Design is Fun!

So I recently caught wind of a little design fun going around facebook. It goes like this

1. Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to "Random quotations" or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.
5. Post it to FB with this text in the caption and tag the friends you want to join in.

I was tagged in one and it made me think about how long it's been since I've done ANY design for fun. So my clicks resulted in the following:

So today I was rummaging through some old art and found this little logo I designed for a site that has since disappeared. It makes me kind of want to use it for something. *shrug*

IDEAs

I was exchanging emails today with a co-worker of mine from a latent design contracting job. Apparently they have been cutting back and many of my friends there have been getting laid off. It was great to catch up with her and offer her a resource to help her in her search to find new employment. In one of her reply emails she said:

"I was cleaning out my hard drive and files and keep finding your sketches and mock ups - you are a huge part of what make it such a great (and award-winning) UI! "

It was a nice ego booster to hear that people appreciated the work I did there, but then I stopped. "Award-winning?" Last I checked, I hadn't heard anything about winning any awards. When I checked back with her on it, she explained that our device won the bronze International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) which, according to 3M anyway, is one of the worlds most prestigious design competitions sponsored by Business Week magazine and the Industrial Designers Society of America.

Now, before my head gets too big I should mention that the award is for the entire product design of the device which took the work of many smart people. Still, how psyched am I to have taken part in designing the user interface to this cool dental device!? A part of that IDEA belongs to me, and you can rest assured, I will be bragging about it.