Dive into the archives.
- What’s So Great About Your Comfort Zone?
This week is an exciting one for me and my family. On Sunday, July 4th, Independence Day, we are driving out of Tallahassee, FL, with our belongings in a U-Haul trailer to begin the three-and-a-half-day journey across the country to our new residence in San Francisco. That amazing, unique city is where I grew up, where my wife and I lived for the first 3 years of our marriage, where my eldest daughter was born, and where our hearts are. Although we spent many years in SF Bay Area, we have not lived within the city limits for years, and we are anxiously anticipating our return.
In some ways the City by the Bay could be misinterpreted as our “comfort zone”, the place we feel the most at ease and safe. Yet anyone who knows us and knows our relationship with the city would make the distinction that we seldom ever make the choice for what is safe.
In the McDaniel philosophy of living, safe is equivalent to boring. Safe is for those who are satisfied with the status quo and have little or no desire to experience the adventure that is an intricate element of the potential within every breath we take. Safe may be fine for others, but it reeks of stagnancy, boredom and insufficiency to me and my family.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure we have our own comfort zones, and this writing is not an attempt to put our approach to life on a pedestal high above your own. It is, however, rich with the hope that by sharing our story you too might be inspired to examine your comfort zone and maybe, just maybe, step outside of it to experience all that you have been missing.
- 3 Distinctly Different Design Blogs I Love Because They Break The “Rules”
Over the past year or so I have been diving into the online design community, meeting and getting to know all kinds of interesting people from all over the world. As I come across different design-related blogs, I have added the ones I like or find interesting to my RSS subscriptions, and I check in with most of them daily. I currently subscribe to about 300 design blogs, everything from the most popular to the least known. I learn a great deal from most of them, and must credit my ongoing education to these wondrous websites that continuously put out tutorials, showcases, inspiration, discussions and more.
Recently I have become particularly enthralled with some new-to-me discoveries in the design blog world. While I do gain quite a bit of knowledge and inspiration from the majority of the design blogs, these three websites have risen to the top of my own personal list because of their distinctly different approaches. Where many others have an obvious focus on driving traffic, which in turn influences the content they produce, these three blogs write from their inspirations and passions. They wrestle in their writing with subject matter that they are dealing with themselves. They challenge and question. They inspire discussion and debate. They ask the all-important question: “Why?”
I have an affinity toward people who go deeper, who don’t just accept the way things are but examine them, pick them apart and try to understand how they became accepted in the first place or if they are the best option. Through different experiences in my life I have learned how foolish it is to blindly follow the crowd instead of think for yourself and I love to commiserate with those who challenge popular thought. I truly believe these types of people are leaders, influencers and world shapers. Not because they aspire to be leaders, but because their actions inspire others to follow.
I believe the creators and authors of these three design blogs are such people. Their writing challenges me. It gets me to look at things from another perspective. It dares me to enter into debate with the status quo. It inspires and motivates and strengthens what I do as a designer. I believe it does the same for others.
So I want to share them with you in the hopes that if you have not already discovered them, you will today be exposed and begin the journey alongside them as they contribute to the shaping of the future of design.
- Design Outside The Lines
I have been a part of a few different discussions regarding design trends recently. One of the best articles I’ve read on the subject was written by Matt Ward at Echo Enduring Blog. In it, Matt helps a rebel like me realize the importance of design trends and best ways to respond. I recently wrote a guest post on Pelfusion.com discussing design standards and trends and challenging us all to break out of the expected to create new, interesting and unique designs, possibly birthing more new trends along the way, or maybe generating some one-of-a-kind, stand-alone masterpieces.
If you have read much of my writings and ramblings, you are probably aware that I am bent towards breaking myself and others out of the status quo, so when it comes to this topic of following trends and adhering to standards I am pretty opinionated. I don’t necessarily think I’m right, or an authority on the subject, but I do have some strong feelings that are rooted in my own personal experience and philosophy. In this post I want to continue to challenge our thinking so that we will extend our approaches to design in any context beyond the perceived boundaries that can bind the creative spirit.
- 570+ Design, SEO, Social Media and Freelance Links I Tweeted This Past Week (5/1-5/7)
Each week I share on Twitter all the links and resources I am reading and learning from with those who choose to follow me. Everything from social media, technology, freelancing, web and graphic design, search engine optimization and more! At the end of the week I am compiling these resources to share in one spot for those that are interested. So here is some weekend reading, or a mega-bookmark, or however you choose to use this list. I hope you enjoy it!
- 650+ Design, SEO, Social Media and Freelance Links I Tweeted This Past Week (4/24-4/30)
Each week I tweet what some may consider a ridiculous amount of resources to share what I am reading and learning from with those who choose to follow me. Everything from social media, technology, freelancing, web and graphic design, search engine optimization and more! Now at the end of the week I am compiling these resources to share in one spot for those that are interested. So here is some weekend reading, or a mega-bookmark, or however you choose to use this list. I hope you enjoy it!
- 600+ Design, SEO, Social Media and Freelance Links I Tweeted This Past Week (4/10-4/16)
Since I started publishing these weekly lists of all the links and resources I tweeted in the past week, this is by far the biggest yet! With over 600 links to this week’s published articles about SEO, social media, web and graphic design, freelancing and more, there should be enough weekend reading here to satisfy everyone.
- 490+ Design, SEO, Social Media and Freelance Links I Tweeted This Past Week (4/3-4/9)
It’s Saturday again and that means time for the weekly list of resources I have tweeted over the past week. This week I was out of town on Sunday and Monday, so it was a little slower in the tweeting department – only 490 or so links. Next week hopefully we’ll be back into the 550 range, but for now this will have to do. Every day I tweet links to all of the articles and blog posts I subscribe to and read. Most of them are related to web design, graphic design, social media, technology, SEO, freelancing and sometimes just the latest buzz. Hopefully these weekly list will give you a place to catch up on anything you may have missed.
- 540+ Design, SEO, Social Media and Freelance Links I Tweeted This Past Week (3/27-4/2)
I’ve started posting a list like this on Saturdays for those that would like to go back through all of the resources I have shared each week. On average I tweet around 550 links and resources a week, in the topics of web and graphic design, social media, SEO, freelance and more – basically all of the things I am interested in. So here is a list of those tweets in the order I tweeted them, for your review.
- The 570+ Links I Tweeted This Week (3/20 – 26)
The past few weeks I’ve started posting a list like this on Saturdays for those that would like to go back through all of the resources I have shared this past week. On average I tweet around 550 links and resources a week, in the topics of web and graphic design, social media, SEO, freelance and more – basically all of the things I am interested in. So here is a list of those tweets in the order I tweeted them, for your perusal.
- What Do You Do When You Don’t Get Your Way?
Athough this post was inspired by recent events in the US political arena, it is not about them in particular. This is not about which side you or I are on or how either of us feels about recent historic events.
This is about grown men and women making a conscious decision to carry themselves like adults or like third graders when something they feel very strongly about does not go their way. I have been on both sides of that equation for various reasons at different points in my life and, although I probably have not always succeeded in behaving like a mature adult when I have experienced a disappointing loss in something I was fighting for, bearing witness to the poor behavior of others in similar situations has bred in me a distinct distaste for the immature and destructive antics of the poor loser. I want to share one of those experiences in hopes that a view from another angle may help us all to consider with compassion those around us as we determine our next course of action whenever we don’t get our way.
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