a) Starting to blog again, and

b) Creating a new blog.

You can find my new posts at sarahjackson.ca/category/blog. My posts will be titled based on the day I posted: so, for example today’s post (July 11th) is sarahjackson.ca/july-eleventh. Makes for easy searchin’. Until 2012, when all hell will break loose.

Here’s swissmiss doing an interview with him. And here’s him talking about The Shape of Design at Build Conference.

One of my favourite quotes from his conference talk: “If you can seduce, you don’t need to conquer.”

EXCITING!!!!!

A reminder that I need to get creative in gear for the upcoming Royal Bison Art + Craft show that I will be vending at. Only a few more weeks!

Ray Fenwick: If you are compelled to do it, do it: everything else will fall into place (his theory, which I support for a myriad of reasons).

(rayfenwick.ca  |  @fenwickray)

Jason McCann: (regarding pitching ideas to clients) Really small ideas and really really big ideas both work: it’s the medium-sized ideas that get caught in the middle (i.e. not big enough to be sent for approval to the Big Boys, but still too big for the Middle Guys to approve). Don’t bog down a great small idea with unnecessary fillings (“side order of fries”). Let it stand on its own. A small idea can get BIG traction with the click of a camera or the click of a mouse.

(taxi.ca  |  @djasonmccann)

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Laurie Rosenwald (of rosenworld.com)

1) Make mistakes and use them on purpose.

2) Don’t start with nothing, i.e. a blank page: start with something – a scribble, a black mark, a ripped piece of paper, a mistake – and let the project grow from that serendipitous beginning.

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Randy Hunt (of etsy.com)

1) Milton Glaser says that “Design is a plan to get from the current state to a future state.”

2) A plan is a set of defined questions (note: a plan only defines questions, not outcomes).

3) When answering these questions, patterns emerge.

4) Recognizing these patterns is a starting point for change. Specifically, change in the way we design.

Randy also reminded me of the important fact that design is only great (and useful) when it’s backing a powerfully good idea. An idea like etsy, that survived long enough to let its design catch up to its good-idea-ness.

He also reminded me about how hip the Canadian look is right now. Lumberjack plaid shirts and lumberjack beards everywhere. Hoser high fashion.

Political secrecy? Pshhh. I got out — despite the death-like grip of this cold  – and voted GREEN at the advance poling in the Canadian federal election today, and there’s nothing any of you can do about it. The X has been scrawled and the vote counted.

I feel the more appropriate terminology would be that I’m being smothered by a cold. Or being filled up by a cold. I suppose a cold does bring you down to your bed.

Speaking of which…

It was something to this effect: There is no good or bad design: there’s just design. Bad design isn’t design, it’s just bad.

Here’s a great link to some more thoughts on design from Ivan Chermayeff.

But yes. It has just been too long and it’s too depressing to contemplate how many days in the past few months have been non-blog-days. Since I made up the whole thing anyways, I’m going to change the rules (it’s not fickle – it’s progressive). I will still be blogging about “Innovation et Revolution!” but I will just date the post according to actual date (today – April 6) and topic (OFFICIAL NOTICE OF GREAT IMPORTANCE!).

Simple. And my life can use a little bit of simplicity as of late, so I will mark this as a step in the right direction.