One of my favorite talks at SXSW this year was Andy Baio’s Worst Website Ever II. He asked a half dozen people to pitch their idea for the company most likely to fail spectacularly. Mike Lacher easily had the best pitch and he was kind enough to put it on the internet. Watch this and imagine constant laughter.

03/22/11Andy Baio, Mike Lacher, SXSW | 1

Brand New takes a look at my favorite new logo of the year. The swirl of the P is wonderful and is 1000x more interesting than their previous logo. As part of the identity system, they’re also using Bree, which is a font I nearly used on Capn Design.

03/22/11design, logos, Peru

Mike Monteiro discusses the need to be picky with your partners. Sure, everyone needs to keep the lights on, but finding the right clients will make everyone happier. I found this bit most interesting.

I’m wary of working with startups in general. At least on their initial work. Even when they’re good, smart people, they’re people with dreams. People who probably walked away from their comfortable full-time jobs to follow a dream they’ve been designing in their heads for months or years. What they need is someone to flesh that out for them. They’re not usually in a mindset to have their dream messed with, nor should they be.

It’s true, people who have been scheming for years are going to have a tough time letting go, but this seems like some of the most exciting work to me. Still, Mike is right that this is not the right realm for contract work. In the case of a startup, they should either hire a designer full-time or put the design shop on retainer. That work requires commitment to see it through, which is expensive.

03/06/11design, Mike Monteiro

I feel like I’ve harped on this before, but I think David succinctly describes what print companies are doing wrong with their digital magazines.

I think it’s a stretch to say “printed magazines work better in every way.” Print doesn’t work better for breaking news, interactive visualizations, collaborative real-time problem solving, blogging whimsical ideas that aren’t print-worthy (a la The New Yorker), community, e-commerce, location-aware behavior or searching archives.

Boom. Tablets have the potential to bring the best of the web and print together, but no one is going to buy a more expensive, harder-to-read version of a print magazine. But if you bring social and interactive elements, then it becomes something really interesting.

03/02/11iPad, magazines, tablet

James Gulliver Hancock is drawing all of the buildings in New York City. He’s good at drawing. [via youngna]

03/01/11illustration, James Gulliver Hancock | 2