book is not the chapter on "service vendor management" (shocking, I know), but the entire section on sustainability. Supermarkets are an energy-intensive industry, what with all the trucking, refrigeration and just keeping the lights on in the cold case, so it's particularly exciting to see this book call attention to it.



Now, this audience does not exactly ooze design sophistication, as noted by such lovely trade pubs as Progressive Grocer and Supermarket Today, so I couldn't exactly go trendy. Given the "how to" nature of the book, and the title, the solution was pretty clear. I designed the 160-page interior along the same lines, though the photos are lousy so you don't get to see them (you'll just have to wait for the site redesign for full shots).

The book was printed on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper (30% PCW for the cover stock). Our printer for this job is a locally-certified Green Business, who uses only soy inks, chemical-free plates, and wind credits to power their plant. The paper stock alone saved the following natural resources:

• 5 fully grown trees
• 1,865 gallons of water
• 3 million BTUs of energy
• 215 lbs. of solid waste
• 420 lbs. of greenhouses gases

Not bad.

Musical Interlude: Nick Cave and the Bad MotherF$#%@in Seeds

Saw Nick Cave at the Warfield this past Saturday. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a skinny funny-lookin' rock 'n' roll man in a suit. I remember picking up Kicking Against the Pricks when I was 15 and it nearly split my head open.

This footage is not from this weekend's show, but is pretty recent:



(Footage from the show I was at can be found here, though there's a little much audience for my taste.)

The thing about Nick Cave is his storytelling. And his nasty version of Stagger Lee. And his funny Australian accent. And his devotion to Elvis. And his complete wackiness as evidenced by the commercial for Dig Lazarus Dig! on his site (navigate yerself to the "Miscellany" section).

Happy 51st birthday, Nick!

Images I Grew Up With: Tomi Ungerer

I am lucky to have grown up with a designer father and a reader mother; one of the first books I remember pulling down from the lower shelves as a tiny rugrat was something about architect Adolf Loos. I was hooked. I practically ate books for breakfast.

Beyond the words I took in, I'm thinking about the visual language that was taught to me back then, and how that language still knocks around inside my head—the colors, the shapes, the sheer bizarreness of the tales told in ink and paint. A lot of it was dark (which explains an awful lot about the other stuff knocking around inside my head), and a lot of it was utterly earth-shattering to my little brain.

At first I was going to just list a handful of these artists as a sort of stroll down memory lane, but I want to share too many images for a single post, so I'm doing this series-style. It only seems fair to provide some sense of the breadth of each these artists; each image, each book, builds on the next, stringing together an entire world in just two dimensions. Let's start with Tomi.

THE UNDERGROUND SKETCHBOOK OF TOMI UNGERER
This book, together with Osborn's the Vulgarians, permanently scarred me for life. I knew they were dangerous when I was reading them, long before I had any idea what they meant, just from the style of illustration. Of course, the sexually explicit imagery had something to do with it, too. The Underground Sketchbook (and other works, like The Erotoscope) seemed to channel all the cynicism and human ugliness that he left out of his children's books and even commercial advertising. Of course, that's not entirely true; his children's books did hint at the darkness and depravity of humanity but, y'know, for kids. The following few images, some of the mildest in the book, are from the copy of the Sketchbook that I permanently borrowed from my parents' bookshelf (it was published in 1964).








CHILDREN'S BOOKS: MOON MAN
Remember those individual film strip players in your grade school library? You'd check out the player at the librarian's counter, choose your film strip story (which were almost always the same selection throughout the year), and then find the furthest-away cubicle and try desperately to load the strip properly. Finally, you'd slide the cassette tape into the slot, align the strip with the sound, and off you'd go. The narrator would read a page of the book, then you'd get the beep (always too loud), and you'd roll the film strip forward one frame. This was how I read Moon Man. It always made me horribly sad to think of such a lonely, lovely figure so alienated from the world around him. Ah, childhood...




CRICTOR
And then there was Crictor, a light-hearted tale of an old woman and her hero snake.




NO KISS FOR MOTHER
I feel guilty to this day for loving this book so much (sorry, ma).






And here, finally, is the man himself:

How do you choose whom to help? Sometimes, you just pick someone.

Living in San Francisco, I routinely step over sleeping bodies in the street, shake my head when spare changed, and generally go about my business surrounded by the needy. To some degree, I think, we all do this. We pick and choose our causes, because there are so many damn causes. So many people who need real, desperate, help.

Every now and then, though, I break my own "just say no or be overwhelmed" rule. I do pro bono work to balance my evil marketing side. The other day I bought a $5 BART ticket for a guy trying to get someplace. I called 911 several months ago when I watched an elderly woman pass out at a bus station (turned out her heart was slowly stopping, it was kind of scary). But I rarely—I mean almost never—bother to champion fundraising causes on my blog. It's one of my "just say no or be overwhelmed" rules.

I'm breaking that rule. Lori Hall Steele needs help, and so does her son, Jack. You may have read about Jack in the Washington Post, where Lori wrote about his reaction to watching Bambi:

"'When I'm 4,' Jack asks, 'will you still look after me?'

Will I? Of course, of course, of course. I stroke his blond curls and tell him he'll always be my baby. But it's as if he senses some disclaimer from the universe.

'Mommy?' he asks. 'Will you still look after me when I'm a grown-up?'"

[read the entire—short—piece, then come back. Just read it, really.]

When Lori wrote this piece almost three years before it was published, she was healthy and she made the only promise moms can make to a small child who asks such questions. And now, three years later, Lori is on a ventilator, paralyzed, battling both ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and Lyme disease. And while she and her family struggle to cope with the mother's brutally degenerative illnesses, they also face immediate foreclosure on their home. Oh, and over $50,000 in medical bills (and counting) that her insurance company refused to pay.

And this is where my "just say no" rule gets broken. It's hard to describe just how deeply destructive a chronic degenerative condition can be. I know this part of Lori's story, to such a milder degree, firsthand. What I can't imagine is how magnified all of it must be when the system set up to care for you turns its back on you, and you in turn are left powerless to care for your own loved ones, and promise them their safety and security. Hundreds of writers, bloggers, and friends have been similarly moved, and have begun an all-out fundraising push to help Lori keep her home and cover her medical expenses.

Please consider joining this push, and donate just a little bit of cash to the fund: the cost of a pizza, a six-pack, a night out on the town, whatever you would have tipped your bartender, whatever. We all have our own "just say no or be overwhelmed" rule: I hope you'll consider breaking yours for Lori and her family.

• Donate via PayPal (note: this is, unfortunately not a nonprofit deduction)
  
• Save Lori's House (you can also donate via this page, or send a check instead)
  
• Article in Grand Traverse Herald on Lori
• Lori's article about her son, Jack
  

Insights From the HOW Design Conference

After an extended trip back to my hometown (Boston, that is) for the HOW Design Conference, I'm feeling super focused. I've spent the last six months or so mulling over Roughstock and my own goals, and the conference put a lot into perspective for me. Instead of a lengthy review or analysis, I'll just note some of the key takeaways I was left with that I think apply to all organizations...

Challenge yourself to think atypically.
We're all conditioned to take the path of least resistance, but if we give ourselves the chance to step off this path, the results can be incredible. There was no better evidence of this than speaker Bill Strickland's discussion of his journey transforming a failing inner city school into an educational powerhouse for arts and leadership. If you want to lead the competition rather than play catch-up, you need to step outside your comfort zone, challenge your own assumptions, and take a few calculated risks.

Work smarter not harder.
This is one of those nuggets of common sense that seems to always fall by the wayside. It goes right along with measure twice, cut once. Whatever you're doing - whether it's designing a direct mail piece, completely rebranding your company, or giving a speech - think about each small step along the way. By making active decisions with a larger goal in mind, the fruits of your labor will yield bigger and better results.

Play.
As the child of workaholics, it's very hard for me to separate work from personal life. But with careful practice, I keep discovering that the more I invest in my personal world, the better my work becomes. After all, the human mind is not a machine. It's an organic, responsive mess o' brains that needs exercise and excitement. Trips to Fenway Park, Charlie's Kitchen, the Museum of Modern Art et al. provided me with color palettes, patterns, lighting techniques, compositions and insights that I never would have gotten with my eyeballs pinned to a computer screen.

Remember why you do what you do.
Chances are, you've gotten so caught up in the logistics of your work that you've forgotten what drew you to it in the first place. Revisit that attraction, and ask yourself if you're doing exactly what you want to do. You don't have to drop everything and hit the high seas on a sailing ship, either; try asking yourself how you can adjust your businesses practices to better reflect your own values. As I practice this myself, Roughstock's future becomes a motivating goalpost rather than a logistical nightmare, and opportunities are already poking me affectionately in the ribs.

I love that just a few days of mental and visual stimulation can make such a difference in both my personal and work lives. Sharing stories with colleagues, meeting new people who I've only ever heard of before, and absorbing the experiences and values of others has been powerful. I can't wait to see it all seep into my work over the months ahead.

A Royal Birthday Gift

The Captain really outdid himself. Last night, on my birthday, he presented me with this:

Answer a Few Questions and Win!

Update: Thanks to all who participated! The survey is now closed.

I'm redesigning roughstockstudios.com and I really want your help. Our visitor statistics keep going up and I want to make sure the site stays as relevant and useful as possible.

I've put together a brief survey (really—it's less than ten questions) to find out what you'd like to see here (or not see, for that matter).

To sweeten the deal a little, one lucky survey participant will be randomly pulled from a virtual hat to receive a free copy of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Don't.

Of course, if you don't want to be bothered, you can always leave your comments below. Thanks so much!

Happy New Year!

And now, for the next chapter...

Hoisting a glass in honor of Repeal Day

The following is an article from the New York Sun dated September 6, 1930. It's the story of one family in the restaurant business—my family—and not only is it a fascinating look at hospitality and daily life in the first half of the last century, it also seems an appropriate way to honor Repeal Day.



"A recent transfer of a lease for a restaurant property in Chambers street, near Broadway, brings back memories of a family who for fifty years or more catered to the eating and drinking appetites of some of the best known men in New York. It was the house of Schmidt—headed by the father Louis, and his two sons, Ollie and George. They actually put the liquor or saloon business on the business map and conducted it as one might conduct a banking institution.

Louis Schmidt opened and ran for many years the place at 6 Center street and it was known far and wide as Pier 6. Just why this name became attached to the place is not of record. It was in this place that two sons were instructed into the mysteries of drink mixing. From the start they liked the business and stuck to it as long as Andrew Volstead kept his ideas to himself.

It must be conceded that the Schmidt menage was good when it had upward of a dozen competitors in the triangle on which now stands the Municipal Building. It was then bounded by Tryon Square on the south, on which the Staats-Zeitung Building faces; Center street, Chambers street and Park Row. In the newspaper building there was a famous rathskeller. Next door was Pier 6. Then came Leggat's hotel and bar. Two doors away was Humpy Hanover's Curio and on the corner Paddy Shea's.



While all these places were going full blast, the Schmidt boys and their father kept right on selling good things to eat and drink. George, the younger son, was born over the saloon on Center street and has been in business barely three blocks away from there during his life. Ollie, being older, took over the burden when his father died and continued the name of Schmidt in the purveying business.

Not far away from the Schmidt domicile was the home of the Stender family in William street, just around the corner from Spruce street. Ollie was a live wire and so was Emma Stender, the niece of the elder Kate, who established the famous Kate's, which ran until a few years ago and which went out of business because liquor was taboo in the premises. Good food could be had until the day the key turned in the door for the last time. Some years ago Ollie died. His wife, Emma, assisted by sisters, Kate and Frieda, tried to carry on. Many of the old customers stuck, although they had to forgo their accustomed whisky sour or the seductive cocktail or a schoppen of Rhine wine with their meals.

Ollie had died and Emma had followed in a few years and the load was left for Kate and Frieda. It was too much of a load with only a few hours of eating each day, and they closed the place.



But to get back to the Schmidt boys. Ollie had a following. The Center street place was not magnificent as far as appointments went, but the bottled goods were of the very best. The small priced luncheons were tasty and the free lunch good. So when the place was forced to close the boys looked about to see what could be had to take over the trade who constantly reminded them they should stay in the neighborhood.

The place at 81 Chambers street long had been an established place and they took it over. Then the difference of opinions of the two brothers became known. Ollie thought the place should be closed at 7 o'clock each evening. George thought a later hour would be better. But the hour was 7 o'clock, and if a customer happened to be in the bar at that hour he was asked to take a "nightcap" on the house and everybody started away from 81 Chambers street, but the records do not show they always went directly home.

From the start the Schmidt ownership prospered, but Ollie thought he should have a place of his own and he therefore opened on Park Row at the apex of North William street, one of the handsomest cafes then to be seen in lower Manhattan. It was not a success and Ollie lost practically all he had saved and dumped into a place that was not wanted on a street of people who were rushing to catch subways and elevated trains. Brooklyn Bridge terminal was in those days a wonderful railroad terminus, but the Schmidt place did not seem to appeal.

Ollie therefore took over the William street place made so famous by Kate. City officials and newspapermen of note of other days congregated here and pleasant hours of reminiscence often brought to light interesting news stories that found their way into print. The Schmidt boys as well as the Stender girls were known to writers and public officials generally, but their support was not adequate to pay the overhead when the Volstead law became a part of the dictum of the day.



But George Schmidt stood his ground. When the law against the sale of intoxicating liquors became operative he stood by the law and never sold an illegal drink. But he did try to make his restaurant stand up a little straighter and reorganized hi place with full restaurant equipment and with this he has gone along until he decided he had been in the purveying business long enough and barely a stone's throw from the place he was born.

The Chambers street place had a couple of things to its credit that did not call for the use of alcoholic stimulant. True the corned beef and cabbage on Wednesdays have tasted a little better with a glass of real beer, but George's customers knew the value of the food and were satisfied to forgo the stimulant. On Saturday's he had a dish of pork and beans that attracted men from far and near. Men who had never called except on Saturday could be counted in the throng, for such it was, during the bean season, which seemed to run the year round.

George Schmidt has not served a drink behind a bar for many years and he probably will never mix another, but he has fond memories of his lifelong experience catering to men in public life in New York city. He has known personally Mayors and their cabinets and the writers followed him around as they did Kate and Ollie. Now he plans to retire from active daily routine and take a rest that may eventually take him up to Connecticut, where he has his eye on a cozy place that will be his home for the rest of his days.

Many years ago the Schmidts—father and sons as well as sisters-in-law—wrote their names into the hearts of good eaters and drinkers. All sorts of men—and no women—found their way into 6 Center street and the other places. One of the customers wrote a piece of poetry of fourteen verses which he had printed on good paper and was distributed to the patrons of the place. The man was retiring enough to withhold his name, but the author was known to those on the inside. On the first page titld "Pier 6" is a cut of Ollie and George Schmidt. It points out that Ollie is the owner and that George and Fred and Ollie Curtis are 'a brave quartet of bartenders, who only serve the best.'"

Now please, go out and celebrate.

Design Interlude: Anniversary CD

We went to visit The Captain's grandfolks for Thanksgiving this year. Despite taking 27 hours to get there (um, it was supposed to take six—thanks, United), it was a great time. They were celebrating their 60th anniversary this year. Holy crap! So we brought them this:



Despite my original attempts at sweet illustrations of birds in trees, The Captain insisted on something more "abstract" (he doesn't go in for sweet too much). So I went with something a little more '40s. I kept it simple, since the grandfolks don't even really know what CDs are (if I could have put it on vinyl, I would have).

If you're interested in what was popular in 1947, the playlist is as follows:

1. All of Me—Frankie Lane
2. Anniversary Song—Al Johnson
3. Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)—Tex Williams*
4. Linda—Ray Noble and His Orchestra
5. Ballerina—Vaughn Monroe
6. Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens—Louis Jordon and His Tympani Five
   
7. I've Got a Crush On You—Frank Sinatra
8. Near You—Francis Craig and His Orchestra
9. Heartaches—Ted Weems Orchestra
10. Chi-Baba Chi-Baba—Perry Como
11. Across the Way From Alamo—The Mills Brothers

*I used to play this song constantly when I was DJing the honky tonk; it's a great western swing number, made famous again as the opening tune to the film Thank You For Smoking.

Some Colors Can't Be Copied

I'm on the road right now, resting in rural Vermont. Internet yes, cell phone service no. Strange dichotomy. Even stranger is the 3-legged dog I'm staying with. Photos to come later (I only brought my film camera). In the meantime, here are a couple of shots from last year's trip:

Simplify This.

One of the easiest ways I have found to simplify my life is to stop reading the absurdly long list of ways to simplify your life continually posted by life-simplifying blogs.

August/September Roundup Now Online

The August issue of the Roundup has been combined with September's issue, for a comprehensive, full blown, content rich, action packed issue of the Roundup.

To get the Roundup delivered to your inbox completely free (we don't even ask for your soul) every month, just enter your email to the left (right there, see it? Where it says "The Newsletter"). Or click this link

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Talking About Important Things

It's been just over two weeks since I was in that auto accident and one week since recovering from a gnarly bacterial infection (I'll spare you the details save to point out that when the doc prescribes the highest dose of antibiotics and coma-inducing barbiturates, you know you've got something vicious running around inside you). Normalcy is still nowhere near my peripheral vision, and yet I can't deny that I've got it easy.

I don't generally get too personal when writing online but I've decided to break with tradition because, well, I feel like it and I need to find a way to start writing online again, a transition. I've noticed/discovered/learned several things over the past weeks, most of which have appeared to me in question form, and mentioning them seems to be a good way to get back into writing about the things going on outside of my own life. The stuff circulating through my brain these days includes but is not limited to:

• When I think "how much worse it could have been," am I belittling the experience of those who are, say, paralyzed? Am I effectively saying, "I could have ended up like them, god forbid"? That seems both rude and ignorant to me. And yet I feel enormously lucky.
  
• Why has western medicine still not integrated elements of yoga and other eastern practices into the treatment process?
• Why do people think it's okay to do things other than drive when they're behind the wheel?
  
• How can I make Roughstock a profitable business that ultimately serves the interests of the whole, not the few?
  

I think mortality and death are beautiful phenomena, because they strip away the bullshit so that we can see "what really matters" (an ephemeral, constantly changing collection of things). My late uncle, conversely, is fondly remembered for having paid close attention to the details of life: colors, textures, pauses, shared words. I think the details allowed him to overlook the terminal illness he lived with for years. He knew he was going to die but not when; why worry about the big stuff when there are beautiful things to marvel at and words to string together in new ways?

All of which is to say, you can feel two different emotions, believe two opposing things, at the very same time. So I'm going to start writing online again, with no promise that my words will be relevant or on time. I'm just going to do a little exploring, throwing ideas out there. Let me know if anything resonates, or ticks you off.

Best,
Jess

Great Examples in Copywriting: Big Agnes

When The Captain bought me a Big Agnes for my birthday, I was in heaven. The sleeping bag was wide enough to allow me to toss and turn at will without feeling like I was being strangled by a giant slug. And it had no filling on the underside; instead, there was a giant pocket for my sleeping pad, ensuring proper insulation from the cold ground without the weight of added stuffing.

Big Agnes is my new hero. The Captain just came home with his latest installment: a two-person backpacking tent weighing naught but three pounds, fourteen ounces. And the best part? This little zinger found buried within the tent's setup instructions:

"Helpful Hints For Tent Set Up:
• Our tents are easy to set up but we suggest you practice once at home before using them for the first time to avoid late night bickering with tent mates while fumbling around in the dark..."

Why is this such a brilliant example of copywriting? Because it acknowledges an important camping reality: tents are a bitch to set up in the dark. And you will fight with whomever you're trying to set it up with if you've never done it before. It is clear and concise, yet speaks to the camper as a fellow camper.

I love copy that is truly helpful without going overboard, and this is a great example.