Maybe those little white mice I occasionally see in the clutches of a magnificent hawk are just getting a ride.

The new BrainstormOverload website is live at long last. Thanks to the tremendous efforts of developer Colin Petit for coding it up and figuring out all the java script madness and to my brother Jeff for early experiments with the navigation. It is amazing how complicated it is to make the interface so simple. There are one or two wrinkles to work out like integration with IE 6.0 and 7.0. But seriously you should not be using those crummy browsers anyway. Upgrade to Firefox or Chrome so you can start experiencing the internet the way we’ve actually designed it.

St. David’s Center in Minnesota has provided a supporting environment for children of all capabilities since 1965. It has been a great pleasure to design a new website to support their efforts. Along with my partners Jonathan Anderstrom and developer Colin Petit at Creed Interactive and photographer Josh Hackney we’re celebrating today’s launch.

Sometimes it’s nice to have an excuse to get off the computer and simply make something by hand. My wedding (a very informal and fun celebration with home made beer and games rather than champagne and fancy tableware) gave me just such an excuse and here is the result. Four bean bags adorned with slightly sheepish looking monsters – who despite all the teeth are really quite friendly. They are eagerly awaiting August 1st when they will be flung through the air at the corn toss boards I made to go with them. I was originally going to illustrate an alien abduction scene in four panels but my fiancée steered me in a different direction and as usual she was right.

The only question is, what to make next?

Hey I’ve got an album cover on iTunes! Of course Victor Johnson aka “V” deserves the credit for making the music but it’s still fun to see my illustration/design in such a high profile virtual location. The story on the cover of a new born bird learning to fly while the gaping jaws of a wolf eagerly await the bird’s failure plays out further on the liner notes inside. Check out CD Baby if you want a hard copy of the CD so you can find out how that goes.

Victor is back in the recording studio and a new EP should be out around the end of the year which means I’m back in the design studio to create a new cover – which will be on iTunes – which I’ll blog about… it’s an endless cycle.

On September 18th you will once again see crazy things going on in parking spaces in downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul – and around the nation in fact. Started in San Francisco by the Rebar art and design collective Park(ing) Day is a growing tradition where a wide variety of artists (it’s popular with landscape architects here in the Twin Cites) take their creative expression to the streets for a day of thought provoking, curbside installations. I think the design and advertising agencies should consider getting in on things.

Why am I bringing this up so far in advance? Because now’s the time for graphic designers to get involved in the T-Shirt design contest. I just submitted mine and want to encourage you to go for it.

Whipped cream bears a striking resemblance to an iceberg. A yummy, yummy iceberg.

The AIGA continues its tradition of organizing the creation and distribution of Get Out the Vote posters. This year a small number have been printed as a limited edition set. However, each poster in the collection, which currently stands at 313, can be downloaded as a PDF allowing you to print your own favorites. There is still time for members to contribute a design and if even I can pull it off (above) I know you can do a smashing design.

The Yearbook Yourself campaign for 2008 (launched by Colle+McVoy) has run its course. As the Associate Creative Director it was a difficult project to manage but I learned a ton and the world seems to be pretty excited about it. During the four month campaign 15 million visitors from 220 countries uploaded their picture to merge with classic yearbook photos including Ev Williams founder of Twitter, Jason Kottke and the folks at Coudal Partners. This helped make it a successful back-to-school campaign for Taubman (owner and operator of high end malls around the country) and is a great example of the positive brand experience that is possible when the idea is fun and participatory, and the hard sell is dialed way down. Thanks to our friends at Gasket for working with us on the intro animation and Audio Altimeter for the sweet original music and The Yearbook Guy for all the historic yearbooks. Watch for reference to the site on the CBS Morning Show, Saturday, August 23.

I would also like to give a shout out to the integrated creative team: Mike, Eric, Nina, Tim, Grant, Lindsey, Andrew, Kyle, Jason, Julie, Brian, Sarah, Jamie and our fearless intern Judson.

What if our first contact with an alien species is made by a meter maid?