Jaxon's first moments of life

Here are some pictures from Jaxon after he had his first bath and first night.

Bobbi is pregnant! Instead of sending out more pregnant photos, we are sending out videos! Expect to see more videos of Jaxon once he has arrived.

I realize I haven’t written in a while, but several things have been going on. I am now teaching a night class at the Art Institute of Dallas. The class is web development for graphic design. So far I’m enjoying the time I spend teaching.

My wife is a teacher as well and I’ve heard several teacher-like statements from her, so now it’s my turn to espouse my teaching philosophy.

I teach the way that I wish I was taught.
— Sal Khan, Khan Academy (via)

Not a very long philosophy, huh? I think we all have these same feelings about parenting: “When I grow up and have kids, I’m never going to make them do ____.” I’m serious though. I teach the way I learned best. I show examples I think are relevant and helped me. I guess a teacher is nothing more than a knowledge aggregator.

I like to stay current on design as a whole. Most of the work I do is digital, but I think it’s imperative to stay current on the many facets of design. For one thing, there’s some crazy interesting stuff going on out there, but what’s more is you never know where your next inspiration is going to come from. Take these things for example:

I know I get stuck sometimes thinking, “There’s no way I could redesign this. It’s been designed so many times.” Then I see this. How could you possibly improve on a USB jack? Brilliant! Make them chainable.

Furthermore, how are you going to improve on a plug design? What if the plug folded? It’s the crazy questions like that which lead to great designs such as this folding plug. Yeah, this solution is great design, but what’s even greater is the question that opened the door to the solution. This guy won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year, which to me doesn’t mean as much as the feeling of hand-hitting-forehead which this design brings about.

Finally, sometimes you need to rearrange your thinking. When buying a light fixture, almost always you consider how the light is going to be cast. This bulb design reverses that thinking; think instead of how the shadows are going to be cast.

What if I took that idea to web design. Don’t think about how best to present the content, but instead this about how to present the absence of content. We’ve been told to increase leading to increase legibility. Can we smash everything together to increase legibility? Crazy questions, but they’ve got to be posed to get crazy, head-slapping design.

Thanks to design milk for exposing me to design.

I was checking the weather today and usually I ignore web ads, as do most people. However, this ad caught my eye because of its (bad) design.

A couple questions came to mind:

• Who designs these? Is it merely something done for a quick buck, or does the designer feel they have arrived at the pinnacle of their career when creating this? Just curious…
• Why the picture of the old, angry man? Is he “surprised at how much he can save?” Is he angry about the “US government… housing relief program?” Has he “mistakenly” eaten too many bananas and is now “surprised” at how constipated he is? I fail to see the connection.
• Are people checking the weather the prime audience for refinancing their home? I don’t think so. I would think the money would be spent better on another site, at least a house-oriented site.
  

As I view other design sites and personal portfolios, several take quite a bit of time to flaunt their awards. My question is do these design awards really matter? Am I handicapped because I have one, maybe two awards?

It’s my opinion the work speaks more than awards. I don’t really think a plethora of awards is going to be the deciding factor. Sure, it might look good and make your client feel warm inside, but does it break/make the bank?

The Puma Hard Chorus