The Blog of Brandon Milford - Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Design

I love IAC’s new building in New York City near Chelsea Piers. It was designed by the great Frank Gehry. This is the first Frank Gehry design in which the entire exterior is made of glass.

Designed with productivity in mind

Coolest feature
The video walls are by far the coolest feature.

More information about the Video Walls.

I just got back from South by Southwest this afternoon. The last five days have been great and my brain is full.

The best panels/speeches that I attended included:

“A Decade of Style” – with Doug Bowman (stopdesign.com), Molly Holzschlag (molly.com), Eric Meyer (meyerweb.com), and Chris Wilson (Microsoft).

“After the Brief: A Field Guide to Design Inspiration” – with Jason Santa Maria (jasonsantamaria.com and HappyCog.com), and Rob Weychert (robweychert.com and HappyCog.com).

“Grids are Good, and How to Design with Them” – with Mark Boulton (markboulton.co.uk) and Khoi Vinh (NY Times).

“Building an Online Fanbase” – joint Film and Interactive session with Scilla Andreen (IndieFlix), Scott Kirsner (Variety), Jim Miller (Brave New Foundation), Ian Schafer (DeepFocus), David Straus (Without a Box Inc), Joe Swanberg (Hannah take the Stairs), and Lance Weiler (Workbook Project).

“Creating a Campaign in an Hour” – with Pablo Marques (pablomarques.com), Todd Purgason (juxtinteractive.com), Jason Zada (EVB), Rick Webb (barbariangroup.com).

“Design Patterns: Defining and Sharing Web Interface Design Languages” – with Luke Wroblewski (lukew.com).

“Scaling Your Community” – with Matt Mullenweg (wordpress.com)

“How to Create a Kick-Ass In-House Design Team” – with Lisa C. Anderson (Intuit), Irene Au (Google), Tjeerd Hoek (Microsoft), and Jon Wiley (jonwiley.com).

I attended a lot of panels, however these were at the top of my list. Matt Mullenweg did an excellent job with the “Scaling Your Community” speech. Great job Matt!

The panel on creating a kick-ass in-house design team was amazing. Afterwards we went for drinks at Cedar Door with the panel and had an opportunity to talk with them for about 45 minutes or so. That’s one of things that stood out for me about SXSW was how accessible everyone is and how they love sharing their knowledge with you. It was refreshing.

This was my first year at South by Southwest and I was very impressed. I’m already excited about next year!

A very cool seating system by Animi Causa.

Adobe has released Photoshop CS3 Beta. If you currently have a serial number from CS2 you can enter it for an extended trial. The workspace looks pretty slick. They’ve "jazzed" it up a little with curved tabs and gradients. I’m very excited about CS3 as it will work with Mac’s Intel Core Duo. Woohoo! The full release is slated for Spring 2007. Here are a few screen shots:

I’m looking forward to the full launch in the Spring.

Every office should have a wall of sticky notes.
What a great idea and wonderful execution. Bravo!

I’ve always wondered who was responsible for creating the various Google logos that appear during holidays and special events throughout the year. His name is Dennis Hwang. A 28 year old webmaster who began his career at Google as an intern. CNN.com published an article yesterday that provides greater insight into his work and the process behind it.

Everywhere I turn I see that Web 2.0 style –we all do. We’re
currently drowning in it. You know the one; starburst above the fold and a fat
footer below. All buttons have that “just been polished” look.

Overall, I like the look of Web 2.0. It’s clean, slick, and colorful
with an eye on simple (thanks Fried!) Though, it’s always a great idea to keep
an eye on the horizon and think about what’s to come. In a year will we
still turn to TechCrunch to see the next Web 2.0 application that’s in beta?
Will we then be in the midst of Web 2.5 or 2.8 or maybe Web 3.1.8? It will be interesting to see how design changes and who’s leading the way.

I stumbled upon a number of quality free fonts over at
Misprinted Type. Be
sure to check them out.

If you guys know of any other places where you can find high
quality free fonts please post a link. Thanks!

We launched the limited beta last Tuesday and feedback is continuing
to roll in from participants. We’ve ended up with a total of 386 beta users - Thanks everyone!
This is a small portion of our current clients who are diving in and testing the
new user interface. Beta testers have the ability to switch back-and-forth between
the old and new UI as they take it for a test drive.

Our primary goal for the beta is to get feedback on the
overall impression of the new UI and ensure the software is in fact, easier to
use.  We’re receiving a lot of great feedback and most seem to love the changes we’ve made. One of the most striking changes is the header. Our old UI contained a total of 11
tabs. The re-designed UI contains only 4 tabs with sub-navigation for
each. Here’s
a look at the old and new headers (note the slogan change as well):