I made a quick stop animation of our magnetic inspiration wall at work being created. Enjoy all 13 seconds!

To start off, I thought this little video I shot would be the best way to show you the design of The Learners.

I have to admit that since I first learned that Chip was working on a follow-up to The Cheese Monkeys, I have been eagerly waiting to see layout, kerning, and typeface decisions weaved into a work of fiction again. While there was plenty of graphic design geekery to be enjoyed, the emotional and psychological aspects of Happy’s life are much more in the spotlight. Having previously worked at several small ad agencies it was very entertaining to follow the politics of a similar size office of yesteryear. The domineering boss, the talent that should have moved to the big city, the eager newbie, the burnt-out hack copywriter … they are all part of the ensemble.

While there are plenty of basic descriptions out there on this book, here is my two sentence summary (the summary from the publisher is more clear). After Happy has graduated from State he goes out to find his dream job at the firm his (de)mentor Winter Sorbeck, worked at. We follow Happy from his interview, to his first weeks and subsequent perils of dealing with clients and the things they promote.

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A commenter on the last story recommended I read Don’t Make Me Think in response to the previous chapter in my story. Instead of listing my response to his response in the buried comments section, I thought I’d give my official position on Don’t Make Me Think right here: it’s the same as my official position on Hey Whipple Squeeze This: Stay away from it if you want to retain free and rational thought. I’ve seen people read and subsequently abuse the information in each book as a substitute for creative and original thinking. In the case of Think, it’s “people are used to using websites a certain way, ergo all websites should look and function in this way.” I saw it at my last job and it obliterated my ability to seek new and creatively intuitive ways to design for the web. Like Whipple, in two years it will be outdated anyway. Stick to A List Apart.

When we last left …er, me … I was in the death throes of my last website.

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The Task: Design a poster for a Chip Kidd (why do I always want to spell it “Chipp?”) that will hang in bookstores and comic shops around Omaha.

The Complication: Must appeal to the common man and woman, not the design community. Book and comic book enthusiasts who have no familiarity with the design world and who, indeed, probably have no idea who Chip Kidd is.

The Challenge: Complete this free gig in 4 hours or less.

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Starting your own business is a hellacious challenge. Very intimidating, scary, ulcer-inducing, that can contain a sort of panic that freezes you to the core of your being. I find the Fear to be interesting in that regard. I mean, once you look out a window and see umpteen thousand Targets, Wal-Marts, Starbucks’s, Home Depots and Burger Kings and realize *those* were all started by *somebody*, a lot of that fear dissipates. Every business started somewhere, by some yay-hoo who thought they could do it better than somebody else. And in design this is no different. When you choose the road to self-employment, you’re doing nothing different than what the people you used to send resumes to did five, ten, or twenty years ago. And that, again, is a bit of an empowering thought.

And what happens then but we a run out and screw up the very first step: the name.

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