We’ve used our 10th anniversary to launch some pretty exciting things. We have an entirely new website and our own bus. But the thing that’ll have the biggest impact on our next 10 years is easy to miss: our new manifesto.
This list is a direct response to every client interaction we’ve ever had. It’s an acknowledgement that the design process is complex, unpredictable, and personal — and sometimes a little too much for all of us.
This list is also an opportunity to align our personal and professional selves. It’s an admission that — as people and as professional designers — we cannot disable our love for the potential of design.
So we’ve taken a look back at our most successful projects, identified the things that really worked, and distilled them down to these 11 things. For the first time, we’re asking all of our new clients to read and agree to these things before we sign a contract. That’s a pretty big deal. …
It’s a big day today — Oxide Design Co. is celebrating our 10th anniversary! Give or take a few days, it’s been ten years since I first opened doors for business. It sounds cliché, but it feels like it went by in the blink of an eye. I can still clearly recall those first days of sitting in the big, empty Oxide office at 4013 Farnam Street, wondering how I was going to keep myself busy. …
Hello and welcome to the 3rd iteration of oxidedesign.com!
Creating this site has been a dream come true; we’re doing some amazing things here. Not only is the design great, but the functionality behind the scenes allowed me to challenge my abilities. Everything you see going on in the site has been meticulously crafted in order to make it easy for all the guys here at Oxide to create really great looking layouts in blog posts and project pages. Going forward, you’ll see some really nice things happening that should make this site more enjoyable for everybody. …
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I’ve dreaded writing this one. Today is it. It’s the last day of my internship. I’ve tried to figure out why I’m so attached to this internship and these guys. Oxide has been wonderful. Truly great, but why is it this hard to say “See ya later”?
My best friend is my brother, Aaron. We’re so similar and yet so opposite. He’s nine years older than me. He’s a graphic designer, photographer, husband, and dad. He likes superhero movies. Spiderman is his favorite, and he can’t stand 3D movies. He’s meticulous and likes taking his time on whatever he’s trying to accomplish. If his job allowed it, he’d wear a superhero/nerd/graphic-design-inside-joke t-shirt and jeans every day. He likes Legos, and going to midnight showings of movies. When we get together, we like eating Mexican food, talking about our lives, showing each other our recent work, and talking about new movies coming out. …
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It started off like any other Monday morning. I got in at 9, checked my e-mail, and then made a quick trip to Bucky’s with the guys.
We sat down at the concepting table like we do every Monday morning for our traffic meeting. It usually consists of going through the open jobs list after we spend about an hour talking about our weekend, or less than an hour (depending on if we all had lame weekends or not).
I mentioned applying for my school loan, the prices for tuition rising, and still not knowing why I was going back. That was it. That was all it took. …
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I didn’t have a clue who Oxide was until 15 minutes before Joe Sparano reviewed my portfolio. Here’s the story:
I walked up to the board where all the postings were listed. There were already a handful of my classmates crowding the area. Portfolio review night is required at the Creative Center. Well, if you want to graduate it is. Finally I got to the front and searched the list of student names and professionals. I wasn’t really thinking about internships. I was going to China for a month just two days after school ended. I was missing graduation and in my mind, any chance of holding a summer internship. …
I’m really happy to announce that I’ve joined the AIGA Nebraska board as the Director of Community Outreach. It’s a relatively new position, one that symbolizes the fundamental changes happening in our field. …
On August 11th of this year, I had the distinct honor of serving as a panelist on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s “Design Counts in Elections” roundtable. The goal of the event was “to show how implementing best practices in design can give voters confidence that that their votes were cast and counted as they intended.” The day-long roundtable was webcast live, and the primary intended audience was local election officials and clerks throughout the United States.
I was invited to participate because of my experience in election design, along with Oxide’s role in co-authoring the EAC’s national ballot design guidelines. My fellow panelists were: Amy Bunk, chairperson of PLAIN; Elizabeth Ensley Deiter, Election Commissioner of Shawnee County, KS; Ron Gardner, U.S. Access Board member; Larry Herrera, City Clerk of Long Beach, CA; Wendy Underhill of the National Conference of State Legislatures; and Whitney Quesenbery, usability and plain language expert. …
I’m pleased to announce that I have been featured in Shout!, the entertainment weekly of Omaha, Council Bluffs, and Lincoln. I was interviewed for their 7QYP (Seven questions with a young professional) segment, appearing in the July 13–19 issue. (This probably also stands as my only opportunity to claim that I shared the pages of a magazine with Kid Rock.) For those unable to get their hands on a copy, I’m reprinting their questions along with my answers. …
Hello everybody, I’ve arrived, and I’ve finally gotten all settled in. I’m having a great time at Oxide!
You may have already noticed the blog working a little more smoothly (I’ve been doing some tweaks even as I write this), and you’ll probably be noticing some more improvements going forward as well. Of course, I won’t just be working on Oxide’s company sites. I’ve already found myself quite busy bringing web goodness to several projects already-in-progress. …