Well, I loved Posterous. Like many Posterous users, I'm pretty concerned that the love affair will be ending soon now that they've been scooped up by Twitter. So, just in case this all goes down the tubes I'm moving over to Tumblr for awhile: http://anchorpoints.tumblr.com/

I'll be watching carefully, of course, and if I start to get emails containnig phrases like "new features," or "enhanced integration," I'll be back for sure. 

Thanks Posterous team, your free service has been stellar. Hope to see it grow.

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Van Halen. Van HALEN! The more times you say it, the better it sounds. 

The band’s return to Boston on March 11 was nothing short of spectacular. But for me to sit here and write another blow by blow review would be pointless, wouldn’t it? There’s plenty of that here, here, and here. Van Halen is back, it’s that simple. They may be gone tomorrow, but right now, they own the rock & roll world like it’s 1978 all over again. 

So instead of boring you with the kind of deeply nerdy fanboy drivel that I’m seriously, very capable of in this situation, I’m going to let you inside an even weirder part of my skull that just couldn’t stop wondering – what was Wolfie thinking? 

No matter how happy I was to see Diamond Dave, Eddie, and Alex together onstage again – and believe me, on the Miller Happy Meter this ranks higher than most grown men would be willing to admit – I found myself persistently drawn back to Wolfgang, imagining the thoughts racing through his mind as he capered around the stage he shared with living legends. 

It may or may not have gone something like this...

...

Boston. 

Wow, these people are loud!
Can’t believe I was 16 last time I was here. 
I had no idea. 
No idea.

Dad said, Just don’t stop playing. Why do you think we mixed the bass so low on all those records, man? This was all in the plan.

Didn’t play a single song the same way twice on that tour. Nobody cared. 
That was Dave’s tour. Thank god for that.
Who knew if Dave was gonna last 10 minutes or get fired or what. 
Not Dave, that’s for sure.

I’m gonna own this shit tonight.
This is my band now.
Just don’t stop.
Right, Dad.

Unchained. Here we go.

Sounds good in here tonight. He sounds good. 
This one means something...all of these shows mean something. 
Thank fucking god, cuz I can remember not being sure if anything meant anything to him anymore. 
Now, here we are.

Dave’s already got this crowd. 
Had ‘em before we even hit the Turnpike.
All I gotta do is nail my parts and look like I belong up here. 
I belong up here. 
It’s my name. 
They all want Mike, I’m not Mike. 
But I can play. I can totally fucking play.
Time for Runnin with the Devil. 
Up on the stacks. Where is he? There you are.

Watch this, Dad!

This crowd is amazing. New York was sick but these people are hungry. 
Nobody in LA is this hungry for anything. East coast people really eat it up. 
What else they got? Baseball. Football. And what, Dave Matthews? 

She’s the Woman. Go.

Romeo Delight. Go. 
Oh MAN I knew they’d go nuts for this! 
Wait’ll they hear Full Bug. 
Man I’m lucky. 

Kool & the Gang is so awesome. They killed tonight.
Can’t believe Dad opened for Sabbath back in the day.
Wish I had been around for that. I love Sabbath,.
God, my amp rig sounds HUGE!
What’s Dave talking about now? 
Okay, right.
Tattoo. Go.

Everybody Wants Some. Go.

Sopmebody Get me a Doctor. Go.

Chinatown up next, shit where’s Dad?
We gotta start this one together.
These people are screaming the words to the new songs like they’ve been listening to them their whole lives. 
Jesus, look at em! 

They're gonna freak when we bust out Hang ‘em High. 
That’s why I pick the tunes, I know what these people want. 
This is all gonna change sooner than they think. 
Bands like this...shit, there are no bands like this. 
Who’s gonna be there to keep it alive? 
Katy Perry?
Justin Bieber? 
Nope, that’s MY gig.

Oh shit I love this part!
Where’s Dad? 
Gotta find the cameras for some father-son shredding. 
Here it comes, fuckers.
BOOM. Just like that. 
Just like that.

Hear About it Later. Go. 
This place is damn near sold out. It was close last time.
But not like this.
This is about the record. 

Pretty Woman. Go.
Nobody’s selling records anymore.
We’re selling records. 
Music is fucking FREE now and people are paying for new Van Halen. 
Not to mention two or three hundred a seat out there. 
Even I know that’s a lotta money, and I’m fucking rich.

I’m working for it now.
Every motherfucker on Twitter hating me and bitching about Mike. 
They don’t know Mike. I know Mike.  

Fuck those Twitter motherfuckers. 
They ever rescue a guitar hero from total self-destruction?
That was my job. I did that. 
Playing this bass is my job now.
MY job.
Did I play on the record? 
Boom. See that? 
That’s what you get. It comes with the name. 
What’s next?

Dave’s right – this is one of the better shows so far.

Mom should be here for this one. 

Dad looks so happy.
I love this. 
I really love this.

Oh man, I need to pee.

Drum solo. Thank god.

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string_lounge.m4a Listen on Posterous

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the_wright_way.m4a Listen on Posterous

Yesterday I nabbed the latest Garageband update, which comes with a new orchestral strings section. It's pretty sweet – the sounds are quite realistic, and the interface continues to be astoundingly innovative and responsive.

So once again, there I was in headphones, up until 1 am tapping on glass while my wife lay (trying) to sleep beside me. I've posted a few of my favorite iPad compositions here, including the one I created last night. I don't use any loops, so while I can't take any credit for the amazing sounds, I can assure you that every note is mine, for better or worse. 

"String Lounge" is a strange ensamble for sure, my wife says she can imagine Cassandra Wilson singing over something like this. Kinda classy for a rock and roller like me, I guess.

"Syncopated Acoustic" is just what the name implies. There's other instruments in there as well, but I'm amazed by the dynamic response of the virtual acoustic. All those notes are tapped, yet it's pretty convincing as a fingerpicked sound. 

"The Wright Way" is one of my earliest experiements, and features a sleepy Robin who's reluctant participation in the recording process yielded some sexy voiceover. The keyboard sounds reminded me of Richard Wright, the late great keyboard wizard of Pink Floyd fame, hence the title. 

Garageband for iPad is a fantastic tool for inspiration, and while I've spent loads of dough over the years on more sophisticated DAW gear (ProTools, Reason, etc), I can easily imagine producing soundtrack material right out of this application. 

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WIRED.com's Underwire is giving away a copy of Pink Floyd’s The Wall Immersion Box Set. From the contest page:"Your mission? “Run Like Hell” to the comments section and let us know why The Wall is much more than Waters’ “whinage,” as Gilmour once described it."

A pretty open-ended challenge, but as a huge fan I couldn't resist. My response below.
__

This is about storytelling, and how it fits into our collective consciousness.

Kids all over the world need stories. They need stories they can relate too, stories that scare them, stories that reveal all the messy adult realities that their parents are afraid to talk about at the dinner table. And they especially need stories that describe the metamorphosis from child to young adult to person of influence -  in vivid, visceral detail.

The Wall provides all of that, through the lens of rock star theater, wrapped in what is inarguably some of the finest songwriting, musicianship, and production in the history of modern music.

In the pre-Internet days of FM radio, The Wall brought deep storytelling, rock rebellion, and social awareness to the masses with nothing more than whatever sounds Bob Ezrin could squeeze through car stereo speakers or the mono Panasonic clock radio in your kitchen. 

Out of nowhere, our radios seemed to grow and swell with the energy of this music that simply had no precedent, no template. It was wholly unique, and yet none of us could imagine the world without it. The stories and sounds were a perfect fit for the times, the culture, and most importantly, the kids. 

I was 9 years old. My dad was a teacher. I was running around in circles in my backyard in rural New York screaming "We don't need no thought control!" at the top of my lungs. 

I was 15 years old. I liked to read. I liked to write. I spent hours with my two closest friends sitting around backwoods campfires, learning how to perform the album from top to bottom on our acoustic guitars.

I was 25 years old. I spent months in band and dress rehearsal with people who had previously been strangers to me. Our musical theater adaptation of The Wall played for 8 sold out nights at the Mama Kin Playhouse across from Fenway Park in Boston. I was, for all purposes, playing David Gilmour, behind a wall of cardboard bricks. I nailed every note and nuance. It was awesome.

I was 37 years old when my childhood friend, with whom I'd spent all those hours learning and playing Floyd tunes, died. The Wall was such a huge part of our friendship, years later I still struggle when listening to it – but its embrace is warming again, reconnecting me to the friend I lost.

THIS is art. Emotional, intelligently crafted art that buoys us through life in a way that transcends the power of individual relationships, while simultaneously enabling some of the most important human connections. 

Roger wrote a story that just happened to be a movie and an album – an album that's been a soundtrack to countless lives. Gilmour, Mason, Wright, and Ezrin filled it with all the right notes and textures. It's part of the fabric now. You simply can't imagine the world without it, any more than you can imagine a world without Spock, Darth Vader, or Johnny Fever. 

The Wall is, in fact, a brick in the foundation of our culture.

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See the full gallery on Posterous

I dunno about you, but I subscribe to the if I just keep snappin photos of everything that I think might be interesting eventually I'll get a good one school of shutterbugging. And since I find just about everything around me interesting (and this gallery ought to prove just how liberal I can be with that phrase), my phone fills up fast.

I've picked out a few favorites from my last import. If you like any of 'em, I'm prepared to give full credit to the subject matter, and nifty little apps like Instagram, Camera+, and Slow Shutter Cam, which seem to make every random slice of life we capture seem printworthy and important. 

In truth, my real favorites are the pics of my kids that collect by the hundreds. Very few stand alone as awesome photos (though they're all awesome to me), but scrolling through a stream of them is a special kind of pleasure I keep in private resrve. 

This gallery has just 23 of the 500+ photos I just backed up. It was kinda fun just quickly nabbing the ones that caught my eye. It was also interesting to note the patterns in my photography. Apparently I am fascinated with workspaces and desks, toys, shadows, and spaces between buildings. 

Can't wait to take the next 500!

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See the full gallery on Posterous

* Hover and click the full-screen button for gallery bigness!

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!

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Best wishes to all for a happy new year!

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

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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.

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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.

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Sleepless.

It's two in the morning. My 5-year-old daughter has been in school exactly one week, and she's already brought home a lovely collection of drawings, handwriting worksheets, and the requisite headcold, which is now keeping me awake, along with the surprisingly annoying pitterpat of rain on asphalt and a Sudafed-induced psychedelia of voices and images swirling 'round my poor, stuffy skull.

I'm a bit of a worrier, and at my age and life stage (the two aren't exactly in synch thanks to my spending all of my twenties and, yes, even some of my thirties trying to be a professional musician) there's plenty of nourishment for the big green monster loving in Binkley's Anxiety Closet. Still, I was somewhat shocked - enough so to prop myself up and subject my watery eyes to the microwave blaze of the iPad - to discover I was not only lying awake, suffering the indignities of late-night snot and Psuedoephedrine night terrors, I was also sweating the increasing burden and exponential, existential complexity of Facebook.

So long had I been meditating on this, flip flopping around in my bed like a sneezy fish the whole while, that I had formed an image in my mind of a stooped, naked human figure climbing uphill, struggling to keep ahold of a giant, stone, lower-case "f" that wobbled precariously atop his broad, scarred shoulders. 

Worse than the curious image of this prone man and his weighty alphabet was the knowledge that his is a voluntary burden. 

He's strong for having carried the monolithic Eff so far - yet his back is criss-crossed with the scars of social foibles past; regretful, embarrassing, and narcissistic status updates and unflattering photos his so-called friends had tagged him in, not to mention botched app requests that spammed everyone in the network he so cautiously and deliberately constructed out of family, friends, coworkers, and old highschool chums, all in the spirit of self publishing and habitual early adoption. 

He trucks The Eff uphill, always climbing, his legs bent under the weight of it. His knees pop and crackle and stinging sweat trickles into his eyes. This is effort, after all, The Cult of Eff demands a consistent degree of studious dedication. One must be expert in the ways of Quip & Snark, but one must also deftly intuit the delicate, ever-morphing Etiquette of Eff, because the abysmal threat of being someone who just doesn't get it is always there.

And he is naked, of course, because he's been stripped of his privacy. For all the personal boundaries he's been willing to set aside in the names of Transparency, Being Sociable, and plain old Good Fun, he's been awarded a set of tools so convoluted, so obviously, consciously designed to inspire apathy and avoidance, that he has simply forsaken them, leaving them behind to rust in the exposed desert of Unmanaged Settings where marketing buzzards and intel gathering bots conspire to dine upon our boy's increasingly public behaviors. 

Now, I realize this is all a bit dramatic, but I told you, I'm on drugs. 

The Cult of Eff 

For those of us paying attention this week, Facebook gave us an awful lot to think about. First, they made the same kind of glaring, in-yo-interface feature changes they always do, heedless of the consequences, and maybe rightly so. There is something admirable in the Fuck 'Em if They Don't Like It approach, I think. This ain't no IBM, after all, right? None of us signed up for this so we could enjoy quarterly, soothing, non-threatening bug fixes, did we? Hell no, we signed up because it was a wild frontier, a bold new take on what the Internet was for.

And while I'll admit to having a bug up my ass about the ticker, and it's clunky sidekick Sidebar, what Facebook unveiled this week is nothing short of visionary experience design. However, I'm not gonna get into evangelizing for Timeline, and Open Graph Apps & Verbs  - not just yet. 

What's nagging at me tonight - aside from terminal cotton-mouth and what seems to be a smallish bee taking up residence in my right nostril - is that Facebook claims to have 750 MILLION users, and an average 50 percent of that base logging in daily. All those people - all of us in The Cult of Eff - will have to work hard to add shape and texture to Facebook's vision, otherwise, they'll shape it for us. 

Furthermore, anyone really committed to Eff is going to put in some serious time making sure that what's being reflected as "Uniquely Me" is in any way accurate. I'm already playing around with the new developer tools, messing about with Timeline, experimenting with my new, WAY richer profile. My casual first impression is that all this new stuff that might someday be a super-transparent, passively personalizing artificial intelligence…well, right now it takes a lot of clicking on a whole lot of doodads to make the thing tick. 

Innocently, Facebook has always been about personal branding as a byproduct of social interaction. But when 750 million people are "into" personal brand, what does that even mean? It's one thing to have a personal brand - but it's another thing entirely to actively sculpt one, day in and day out, remotely, from an electronic box. I'm not judging, I'm obviously in this up to my tickly little nose hairs. But how do we wrap our heads around this evolutionary concept? This incredibly widespread, mainstream, workaday adoption of remote, detailed self expression reflects something important about us - but what? 

And it begs another question - why do so many of us willingly take on the burden?

Have you ever called someone out for having more style than substance? Even if you haven't, you probably get the idea. Some people spend a lot of time on appearances and not enough on the stuff that matters, the human stuff. Personal development. Talent cultivation. Experiential living. Trust. Love. Relationships.

On the one hand, it's easy to view all this Facebooking though the cynical lens of narcissistic self-gratification. I paint a picture of myself every day so you can listen to what I listen to, watch what I watch, and react to my opinions. Who? Me, that's who.

On the other hand (maybe it's the one clutching a damp Kleenex while I type), there's the more hopeful lens of creative self-exploration. I paint a picture of myself every day so I can understand myself better. I. 

Maybe one scenario feeds the other, and the contiguous relationship between Me and I is the secret sauce that's fueling the minions of the Cult of Eff.

Substance vs. style. Who I Really Am vs. My Facebook Profile. For 750 Million people, this just became a more complex proposition. 

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The Adaptive Path article The Pernicious Effects of Advertising and Marketing Agencies Trying To Deliver User Experience Design is a thoughtfully scathing attack on mainstream agencies and their approach to serving consumers through design. The comment thread on the article could wrap around three city blocks, and features voices from all tiers of the design and marketing industry. This post doesn’t really qualify as a response, but as someone caught between the grinding gears of the topic at hand, I wanted to share a bit of my own experience and perspective.

So I’ve gone from being a “UX” guy to being a “Digital” guy. All I had to do was change jobs. You might ask, what’s the difference? Truth is, I’m not exactly sure. Tags and labels, metaphorical or literal, make me itchy. But if I have to wear one, I’d much rather be associated with UX than a squidgy phrase like Digital. At least UX is specific in it’s implications. A UX Guy is interested in user experience. What’s a Digital Guy into? Calculators? Watches with calculators built in?

Once upon a time, right around the time young rockers traded in their Aquanet and spandex for flannels and army boots, I was called a Web Designer. A typical day consisted of meeting with a bunch of people to discuss abstract marketing and business goals, then heading back to my desk to transcribe all the biz-speak into layouts that could be clicked on. It was a brand new thing, and it was fun! My employers (not an agency)  relied on me to sort out the important info and make it navigable and pretty. If I had two projects going simultaneously, that was a busy week. Plenty of time to play Quake Arena with my pals. To this day I still have no idea what qualified or prepared me to do this job. I went to music school. Go figure.

Much later, I became a VP, Creative Director, Experience Deisgn. That’s a pretty long title, but an accurate expression of what I did. A typical day consisted of meeting with a bunch of people, discussing abstract marketing and biz goals, then meeting with smaller groups to rethink all that talk into a strategic design approach. Again, my employers (an agency) relied on me to sift through all the biz-speak, only now I had a design team to make the cool, clickable stuff. I was often responsible for several projects, new business pitches, and thirty or so recklessly conceived internal initiatives. My employees counted on me to make sense of what often feels like a senseless business, and to provide a little guidance through the same maze I had to run, slither, and scratch my way through to arrive at my lofty, long-titled perch.

At a glance, it might seem like the gap between Web Designer and VP, CD is pretty huge. And certainly the later role implies greater overall responsibility. But for the most part, the questions have remained the same: What are we saying? Who are we talking to? Why should they care? These are the questions I’ve stuck with throughout my career, whether I was pushing the pixels or shovelling the, er...strategy.

Art Director-UX-types like me are an emerging subset of designers. Most of us don’t have degrees (or even backgrounds) in marketing, art, or communication. We don’t come with simple, intuitive stories that make it easy for creative recruiters to slot us into open recs. So we have to be chameleons, tweaking our titles and roles to suit the environment and whatever set of puzzles we encounter. The trick, of course, is not getting eaten by the bigger lizards. Especially in big agencies, where politics and client services are the name of the game.

Many of these organizations will outwardly flaunt a passion for integrated digital work, built on audience insight and mutual value exchange. But internally they’re conflicted over how to do the work and what services to sell. They’ve had decades to master TV and print, but only a few short years to wrap their heads around service design, which, in case you missed it, is where Digital gets interesting (or integrated, as the case may be). It’s complex stuff, and where one brand succeeds wildly, another fails miserably – often with the same agency holding the reigns. Why is that? Will it really take decades to come up with formulas as beloved and bulletproof as “Make the Logo Bigger,” and “Sex Sells?”

I’ve recently landed at one of the worlds greatest advertising agencies, and like I said, it’s pretty clear that I’m largely seen as a Digital Guy. And it only took a few hours to see that U and X are fairly recent additions to an alphabet where T and V are the dominant letters. It’s very easy for me to feel like a fish out of water, and so I do...right now I really do. But they did hire me, and I don’t think it was a naive move on their part. Nobody expects me to throw a Digital Switch that illuminates the path toward Righteous Clicks. And nobody’s hovering in my office trying to glom my secret recipes for page layouts, user experience diagrams, customer journeys, or social media programs. I’m pretty sure the only expectation is that I’ll find my own ways to plug in, and that I’ll influence the culture from within.

Now, that has it’s ups and downs. It’s great to be a free agent, it’s nothing new to me. I’m a chameleon, after all. But it isn't exactly a treat to be 100% responsible for one’s own career path, 100% of the time. I’ve experienced my truest and best career growth when I’ve had the benefit of a real boss and mentor on my side. There is no substitute for someone who really gets you. But in my particular lane of expertise and experience, those folks are few and far between. For now.

I’ve spent plenty of time pondering whether guys like me will ever be a true part of the mainstream approach, or if we’ll always be the calculator watches* of agency culture; handy when you need us, but otherwise too fussy to deal with most of the time. Frankly, that kind of introspection hasn’t led me to any meaningful conclusions, just more questions.

What should I do? Should I keep fighting the good fight at agencies, hoping my incremental influence pays off through the work? Or should I try to find that one brand and audience that resonates with me and go client side? I could even – gasp – go deeper into technology, and trade all the biz-speak for some serious algebra. Eesh.

And what about my old, reliable questions? What are we saying? Who are we talking to? Why should they care? Now that I’m a VP Big Deal CD Digital Whatever, and I’ve been dealing with the inevitable frustrations and limitations of the business world for a while, it seems critical to modify these questions:

What do I want to say (create)?
Who do I want to talk to (serve)?
Why do I care (empathize)?

I am not a Digital Guy. I’m a designer. I’m a chameleon, and I’ve been at it long enough to know that sometimes an organization’s color rubs off on you, and some times it’s the other way around. And sometimes the chemistry just isn’t there, and you just can’t blend into anything.

I’m hoping my new, personalized questions lead to rich, fertile, creative ground – and that I’ll be inspired to drive great work, make cool stuff, and maybe even influence the way stuff gets done. It could happen right here in this big ol’ agency, or it may mean a bigger change someday. Either way, it’s up to me to ask the right questions, and to pave my own road toward fulfillment.

So if you’re a sort of a kind of a digital creative, try these questions out for yourself:

What do you want to create?
Who do you want to serve?
Why do you empathize with them?

And let me know what kinds of answers you come up with. This is where stuff gets personal and interesting – I hope you’ll share.

*For the record, I, um, don’t wear one of those. In fact, I don’t wear a watch at all. Oddly enough, the absence of a clock on my wrist was noted by one of my new colleagues as a Digital Guy Thing. Apparently we favor clock-watching by cellphone or laptop. Could this really be a thing? Really?

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There are lots of panic triggers. Deadlines, technical difficulties, last-minute client requests – ugh, client panic triggers are the worst. My least favorite trigger is the one where the email subject goes something like this:

Priority: HIGH! Fwd: Re: Fwd: This needs fixing ASAP.

You know you’re looking forward to a pleasant read with a subject like that. And the three levels of forwarding tell you right away that the request likely comes from some new player – with a very fancy title – who just became everyone’s new Most Important Person in the World.

So what, what am I complaining about? These are the clients, right? They pay the bills! It’s out job to be responsive, and get immediate results implemented – look it says ASAP right there in the subject.

Bullshit.

A design, especially a design that involves technology and content, is an investment. And when some influential new player gets that deer-in-the-headlights look in their eyes, the worst thing you can do is indulge their fear. Being responsive is not synonymous with being reactive – there are hours and dollars behind everything you’ve done to date, and very likely the new player isn’t fully informed.

How about this: Send a case study to the newly indoctrinated King of all Decisions. Give them the boiled up synopsis of how you arrived at where you are now. Make sure they get the core principles of your strategy, and above all, get them on the phone. For crying out loud, how many more crappy, ineffective dialogs do we need to conduct via email? It just doesn’t work people.

Then, follow up with stuff that doesn’t just appease. Follow up with realistic design solutions that set the stage for long-term progress. Be considerate of the new player’s role by showing them what your real value is, so that next time they’re asked questions about their design partner, they can respond with some degree of confidence that you have their back, and that you bring the strategic design heat.

Design can be very fluid, or it can be very expensive. Those are your choices. It’s easy to find your way to expensive. Indulge in politics and responsibility evasion. If you want fluid, then make real-time collaboration part of your organization’s ethos, and vigorously defend its importance.

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Hey there, business manager type. You've put a stake in the ground and invested in some post-web 2.0 social media platform/content initiatives, and now folks are looking for results.
So what do you say when a colleague asks you, "what's up with that social content web thingy that's been sucking up all our budget and resources? Is it working?"

I know when loaded questions like that are pointed at me, my first instinct is to pretend my phone is vibrating with a family emergency and run away promising to get right back to ya on that! But in this example, our irrational fear of failure or exposure can be tamed. One simply needs to remember that social and content programs are in a constant state of optimization. Then just state the last three things you agreed to do, in order of priority.

Here's an example of a good answer:

Well, since we launched version one, we've observed a lot of different behaviors in our user base. Some map to our goals, some don't. So in version two we're doing three things: First, we're gonna shift the energy of the site's content by working directly with known influencers in our most active topics. Then, we're going to follow the dialog around that content, and try and stimulate that audience of responders any way we can. Finally, when we see someone who really stands out as a topic enthusiast, we're going to elevate their content within the experience, and maybe even reach out to them directly for more input. That way, we're creating an audience around relevant topics and contributing to the conversation.

Pretty simple, really. Three responsive tactics that all back up to two common business goals; content generation and community building.

There's nothing in that answer about conversion, or performance, or bottom line. But it tells people very clearly that you are engaged in the process, know what you're talking about, and, most importantly, someone is steering the ship.

So what about the bottom line? What if the next question is, "we're losing money on that, right?"
Well, chances are if you're early in your organization's social and content development, making the case that your investment is literally paying off can be tricky. But you have to stick to your guns. Your company's social footprint – and the content & people that sustain its viability – will never be "finished." In this case, your program design is an ever-shifting call and response between you and your audience. You need to find them, learn from them, feed them, and reward them.

I'm not suggesting that you should feel comfortable looking your boss in the eye and saying the bottom line doesn't matter. That's just not gonna work in most cases. But you should be able to look your boss in the eye and say, with confidence, we're in good shape. We're being responsive and responsible. We're building important, essential equity.

And we are not giving up.

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note: you might be asking yourself; I thought this was a design blog? Well, I'm a designer. And today, this is something I had to think about for a real, paying client. Sometimes it's not enough to arm your clients with great creative work. Sometimes it's not enough to collaborate with them exhaustively. Sometimes, you just need to get in their shoes and understand the world they live in – otherwise, your design may not matter.

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