Here’s the Christmas card we sent out. And be sure to watch our Christmas Gif(t) below!

Click the image if it isn’t doing anything awesome.

It’s finally cold in Texas and my garden is now officially dead. I had about 50 tomatoes start growing just as it was starting to get cold. As you can see (above) none of them had a chance to ripen.

The type below was made from my basil plants. All the leaves had fallen and left these wonderful little branches. Hope everyone is having a delightful December!

I had a chance to spend some time in Cozumel, celebrating my grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary. Here are some photos I took while exploring the streets outside the main touristy area. The town of San Miguel in Cozumel is rich with hand painted typography, beautiful painted walls, vibrant colors, patterns and tons of inspiration. My eyeballs were happy. Check out the pics.

Lesson learned. If you’re going to create a templated letter, use a greeting like, “Dear Mighty Warrior”. If you forget to add the real person’s name, it still makes them feel awesome.

Oh and we even presented at the conference! We did a live critique of this website: developersmackdown.com. Clark Sell, the owner of the site, was part of the panel (along with Brandon Satrom, who moderated) and Martin and I just went to town on all the things we’d change to make the site more effective. We even had a fancy PowerPoint! I think about 100 people showed up for our session. I was really nervous and one of Martin’s jokes failed big time. Everything else went pretty smoothly though.

Below is a photo of one half of the room at our session. Just before we started I asked if I could photograph everyone doing the html5 gang sign. Yes. There is an html5 gang sign.

Below is a shot of one of the schedule posters.

Below is Clark Sell, the Developer Smackdown dude. Check out the shirt and water bottle he’s rocking.

Below is Brandon Satrom, mastermind behind the html5tx conference. See the sticker on the laptop?

Hey Look! It’s Martin.

We have a pretty rad video on the footer of every page. You should check it out and let us know what you think. We’ll do a post on it soon also.

Time to sleep so we can dominate tomorrow.

Design and craft brewers.

This last weekend we checked out the Beerfest in Humble, Texas. It’s a market where budgets for marketing/design are pretty weak (at least in the local markets/craft brewers) and yet it is crucial to getting people to try your beer. If your beer is good but you can’t get anyone to taste it, then you run into a few problems. Like no one drinking your beer.

It’s also a market saturated with visuals. There are a million different types of beers each with it’s own labels and packaging and branding. How can small breweries afford to do more than just trying to let their beer sell itself?

Below are some photos of details we liked or didn’t like about the presentation and branding of a few of the breweries at Beerfest.

I love this goat illustration. The name of the beer is pretty rad too. I tried it for the first time simply because of the name. Goats! If you’re a fan of Amber/Red ales you should pick up some Thirsty Goat from Thirsty Planet Brewing. They also have a really solid IPA called “Bucket Head”.

Simple is good. Sometimes labels and packaging can just get crazy trying to “stand out”. Our buddies over at Always Creative did a good job with the New Republic Brewing branding, and I can’t wait to see what New Republic can do in the College Station market. New Republic is brand new, and I’m happy to say we were able to taste the first “official” batch of their Bellows Amber Ale. I might or might not have had a few of these with Dean (the owner) on his porch a few weeks ago, but it was still exciting to see them officially launch. Bellows is New Republic‘s take on an Amber and has a great hoppy taste comparable to a lot of IPAs while keeping the amber characteristics that make it super drinkable.

This was a nice little way of reusing some packaging for part of Alamo’s booth display. The tag line is also fantastic, “a fiercely independent spirit”. One thing remains consistent in craft beer branding, it is all about where you are from.  This small brewery from San Antonio is a prime example of leveraging your market by appealing to their state/city pride. The golden ale is self described as a full-bodied, refreshingly lighter style ale with a smooth, velvety finish. (I can vouch for that) They’re soon to be distributed all over Texas, and I just saw a promo coaster in my favorite bar. Way to go Alamo. Looks like Alamo could use our help (or at least some SEO) I couldn’t find their website for you guys.

Cool beer tap that also looks fairly inexpensive to make.  I’ve been lucky enough to try most of the Live Oak beers before our trip to Houston, but the Liberation Ale with its hint of grapefruit was definitively a stand out. I also tried their HefeWeizen, and while it is not normally my favorite style of beer the banana flavor was a pleasant surprise instead of the citrus flavor found in most Hefes.

I hate pugs, but this is an awesome illustration of a pug. The eye-patch is what sold me. The Rahr & Sons booth was definitally one of the stand outs of the entire fest. Their Bucking Bock was phenomenal and I wish it was one of their permanent beers rather than a seasonal. If you’re a fan of Black Lagers you need to check out their Ugly Pug because  it kicks the hell out of Shiner Black. (Gavin only hates pugs because his grandparents literally have 16)

Wasatch Beers had some intense posters/labels. Polygamy Porter: Take some home to the wives. (Wasatch is based in Utah btw) There were a few others I posted on our facebook page. I tried their Devastator Double Bock and it holds true to its name. The beer was good, but I think I could only handle a 12 oz. before having to switch to something lighter (read: water).

I definitely tried one of their beers after seeing these. Shock value marketing = win. Tell me you wouldn’t want to grab one of these (beers) after seeing this in a bar.

Perception is reality. If you’re a local burger place that’s been in the community for 50 years and everyone knows you then you can get away with something like this. But if you’re new and you’re trying to compete with the big boys…this isn’t gonna fly. (the tap next to it was a different company. Their cider was fantastic.) Jester King has a solid website, but it looks like they need to hire someone to make sure their brand is represented the right way every time it is presented.

The Ranger Creek logo looks good burned into the wood. The “beer” logo is kinda “eh”, but the idea of just a piece of wood and a “branded” logo into the wood works pretty well. I imagine the cost on that is pretty low.

I just like the “made in the shade” tagline.

Ah we had to! I was able to grab a sixer of the Drifter beer when we were in Portland and I was happy to see it at the beer fest. I think I might have to get Spec’s to order us some cases for our office parties.

All in all Texas Beer Fest was a great way to spend our Saturday and we met a ton of cool people. We have some more photos here: facebook

What is your favorite beer?

We’d love to know what you think. (Click the photos below to see all the neat details.)

Here are a few tasty nuggets of advice/info/random thoughts, etc from some of the presentations that we attended.

M Jackson Wilkinson (User Experience Lead at Posterous) gave a presentation on “Designing for Silence: Using Email for Good”. His overall presentation was okay, however, it was one of the first things he said that was most valuable for me.

In regards to his daily routine, he said, it starts with getting up and going strait to his chair. Then he starts out by learning one new thing. Something simple and not too time consuming. Whether that means going to wikipedia and doing a random article search or reading up on a new tech, learning a new word, whatever doesn’t matter, just start your day off with learning. Seems like a pretty valid strategy. Instead of starting your day with email, twitter or facebook, (read: distractions) start your day with something valuable to your brain. Your brain is a muscle. It noms on tasty bits of info. Feed your brain.

The second thing he did was to reflect on the previous day. Think about the accomplishments for that day. The work that was done or wasn’t done. The day’s conversations, arguments, thoughts, goals, decisions, etc.

And finally the last thing he did to start his day was to think about how he could improve upon the day before.

I’m going to see if I can’t try this for a bit. I’m pretty good about starting cool new “daily inspirational” things, but they last for about a week max. This one is pretty simple though and I think the reflective nature of it will be a little easier to be consistent. The last one I tried was a freezing cold shower every morning. That lasted about three days. Let us know if you have some kind of daily ritual that works for you.

Shane Pearlman moderated a panel on WordPress, called Making Money with WordPress. So here’s a few tidbits of wordpress related tips. Some are no-brainers, but were still new to us, so we figured we should share.

1. WordPress updates every 3-6 months. Sometimes these updates may cause issues with your clients’ sites if they update on their own. You need some kind of statement in your contract that says, “If you update your wordpress to the newest version and it causes your site to bug out, we’re not liable.” We actually had this happen to us, luckily it was a simple fix but it’s definitely something to add into your contract just to be on the safe side.

2. WordPress runs 12% of the interent. (This was something Shane Pearlman said, however I wasn’t able to find anything online to verify that percentage.)

Mike Kruzeniski gave a really good talk about how print design is the future of interaction design. Basically he linked the principals and theories of print design to how we should be approaching design for all these new technologies. One thing I wanted to leave with you is something he said in regards to communicating, which I think applies to more than just web UI.

“An arrow is only an arrow if people understand it to be an arrow.” – Mike Kruzeniski

More notes to come from the lecture with Khoi Vinh and my favorite presentation given by Paul Boag