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Did you know that in March of 2011 I left my Big Advertising Job and went solo? Well, I did – and I gotta tellya I'm pretty happy with the change. I shed most of the dead weight and anxiety that comes with being a "Digital" VP/CD, and rediscovered some of the basic stuff that's made me successful (and sometimes dangerous) as a creative partner.

Funny thing. As I was narrowly escaping the trappings of Big Advertising, I was winning my first Hatch awards for - of all things - some banner ads I designed for an auto insurance giant.

Wow. After years of pushing on creative tech, multidisciplinary design, and innovative creative process, my first-ever industry awards came from two BANNER ADS. Ooohh the...um, what is that? Irony? Poetic justice? Whatever. The Hatch bowl is a handy place to store guitar picks and cable adapters. 

More satisfying than any award has been the experience of meeting with a huge variety of Boston's small businesses and expanding my view of what's happening in this crazy old town. Working for big agencies can be satisfying and enriching in many ways - but also very insular. From inside the walls and cultures of the Big Name offices, it's sometimes difficult to recognize just how much creative business is churning all around you, all of it propelled by nothing more than people looking to try something different.

Somehow I convinced a bunch of them to work with me, as evidenced in the gallery above. Of course I can't show everything I created or worked on in 2011 – but these snapshots illustrate a range of different roles and skills that I'm proud of.

Highlights for me included strategy visualizations for iFactory, some inspired logo/ID work for a new social/mobile app called Kibits on behalf of Holland-Mark, an infographic (about trains!) for Home Front in D.C., and an interactive experience for The Big Studio that somehow actually manages to make learning about small business retirement plans kind of fun (not pictured, sorry, client confidentiality dont'cha know).

These are just a few of the projects, places, and faces that I've encountered so far as a ux/creative consultant, and I'm grateful for every chance I've received to help these companies out.

2012 is already looking fantastic. All around me are awesome things to inspire the creative mind. The Avengers movie will finally be released, an unexpected addition to Stephen King's Dark Tower series is forthcoming, and the mighty, all-powerful and undefeated VAN HALEN are not only touring with David Lee Roth, they're releasing a new record – on vinyl. 

All this, and it ain't even February yet.

Thanks for reading – and stay tuned any way you like, just choose a channel at my about.me page!

Best wishes to all for a happy new year!

You can download the full-size version of the card here.

This video is a beautiful, meticulously designed, and gorgeously rendered piece of art. 

It also heightens an inner dread that began forming the first time I saw Logan's Run, roundabout 1978. My fear of a homogonized, sterile society has been compounded over the years by films like THX 1138, The Island, and Minority Report.

In fact, I was in a meeting just yesterday where – once again – Minority Report was referenced as an aspirational benchmark for interactivity. When I tell you this is a common reference, I'm not kidding. Clients and coworkers, from bankers to high tech to retai, they are all obsessed with that fucking movie. And it's not even the film or Tom Cruise that's got them foaming, it's just that one scene where Cruise's character John Anderton is swiping files and videos and whatnot, apparently in the thin air.

I love scifi, I really do. And I love Spielberg – but this vision of the future is almost a decade old, and in my view, it is absolutely NOT an appropriate basis for reimagining an antire lifestyle; one wherin everybody is constantly working, even the 9-year-old girl. 

In this vision, only the appearance of human connectivity is required. What could be more fulfilling than sharing recipies with your daughter from the cool confines of a sterile hotel room? And nothing says collaboration like trading monotone graphics between thin, translucent sheets of plastic.

Technology is supposed to enhance real life – not take it over.

As an interactive designer, I appreciate the effort put into this vision of minimalist, quiet, usable design. But while it's all very tasteful, it's utterly without flavor. What's missing is the less-polished, more visceral human context.

How will Microsoft's tech bring me closer – actually physically closer – to my family? My guitars? My pens, pencils, and woodworking tools? How will their stunning, transparent, etherial technology help us to craft a future where the richness of human life is valued more than endless, ceaseless, constant "productivity."

I love a good scifi blockbuster. I'm a huge nerd. But maybe it's time to retire Spielberg's decade-old visualization of Philip K. Dick's story, and take a closer look at the lessons within the tale itself.

Really, it's the most natural thing for someone like me to write about. After all it's a big bucket; music, tv, movies, all things Internet...I could just yap about my job (if I bothered to get one) and the zany goings on there, and even that would qualify, since a huge part of our culture revolves around what we do for a living and how we feel about it.

And the way we feel about things is a commodity right now, make no mistake. I've spent enough time in marketing-related industries to know that any insight we're willing to give away is like crack for brand managers, campaign runners, and marketing metrics nerds. They can't get enough of this stuff. They've even got crazy names for it like lifecycle forecasting and attitudinal data. Nope, not kidding. Attitudinal – man, where I'm from, a guy might just get his ass kicked for using a word like that.

But it makes perfect sense. The more adenoidal (or whatever) data they've got, the more raw material they have to predictably manipulate our senses, and ultimately the way we behave, on and offline. Now this sounds more cynical than I intend, but it's hard to talk about this stuff without pointing out the obvious; marketers want and need us to behave predictably. That's how they sell us shit, and without that, the whole capitalism thing kind of grinds to a halt, for better or worse. (Better, if you’d enjoy spending your days bartering, say, farm-fresh eggs for, gee, I dunno, drywall? Worse, if you enjoy Saturday afternoon trips to Target for things like DVD's, cheap underwear and Swiffers. Hey, I'm not here to judge. I'm for all that stuff.)

Of course, a huge playground for abdominal (or whatever) data-collection is Facebook. And the majority of us in The Cult of Eff are happy to supply said data all day and night - it's what Facebook's all about. I Like this, I Comment on that. I Share this, I Subscribe to Them. That's attitude baby, and so what? The whole idea is to let people know what you do or do not dig, agree with, listen to, care about, or otherwise buy.

But here's what I like to do. 

I like to drive through Cambridge with all my windows down, un-ironically blasting late-era KISS tunes as though they are completely relevant in this Fox News, America's Got Talent-driven culture of ours.  And they are relevant. Why? Because Paul Stanley fuckin RULES and I say so. I say it loudly, through the wide-open windows of a 2005 Honda Element, and that, my friends, is what it really means to Like something, old school, analog-style.

This is what the world used to be. You knew something was hot when you heard it spiraling out of someones car, infecting the masses, making asses shake, fists pump, and square people sweaty and uncomfortable. It's a true measure of relevance - not a collection of passive/aggressive clicks or quips hidden behind a Facebook persona - when a guy in a car, so totally taken over by a tune that's just kicking his ass, absolutely wants to, needs to, has to share it with anyone within shouting distance.

And you can bet your two-tone Vuarnet shades that I'm scanning the rock-deprived populace for telltale signs that someone out there identifies with the stone-cold, teenage-mania inducing anthem that is my gift to the Davis Square throng. Cuz that's the good stuff, right at the heart of being alive and communing at an emotional, visceral level. Identity. Belonging. Broadcasting something primal and seeing if you get a reaction, an unconscious bobbing of the head, or a full-on thumbs up from a total stranger.

It's about being part of a movement, or creating a new one.

But it's not measurable, and noone wants to hear that crap anyway, Jeff! Yeah, yeah. I know. KISS is a big joke, laugh it up, but know this: more gold-certified records than any other American band, and that was before the Internet even existed.

Measurable, attitudinal data. Hrm. Does any of the data we're trading in exchange for virtual community really measure up to the horny throb of Runnin' with the Devil pouring out of a T-top Trans-Am? Are we sharing what we feel, or are we sharing to feel? I gotta know, does the Like button really have enough juice to replace windows down, volume up?

in terms of minute-by-minute convenience, maybe so. But I think these public, searchable mediums of self-expression promote a kind of sterilizing behavioral interference that belies our most valuable - our truest - selves. And that's just got to compromise the abominable (or whatever) data, doesn't it?

I've mentioned KISS and Paul Stanley in this post a few times, but no matter what Google thinks, that doesn't mean I want to buy any KISS merchandise right now (Well, I might). And just because I followed your lead and listened to Chickenfoot on Spotify doesn't mean I'll keep on trucking over to Amazon to buy Sammy Hagar's autobiography (already have it). Now, you might deduce that - strictly attitudinally speaking - I'm inclined to favor late-seventies arena rock artists. But if you want to separate me from the twenty bucks in my wallet, you're gonna have to do something pretty provocative (and this usually translates to expensive) with that data. 

However, if you can actually catch me in my car rocking out in real time to something that sounds like Pyromania, that might just be the perfect opportunity to try and sell me an original Def Leppard tour program or a WKRP lunchbox. Because in that moment, I am all in, brothers and sisters. 

I am all in.