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Most of the pain points in web development stem from the fact that interactive projects, of any scale, quickly become complex machines with many moving parts. Because of this, every person involved in the process of making, selling or marketing in this medium has to constantly balance education (client, co-worker, boss) with their day-to-day workload.

While recently discussing our best client stories, as well as the often therapeutic clientsfromhell.net, Eric let loose a little gem of advice:

Before you start a job with a new client, you should take them out to lunch in a restaurant with bad service. Just watch how they handle the situation.

I thought this was seemingly brilliant compatibility test. Best case is that you quickly observe the inherent communication patterns of the team, worst case is that you are no longer hungry.

I think that too often clients/teams get a bad rap for what they don’t know. The reality is that, by choosing to work with you they have often already disclosed that they know something, yet need to know more. When you are trying to create new things, your building blocks are small pieces of unknown and yet to be proven ideas. Some blocks snap right together, some blocks take down the last 4 hours of your day. The great clients are the ones who handle what they don’t know with honor, honesty and respect - regardless of how much they understand the technical thingys.

Good clients have taught me more then I would ever consider I have taught them.

To better help the world to understand this collection of complex diseases, our studio worked closely with the non-profit group Rheuminations to create “What is Lupus”. The 17 minute animation presents the viewer with a review of what an auto-immune response system looks like in the body of an average woman versus what that same response might look like within the body of a woman afflicted with Lupus. It does so with illustrated characters that are friendly looking enough to appeal to youngsters while not tuning out adults who may be doing research for a loved one or for their own condition.

In order to tackle this complex disease, The Chopping Block met with and was instructed by some of the best Rheumatologists available on the US east-coast. Several meetings were set-up to discuss the decipher the inner workings of the body and the cells that play a part in what would become a cohesive overview of the disease. Over the course of these meetings the overall content was story-boarded (see below) by The Chopping Block, revised and ultimately approved by Rheuminations as well as the rheumatoid specialists involved.

Voice over is by Charles Osgood of CBS’s Sunday MorningView. Script by Lisa Goldman & Katherine M. Snider. Music written and performed by Justin Dello Joio. See “What is Lupus for Rheuminations” from Chopping Block on Vimeo or go to dxlupus.org for the full animation.

HTML5 was selected as the presentation engine because it was seemingly the right time to do so. A lot of designers/developers were inspired by the HTML5 slides built by Marcin Wichary & Ernest Delgado, our goal was to add some web fonts and make it look nice. Over the years I have used Powerpoint, Keynote and Flash to build out often elaborate presentations, but now I am quite content trying to push the HTML5 & JavaScript slides as far as possible. If there is continued interest I can post more information about building the presentation itself.

On the way back from Denver, I made some additions to the slides:

• Removed the PDF links, replacing them with Shadowbox.js galleries.
• Quickly added a print.css file, which means it will look nice when you hit print.
• Enabled the display of inline notes, just hit the 2 key (on a slide with notes).
• Cleaned up the copy a bit, added more resource links.
• Trimmed down the file size a bit. There is always room for more optimization.

The HOW Design Conference is a force for good, and I don’t often say such things about big conferences. The attendees, speakers (and yes sponsors) are a humble & talented group. Huge thanks to the folks at HOW and everybody who stopped me to say hello and talk shop.

Seen above is the new drop panel that will be published weekly in Sunday edition newspapers all over the world.

The kernel of this idea came from a bowling team full of Chopping Block folks. The team name was the “Burly Bowling Brigade” and they had a silkscreened team shirt that simply featured a cluster of short stubby graphic hairs, two nipples and a sweet logo on the back. We all liked the idea so much that we decided to come up with another version that would have wider appeal than the guys on the bowling team.

This design comes in Alstyle color Sand (top) or a very limited quantity on American Apparel Black on Charcoal or Black on Black. Sizes are SML-3XL. Ladies… if you are interested, let us know. Know what I’m sayin’?

We have been working closely with Climate Central to help illustrate the actual data they get back from NASA and the US Navy on climate change. Climate Central is a nonprofit science and media organization created to provide clear and objective information about climate change and its potential risks. The illustrations are an attempt at showing the raw data in an entirely apolitical way that is easy for the average person to understand. The issue of climate change is a complex one and we hope that these illustrations can help people focus on the data, because climate change like any other science should be based upon data and not opinion.

The first image above reveals the overall changes in Arctic ice thickness over 25 years. Link.

Above is an attempt to speak in volumes…  It is difficult to speak to people in metric tons, so we try to convey the amounts in terms people are familiar with. Here we illustrate how the amount of ice lost in Alaska over 3 years would be enough to cover the states of CT, VT, ME, NJ, MD, NH, MA, RI and about 90% of NY in about 3 feet of ice. See also a similar treatment of Greenland Ice Loss.

Another way of looking at how the Arctic ice is thinning over 25 years. This time we are also showing the actual distribution of thicknesses over the region. Here the data on Autumn levels are shown and an additional illustration of these thicknesses is also available for Winter data on the Climate Central website.

Perhaps the most shocking data set is this illustration of how much ice is actually shedding off the coast of Greenland. The two front bergs represent the actual tonnage of bergs that were dislodged from the Greenland land mass. Only 7 billion in a TEN year period from 92-02 and 177 billion in only THREE years from 04-07. Hard to argue with those numbers… though people will.

A few weeks back, we helped our good friends at shipwire.com to redesign their shipping and product fulfillment blog. It’s great to see it up and running. The team is doing a fantastic job keeping the posts knowledgeable and fresh. It is increasingly becoming a fantastic resource for growing your online business.

It is also refreshing to see how small, incremental design and UI projects can become great catalysts for change.

As graduates fresh out of college, the members of wellDone traveled to Africa during the Summer of 2005, during which they observed the critical need for safe drinking water in communities throughout rural Ghana. Wanting to make a difference they launched WellDone with one goal: funding, constructing, and the long-term managing of six wells in villages throughout rural Ghana. The costs associated with the drilling of a single community well amounts to only around $8,000. That number is actually less costly than the installation of just one industrial sized cappuchino machine you normally see at many cafes like Starbucks.

We worked closely with the WellDone team to design a t-shirt that highlights the various facets of the global water crisis through the visualization of 27 striking water statistics (see the actual art below). The icons paint a picture that remind us that we must both conserve earth’s most precious resource, while working to improve clean water access to those most in need. Furthermore, the key to each of these icons and their associated numbers is listed on the inside/back of the tee below the label art. Never has looking this good, done so much good. Your purchase of one or two tees is quite literally one step further on the road to providing a permanent source of clean water access for an entire community. Available in styles for both men and women.

All digital prints are produced and printed on archival Moab Rag Bright white and the weight is 190 GSM. The size of these particular 3 pieces is 13″x19″.

Oh and I had to add this link to include the blog in blogcatalog.com