[Left to right, top to bottom.]

Occupy Wall Street. And Portland.

World population reaches 7 billion.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, passes away.

Water is found on Mars.

Devestating earthquake and tsunami off the coast off Japan.

Portland’s soccer team, The Timbers, go major league.

New species of mushroom discovered: the Psathyrella Aquatica, found in the Rogue River, fruits under water.

Summer Olympics in London (yes, I spared you the London logo).

United States’ presidential election.

Trees. Love ‘em.

“#NoFilter has become a tag of note this year [2011], thanks to Instagram. What is real? What is fake? What is Kardashian? I think 2012 will demand that we say so up front.”

Peter Jackson’s version of The Hobbit will premier.

2012 is the year of the Dragon in the Chinese Zodiac.

December 21st the world is to end, according to the Mayan calendar.


Cheers to the new year!

[Last year’s card]

On the first Wednesday of every month, CHIFOO - Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon (pronounced ‘ky FOO’) — invites thought leaders to share on different topics. This lecture series is to share experiences and ideas on User Experience, Usability and Interaction Design.


April’s talk will feature the lovely and inspiring Kate Ertmann of ADi, a 2D and 3D animation and interactive studio in Portland. The title of her talk is “Ethnographic Animation:  3-D Design for Marketing and Education.” She won’t disappoint, folks.


Below is the 4/6 event description, and more details here.

“Animation has proven to be effective at appealing to diverse consumers because people have a heightened emotional response to animation.  In this presentation, you will learn how animation can be leveraged as a key strategy in communicating human-centered research to decision makers, venture capitalists and customers. Kate will present a comparison breakdown of the advantages of using animation visualization versus video when explaining complex UX data and results, as well as Best Known Methods for the process itself.”

A full write up (with better photos) can be found on the XPLANE blog by Graham Barey.

At the conference, 19 forward-thinking design professionals shared their stories, projects and challenges.

Bruce Mau, Chief Creative Officer of Bruce Mau Design

Lisa Gansky, Author of the Mesh

I’m still trying to absorb it all, but here are a few nuggets of wisdom that stuck out:


We create better together, and should be encouraging diversity and participation.


Enter into partnerships to move past the “seasonal” effect of a collaboration and adopt a long-term outlook.


Design is less about the individual ego, but the collective impact.


Inclusive instead of exclusive


Design with people, not for people.


When facing a design challenge, if you start with the wrong question, you’ll get the wrong answer.


Use the triple bottom line to evaluate success


Design the system not the object


Live your dream and wear your passion

Christopher Simmons of Mine commented that while designers now have a seat at the business table, our ability to speak in the same language is a necessary part of the equation if partnerships and collaborations are to reach their full potential.


Julie Cordua of (Red) discussed the power of corporate partnerships to advance worthy causes.

Bruce Mau said “I don’t want consumers to be the definition of a person, I want them to be citizens.“



Yves Béhar, founder of Fuse Project, created “See Better to Learn Better” to help combat the 11% of children in Mexico whose eyesight was too poor to learn at school. To get around the cultural stigma of wearing glasses, Yves used uniqueness and participation, where each kid designs their own set a glasses, and for only $5.

Another project presented was SOUP, created by Kate Daughdrill, an MFA student. Once a month, people gather for a $5 dinner to fund micro-grants for creative projects in Detroit. During the dinner, people pitch ideas for projects, and everyone in attendance votes on their favorite. The winner receives the proceeds from the dinner. Kate says, “We realized that we were the ones that had to invest in our neighborhoods.”

I enjoyed reading the Compostmodern recap on DWELL’s site. Their end paragraph about moving forward states:

The breadth of topics covered at this year’s conference was impressive. Every speaker shared anecdotes about how they approached sustainability and carved their own niche. Whether that niche involved assuming decisive roles, crafting better products, communicating ideas unconventionally, creating corporate partnerships, or rallying a community, there is no shortage of possibilities for design professionals to find their own way to contribute to the global sustainability movement. There is no “one” thing that everyone has to do, but there is a place for everyone. That’s a very powerful idea, in my opinion.

To learn more about these ideas, people and projects, visit Compostmodern.

Just like the 48HFP, the 48 Go Green challenges you to make a narrative short film in only 48 hours, writing, shooting, and editing it. But, to mix things up, this challenge has some slightly different rules than the 48HFP.

• Environmental Themes. You will be randomly assigned a theme for your film which has to do with the environment. The themes are: animals, energy, the environment in general, forests, the next generation, the planet, the sea, and water.
• No genre assignment. You get to pick your own genre–just notify us which one you picked when you turn in your film.
• Elements. We will still provide you with a character, prop, and a line of dialogue which must appear in your film.

I’m very much looking forward to it, and if you have any interest in participating on the Portland team I’m devising, please drop me a note. No sissies allowed though.

This quickie illustration is to represent a few random things that happened in 2010:

“Made in Oregon” sign changed to “Portland Oregon“
Old Spice Man hub bub, created by Portland’s Wieden + Kennedy
Free plastic bags are banned at Fred Meyers and retail checkouts in Portland
Double Rainbow and auto-tune phenomenon (Bed Intruder is a close second)
Angry Birds slingshot their way around iPhones and iPads
BP oil spill
Tilly strikes for the 3rd time. Killer whale indeed.
Passing on of Easy Rider’s co-star, Dennis Hooper (“a man looking for America and couldn’t find it anywhere”)


Cheers to the New Year!

“The event emerged from a conversation about Portland’s rich publishing landscape, and the sense that we’d all benefit from an open exchange of ideas and experiences. With so much change afoot in the industry, and so many innovative applications of new technologies, we wanted to bring people together to talk about experiments undertaken and new directions traveled in the name of publishing progress.

What’s working? What have we learned? How might we apply these lessons to our own businesses?”

Featured speakers include:
Victoria Blake, Underland Press
Aaron Colter, Dark Horse Comics
Melissa Delzio, Our Portland Story Project
Tim Grahl, Out:think Group
Justin Hocking, Independent Publishing Resource Center
Greg Netzer, Wordstock
Josh Kenyon and Colby Nichols, Jolby
Matthew Stadler, Publication Studio
Tim Sullivan, Harvard Business Publishing
Joshua Tallent, eBook Architects

Doors open 7pm, admission free, cash beer. Presentations 7:30 — 9:30 with beer break. More information >

(Image is a composite of Two Gentlemen of Lebowski by Adam Bertocci, gesturecons, and an old composition book of mine.)

Another country that has successfully implemented a customer fee on plastic bags is Ireland. Residents now use about 20 bags versus 330 bags per year, when they were given away for free. That’s a 90% reduction, which has been brought on by successful campaigns to educated people on the harmful environmental impact of plastic bags.

One factoid from this well-designed infographic is that a plastic bag thrown into a landfill today will need until 3010 to break down. Americans throw away about 1000 billion bags a year.

Local efforts in Portland include Fred Meyer banning plastic bags in all 10 stores since August 2010. Other stores, like New Seasons, never even offered them. However, there’s some question as to the real benefits, especially when it comes to human behavior. It’s not as if by not buying plastic bags people are bring their own reusable bags to shop. This local blog post brings up a few of these issues, including that a customer may just be asking for a double or triple paper bag. This then gets into paper versus plastic debate in which neither really “win,” and is viewed as a wrong question. So far the best option at this point is to bring reusable bags, while questioning what we’re buying and why.

Which then brings up the mixed messaging on reusable bags potentially contradicting a stores’ policies/offerings.

But that’s another blog post for some other time. Time to go film a floating plastic bag while I can. Except it’s raining. Oh, Portland.

Around this time last year, I found myself at the most disgustingly exquisite Hofburg Palace in Vienna, which drips of yesteryear’s luxury. In the room displaying the dining sets, there was a very complicated napkin that is a family folding secret. Only two people know to fold this “imperial napkin,” and use a single napkin to do so (sans faux rolls).

Shown are the two snaps I took, and even some other tourist went so far as to film walking by it to get a hint of how it works. Perhaps this year I’ll crack the folding code.

In the meantime, have a happy Thanksgiving!