After leaving my job at Mule Design, I finally had some time to myself to think about what I wanted to do next. It was a bold move to leave a job that I enjoyed so much, especially without a plan for what’s next. I still get crazy looks from other designers.

Anyway, I gave myself about a month to ponder over this, while I worked with Mike to get Tinkering Monkey up to speed for the holiday season. (Side note: We launched our holiday luminaria today) It was bliss. I loved working for myself, and at my own pace. Mike is working on Tinkering Monkey full time now, so it was

wonderful to work on our business together, in our pretty new loft.

Then I got a job. To leave that lifestyle and go for a full time job meant that the work had to be amazing. It needed to be challenging, influential, and something I’m really passionate about. Life is too short to do anything else.

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Today is my last day at Mule Design. Crazy, right? Most designers would kill for this job. It comes with dream projects, great clients, and some of the smartest people in the industry. I wasn’t here for long—only a year, but I’ve learned more in that time than I have doing anything else.

Working at Mule was the best place I’ve ever worked (really). Everyone is amazing. Everyday we work together to solve problems, get things done the right way, and don’t give up until we do. My design director Mike is a great mentor that I wish I knew a long time ago. You should hear what he says about running a design business,

because he’s damn good at it.

Why am I leaving Mule? To be honest, I don’t have a good answer. It’s more of a gut feeling. Unlike most people, I start to feel uneasy when I get start to feel comfortable somewhere, which to me, is a good indication that I should try something new that terrifies me. Don’t ask me why. It’s just how I tick.

People ask me all the time what my plan is. I’m proud to say that for the first time in my life, I don’t have one, but I

know things are going to turn out great. I’ve learned that the big successes in my life were from listening to no one else but myself. These were the decisions that were rebellious, difficult, and risky. These were the moments where I’d quietly listen to what people want me to do, and choose to go the other way. It’s makes me trust my gut more often, because somehow I know what I’m doing is right.

So here it goes.

I sold my car, quit my job, and moved to the other side of the bay. I’m closing one chapter of my life, and opening up another full of uncertainty. I have no idea how it’s going to turn out, but I know that my deep desire to solve problems and help people will lead me the right way. I’ll always stay curious, find meaning in what I do, and hopefully, leave my mark in the world.

I’m a little terrified, but it feels right. This time, my life is up to me.

The question that’s been going around lately is, “Should designers know how to code?” My answer is yes. If you’re serious about your craft, it’s essential that you know how it’s produced.

Coding is to web design as typography is to visual design. It’s not the final product, but it’s essential to understand before anything good happens. —Brian Haslanger

At one point, anyone who made anything was required to know about the materials and processes that they had to work with before their jobs became so specialized that they didn’t have to anymore. But why so? If you’re a chef, shouldn’t you know where your food comes from? As an industrial designer, shouldn’t you know how things are manufactured? If you design websites, shouldn’t you know

how they’re made? How else are you going to know about your abilities and limitations, and how to fix something when it breaks?

Here are ten reasons why I think designers should learn how to code.

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If there’s one thing that I live by, it’s this: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Working at SolutionSet (my old employer) was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. The company was still an infant, and I grew as a designer as the company grew six times it’s size. After three and a half years, I started to get comfortable. A little too comfortable.

And so, after some truly heartbreaking goodbyes, I left a 300+ person, full-service marketing agency to a small, 8-person design studio. Hard as it was, it was the right thing to do.

That’s how I got started working at Mule Design Studio. I am honored to be part of such a tight-knit, talented group of people, and I couldn’t have had a warmer welcome as a newcomer on the team. Being at a small company obviously means doing more, which I am embracing to the fullest! I’ve been hired on as both a designer and a front-end developer, which will finally give me a nice healthy dose of both creative and technical thinking.

So far, so good. I’ve enjoyed going into work everyday, mostly because it doesn’t feel like work. Heck, the office feels like a giant living room. Allow me to share…

See all photos »
Mule Design Studio »

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Working at a digital media agency usually means doing work for the screen, but once in a while, my agency will throw something completely random in the mix – like a project to develop car graphics for the first electric taxi in Japan.

The effort to make electric cars more appealing to the Japanese public is a huge step for BetterPlace, a company that doesn’t actually make electric cars, but instead, partners with other car companies to convert selected models to work with Better Place batteries and charging stations. Any Better Place electric car can make a quick pit stop at a charging station – the idea being that these stations will eventually will circle the globe – and have their battery swapped out for a fully charged one in just a few minutes.

See all Flickr photos » | See video »
New York Times article »

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It was Monday morning, around 10am. I was listening to the Beatles on my headphones, and completely immersed in some Flash work – when I looked up and saw that the room was empty and my creative director urgently telling me there’s a company meeting in one of our other buildings. I thought, “That’s weird. Our staff meeting isn’t scheduled until Thursday, and we never have meetings in the other building.” Whatever. It was probably some project I just got put on, or an update on our insurance policy.

I was the first to arrive in the conference room, and waited for a few minutes for the others to file in. Not everyone arrived. The founder of the company came in, and he got right to the point. He gravely announced,

I’m afraid this isn’t a good meeting. The people you see in this room are the ones that will continue working here. Everyone else will be packing up their things and leaving in a few hours.

I looked frantically around the room, choking back tears. The more I thought about who wasn’t there, the lower my heart sank. And once I realized that almost no one from my design team was there, I almost couldn’t take it anymore.

There was a short session of questions that followed, and then a solemn walk back to the building I worked in. While I was in that awful meeting, there was an even worse meeting that went on at the same time, in my building. You can guess which one that is.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked in. I saw my team members there, quietly packing up, some crying. Hugs, emails, and wishes were exchanged. It was incredibly difficult. And after a few hours, they were gone.

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Apparently, a poster design I did in school is being used as a supporting graphic in articles – which is cool because:
1) Even though the actual poster is sitting in my closet collecting dust (sorry Professor Byrne), it’s being somewhat useful to others
1) It means that my poster is successful in correctly communicating the idea of Innovation. Which is much better than the actual grade I received on it (heh heh)

Here are the articles I’m talking about:
Nurturing an Innovation Driven Culture by Michael Plishka
Gelecein is yapsn tasarlamak by Yusuf Ozan (and no, I can’t read it either).

Now I’m just waiting for a phone call from a publisher that wants to use it in a book. I wouldn’t mind having some extra rent money. But I guess for now I’ll keep searching the image name in Google to see where else it’s popping up.

Or even better, it may be coming to a PowerPoint near you. Let me know. Every company has a PowerPoint on innovation, right?

See my name in the credits? Ok so there were 20 other people mentioned on that page but hey, it’s nice to be recognized in a published book.

The book is called “Market This! A 90-day Marketing Tool”, by Sherry Prescott-Willis. She came to my company’s creative team about a year ago with the opportunity to work on her book cover and we went wild with it — creative projects like this are rare, and so refreshing. And what could be more challenging than marketing a marketing book?

I wish I could show you all the designs we did for her book cover, because they were all fantastic. Here are the three final designs from my company’s creative team. I did the first two, my creative director did the last one (which is what you’ll see on the bookshelves now).

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