Talk at UW

This coming winter, we’ll be teaching a class at the University of Washington. To introduce us to the students, Karen Cheng invited us to give a talk to the school. It was great meeting some of the students and we look forward to teaching there in a couple of months. Above is a cool poster made by Joey Flynn. And James Davidson took some great photos of the event.

Welcome, “We Care”

Parking lot signage. Rather poor choice of quotation marks in the context of a parking sign, given how parking lots are known of their “care”. Obviously, once payment is received, caring will commence. And it will be limited by the amount of “care” time you purchase. It can end in 2, 4, 6 or 8 hours. Then there ‘s the early bird “care” rate. Somewhat cheaper than regular, but still a rip-off.

Webvisions / NW Dev. Group talk

We were invited to speak at the Northwest Developers Group / Webvisions speaker series. The subject was the future of the Internet which is a rather big topic. The upside of it is that I could have made it all up. It’s the future, after all, no-one’s been there to check and see what it’s like and come back to refute anything (Jet packs. I’m still waiting for mine…)! Take a look at the presentation when you have a moment and see what this was all about.

Unexpected Bug/Feature

Continuing with the spirit of my last post, I recently received an unexpected gift from TextMate. There was no accompanying bug or crash, and as soon as I scrolled up and down (after taking the screenshot, of course), the text rainbow disappeared.

Impressive Spam

We’re used to dealing with spam, but we’re seldom impressed by it. Today we were pleased to discover a blog-post-worthy viagra ad in our collective IF/THEN inbox. Some unknown spammer lovingly crafted the word “viagra” using colored table cells. It’s simple, uses web-safe colors, resizes nicely, and is sure to please.

As seen in Communication Arts

We just found out that we got 2 mentions in the latest Communication Arts magazine. It’s CA’s 50th anniversary issue, and they included the Vancouver Culture Guide in their 50-year timeline of influential work. It’s a great honor to be included on the list along with some amazing designs.

In the same issue is a feature on egg which includes a shout out for Jim’s work on Better World Books. Congratulations egg! And if you need a buy a book, check ’em out.

IF/THEN vs. THE hotel

We recently returned from Las Vegas where we attended the MIX09 conference, following our branding work on it. We booked our stay at THE hotel at Mandalay Bay. What follows is an exploration in branding gone off. An exercise in bringing up the banal and selling it as THE exclusive. A coup for the lazy marketeer. Never mind the inconsistency of application. What matters here is THE idea!

Read More

Frye Art Museum website and Henry Art Gallery website win awards at Seattle Show 2009

We launched two museum websites in 2008 and they both recently received awards at the Seattle Show 2009. The Frye Art Museum website won Silver for Information Design and the Henry Art Gallery website was recognized with a Merit Award for Information design.

New site up

And not a moment too soon. After quite a titanic struggle that lasted all of February, we now have a completely remodeled web-home. More usable, searchable and most of all, more complete. Stay a while, enjoy that “new site” smell till it lasts, and let us know if you find kinks.

IF/THEN at HIVE

AIGA Seattle kindly asked us to present at HIVE along with Gabe Kean from Belle & Wissell. The theme of our presentation was “Honesty” and how honesty influenced the design approaches we applied for three recent projects; Frye Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery and MIX 09. Thanks to Jeff Barlow, Halli Thiel and HADW. Check out the video.