Two nights ago I was able to attend the ADDYs for my company and it turned out to be a fantastic evening. I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but we did amazing. I came home with 7 awards for us including a Judge's Choice and the Best in Show (with a sprinkling of some golds and silvers in there too).

A lot of our clients have been giving a lot of freedom lately and it has really been paying off. Since I work mostly for law firms, most of them are set in their stodgy ways and in the end it shows. However, the few choice clients that who let us go off an do what we love, end off better in the end. The work for the client that won both the gold and the Best in Show is an ad campaign that is far from what you would see for most law firms. Clever copywriting, great photographs, use of white space, these isn't the norm in the industry*.

So in the end, sorry for the goofy shot of me. This was my final seventh time up, and I was running out of little things to say at the mic and I am way overdue for a haircut. Plus, thanks to my wife for taking shots of the event and getting a couple of me not looking like an idiot.

*I try to keep from posting images and stuff from work, since I don't know exactly how that works, but if you want to see some of the winning work or my work in general just drop me a message.

No design post today because it a a great day and LOST is starting it's final season. So if you are casually browsing your design blogs tonight, I want you to see this, and go turn your TV on. Wait, you don't watch LOST?

Well, just think, does your life have a hole in it that is just too hard to fill? A certain emptiness? Could it use a TV show that makes you question all kinds of things but never really gives you answers, but only enfuriates you more? If the anser is yes, maybe you should go watch it (although you would be hoplessly lost as to what is going on, so maybe you should go get all the dvd sets, watch them all, build a time machine, come back to tonight, so you can watch it with the rest of us, then give me the time machine, Id like a pet T-Rex).

10 points to anyone who sees the photoshop disaster in the poster!

So if you don't know about GD USA it is time to find out about them. They are a graphic design magazine that is pretty good and best of all it is FREE.

So go check out the website, maybe sign up to get it. The magazine does have a lot of ads, but what can you expect.... it's free. They gotta pay for it somehow.

These are some great Stella ads from Lowe London. I can't find the work on their site anymore though.

Great color, texture, vintage feel. I especially like the bomb image. So simple and convey an important point, beer must always be saved. No matter what.

This is a "hand made" stamp for sale over at Twine. It caught my eye first with the good idea to somehow mark your goods as handmade. Wether you are a screen printer, sewer (is that how you spell someone who sews, not like a drain pipe?), drawer, crafter, or something else.

But then it got me to thinking, if you are into making things handmade, why not hand make the stamp yourself? Yes, for some that would be above and beyond, but really, a stamp that says handmade, which is not handmade is kind of an oxymoron. Isn't it?

If you want to mark your goods you can pick it up for $6.50 over in their store.

The Canon EOS line of cameras are named differently depending on what country you are in. In American they go by the name of the "Rebel" (after Andre Agassi), in Japan they are known as the "Kiss" and everyone else refers to them as a number (450D for example, along the same lines as European cars).

So here is a Japanese ad for the new canon T1i. To me it is confusing on many different levels. First being why the heck they call their camera the kiss, and second, what it has to do with the actual band Kiss at all... Is that band reference really needed, is it current? No.