I’ve never been so proud as this - Crystal Adams, one of my finest students from years past, will be published in Print Magazine’s Regional Design Annual this November. Her poster design for SimpleHuman, where she has been working as a full-time designer for the past year, is included here. Way to go, Crystal! This is only the beginning. I might add, Crystal showed her dedication to design education by showing up in nearly all of my classes. She wasn’t necessarily enrolled in all of them. She just showed up. You know that famous Woody Allen quote, right? “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” Not that this merit has anything to do with showing up - simply put, this is an example of good design. But showing up, repeatedly, is part of the process.

Hey, if you were one of my students and you were recently awarded, or if your work is recognized in the future, tell me about it! I want to know.

Let's Go Crazy Project @ letsgocrazy.info

In the fall of 2008 I started this “Let’s Go Crazy” YouTube project with my students…and wrote about it here. It’s spring, the semester is over; and a new crop of videos have been posted. Some are truly worth checking out, like Mark’s remix and Sean’s paranoid androids legos. Students from other colleges are posting videos, too - thanks to those of you who are offering extra credit for this silly but significant project!

I always knew I was weird…MechanicalOlympics.org has been selected as an Official Honoree in the Weird category of the 13th Annual Webby Awards.

The Webby Awards is the Internet’s most respected symbol of success. The 13th Annual Webby Awards received over 9,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries worldwide. Webby Awards are awarded in over 125 categories. Winners are chosen by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences a global organization whose members incluce David Bowie, Harvey Weinstein, Arianna Huffington, Matt Groening, Internet inventor Vinton Cerf, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson, and R/GA Chairman and CEO Bob Greenberg.

What can I say but, woot-woot!

Hello from the Communication & Digital Culture area of the PCA conference. I promised to publish my presentation, so the PDF is here. Also, here is the link to all of the experiments I’ve been creating with the help of the Turkers.

This year I saved the three bucks I would have spent on a Hallmark card and used it, instead, to send three dollars worth of “Happy Birthday” messages from workers on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk website.

The truth is, I never buy cards anyhow. Still, this was a lot better than some made-up thing I would have put together in so much time - and I’m considered an “expert” at using paper, scissors, graphics and glue to create visual messages.

So, I went to mturk.com, signed in as a requester, and left the following instructions for my workers:

For his birthday, I’m sending my boyfriend “Happy Birthday” emails from Mechanical Turk workers. This is super easy - here are the directions:

Send him an email wishing him a happy birthday. You can adlib within the message, wishing him a good day, good luck this year, or tell him that his girlfriend loves him…you know, birthday well wishes. (The email address was inserted here).

I promise that I/he will not to share your email address or use it for any purpose.
One last rule - only one email per person. It’s more fun if he gets a set of totally different messages. Thank you!

We woke up today and I couldn’t wait to have him check his email. Playing it cool is not my best skill. Here are some of the messages he received:

“Hope you have a good time and enjoy every second of your day. And may this year be 10x better than any other year so far Happy Birthday”

“Happy Birth Day to you. Many Many Happy Returns Of the Day”

“Happy Birthday!  I hope you have an awesome year and it is full of love and hugs and kisses and more!  Enjoy yourself!”

“How lucky you are to have a girlfriend that cares som much about you that she wants people worldwide to greet you on this historical day for you. Paul I hope this day is wonderful, I hope this year is magical. Have a teriffic Birthday.”

I have to say, for the price of a card, you get a lot more fun out of seeing what people from all over the world write to your loved ones; and it’s even better when they tell your boyfriend/spouse/loved ones just how great you are for sponsoring their messages. I haven’t seen a card with this kind of message yet.

This was not my first project to include the Mechanical Turk workforce. You can see all of my projects hosted here: http://mturkprojects.info/