No matter how hard we try, this labor thing will just happen when and how it should…exactly when she’s ready to come. However, being Dr. Leo’s in this whole thing makes that difficult to accept.

We’ll keep you posted.

I asked for an invitation to the private beta and I really hope that they will let me in. I use Base Camp right now for project management, but Gist would provide something that it doesn’t: a tool for client involvement. It allows me to stay on top of my client’s business - not just my own. However the cookie crumbles with the private beta invite, I’ll be interested in seeing Gist whenever I can.

The largest section of the site is the portfolio section which features many pieces of work honored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Innovative, professional, clean and effective would be words I would use to describe many of the pieces in the portfolio section.

Specializing in marketing communication efforts for institutions of higher education, Sundstrom Marketing Design is very well positioned to help colleges and universities engage students, propects, and potential donors. Alice’s experience at the University of Oregon and her background in fine arts really makes her an excellent resource for many departments and university marketing offices seeking to solidify their brand and meet their marketing goals.

Now this word organic, does tend to be a trendy word these days - especially in the emerging church world. But I feel after nearly nine months of church planting this is exactly a part of us. Over the summer, Karlene and I have attempted - albeit it a feeble attempt - to grow a garden. We planted tomatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, yellow squash, corn, peas, and beans. After planting them, we watered them, and waited for them to come up. Some of them did, and some didn’t. Some bore fruit right away and others still haven’t. Some of it grew and then died.

As we’ve been “planting” the church, I feel kind of like the same thing is happening. Some of the things that we were expecting to pop it’s head up out of the ground, never really materialized. Other times, some of the people who were walking alongside us didn’t find the soil nourishing for them, so they had to leave before bearing any fruit.

But the best part of the whole thing is being surprised at the most inopportune times at the sweet fruit which is growing among us. The other day, when I had just about given up on the summer squash I went out out found the start of five or six fruit. Similarly, this week one of our “congregants” had been talking about the tenuous (at best) relationship between the street kids and downtown Eugene business owners. We talked about it for awhile but didn’t really come up with a plan to help the situation. However, she planted a seed by writing a letter to the Eugene Weekly inviting street kids to prove business owners wrong through kind acts. That letter appeared Thursday on a huge piece of paper hanging from the Eugene public library with a colorful mosaic border. Seed of change produced a message of hope and fruit in our community.

As we continue to venture in this world of church planting, I’m continually amazed at the organic nature of this endeavor. As gardeners, we can prune and create conditions of growth, but only to be continually amazed at the beauty of the fruit - unexpected at times - that comes at the most opportune moments.

The tee on threadless (and seen here) seems to think that she has not quite been perfected and requires a tune up in her age (she is nearing 300 years, afterall). Along with being funny it is a great testament to our culture’s inability to deal with aging and the incredible pressures we put on women in regards to beauty and physical appearance. Botticelli, along with all the other great Renaissance artists, focused on the perfection of the human form. But there was something intuitively natural about this perfection. Humanism, at it’s very nature is the essence of natural human perfection. It is ironic, and indeed this shirt design suggests that maybe we have gone too far in our pursuit of perfection in the human form that we must subjugate ourselves to unnatural means.

I know that this shirt is intended to be funny, and, indeed, I do find it so. But at the same time it raises an entry point in its irony to our cultures infatuation with beauty.

From a user perspective, I really focused on the concept of usability and establishing and building the site to the main user path - which is finding internships and then information for application. The navigation has been set up for such a process, while other audiences can still access information particular to them using the utility navigation.

All in all, I’m delighted at the final product and can’t wait to see it go live. The site will replace the old site located here.

Having worked in Real Estate advertising I always thought pretty low of these types of books, because statistically they accounted for an absurdly low number of actual real estate transactions. 2006 statistics showed that less than 1% of home buyers found the home they bought using these types of publications - which is especially ironic for the magazine called “Homefinders.”

That statistic was enough to convince me that these were not the right way to go for Realtors who wanted to spend their advertising money wisely. However, I’ve just recently started to wonder why these publications have such low numbers of success. Is it simply because people look elsewhere for their home purchases? Or might there be a usability problem with the design layout of the particular magazines which inhibits buyers from finding a home? After some thought and examination of the “Homes and Land” I received in the mail, I realized that the design has nothing to do whatsoever with selling homes.

We’re currently in the market for a new home, and as a consumer and a designer, I’ve been really attentive to the way in which I search for home listing information, and how I interact with the ways in which it’s presented to me by marketers. Information architecture is everywhere, and these magazines are no exception. Information, whether intentionally or not, is presented in a form or fashion which conveys meaning, usability, and intended audience.As a home buyer, I want to be able to search by many criteria - such as price, location/neighborhood, number of bedrooms/bathrooms - NOT by Realtor. “Homes and Land,” and similar publications like “Homefinders” and “Homeseekers” all provide individually designed (or as they would suggest, “market differentiated”) ads, which are hard to read, entirely different from ad to ad, and more focused on the Realtor than the homes they are selling. While looking at the information design (if I dare call it that) for “Homes and Land” magazine I had to ask myself “who do the publishers believe their readers are and how is this conveyed in their design choices?” It is apparent that the answer to this question is not the Realtors coveted buyer, but the magazine’s coveted consumer - the Realtors themselves. Indeed, if the design was truly for a buyer, it would have a completely different information design.

Now, I know that for Realtors there is an incredible need to differentiate themselves from the “competition.” It is a dog eat dog industry, and many in it stress the need to set themselves apart from one another. It is evident, based on the design of these magazines and their low success rate, that the real reason for their existence is not to sell homes, but to meet the felt needs of Realtors for differentiation in their local markets. A magazine which was focused on meeting the needs of the home buyer would be thoughtfully laid out with their needs in mind and the structure would mimmick their user process in finding, selecting and buying a home.

“Homes and Land” is a perfect example in how the way design information structures convey a certain truth in advertising. It undermines our words and shows true intentions. While magazine publishers like those at “Homes and Land” wouldn’t necessarily say they are being deceptive with Realtors, the design of the magazine conveys one of two things: (1) the magazine designers have no clue as to the actual consumer process of a home buyer, or (2) they are not designing for the home buyer, but rather for the people who butter their bread.

This happens all the time, in many different ways - company politics, inattentive copywriters, and other factors make us stray from the intentional focus on the needs of the user and decrease the effectiveness of a design at meeting it’s stated objective.

The irony of this whole thing is that while these print publications fail miserably at conveying information in a helpful fashion for the buyer, many of the company websites get it right. With the ability to search by zip code, price range, beds and baths, and myriad other helpful filtering search choices, Homes and Land does a great job of being focused on the consumer.

Silverback screencast from Jeremy Keith on Vimeo.

Subsequently, my good friend David Moulton will have his site included in the book as well. Very exciting for him too.