I have a few flickr libraries that I really enjoy crusing through. I have setup a few RSS feeds to some photographers out there who are cool enough to share their photos with anyone who has the time to look at them. I have posted before some links to my flickr feeds. This one by Tommy Oshima is something I really like. I don’t know Tommy, but it is obvious from watching Tommy’s work that there is some real talent in this collection. Thanks for sharing Tommy.

If any of you have some great flickr feeds that you think highly of, I would love to see what you see. Last week Matt gave me a great reference that i have since subscribed to.

With 60 miles in the bag today, my power was more than my bike could bear…or my bottom bracket that is. I am just so powerful that I ground the bearings into dust… Here’s a shot of Kevin doing a quick overhaul at 6:30 pm so that I can do another 60 miles of long slow distance tomorrow. Featured in this post is a shot of Kevin… With a look like this, would anyone trust this guy to work on your prize horse? Thanks for the quick hook-up Kevin!

This week we had a lot of fun launching the world’s first blog in the airline industry. Next week will bring something completely different, new and fun. How do you take a really successful business to business e-commerce web site and make it even better? On Monday we will share that experience!

So, the best airline on earth and hometown hero Southwest Airlines asks you to design a blog to be the face of their online community. What’s going to be the theme? Big powerful 737 airplanes*? Corporate colors? Pilots typing on laptops with a toothy grin?

Thankfully, no.

After reading everything I could about Southwest, looking over their advertising history and talking with their marketing department, I found a company with a history of Internet firsts and a history of simple, clever advertising. In our meetings, we discovered that this blog would be the first direct online feedback Southwest customers have ever had with the airline.

With all that in mind, we came up with peanuts —­ the little complimentary bag of peanuts offered on every Southwest flight torn open and spilling out all over the page. Southwest is famous for those little guys. I felt they were really the unofficial mascot. So right alongside Southwest’s employees talking to the world, it seems appropriate to have a bunch of peanuts.

A good deal of the design I see on the web seems to be an afterthought. It is simply decoration for the content. At RD2, we try to make design that is beautiful and helps our clients tell their story. That goes way beyond using company colors and fonts. We always try to design to the spirit of the message. With a little effort in research, a concept-driven design can be one of the most powerful communication tools on the website.

I have really enjoyed the entire process of designing this blog for such a great client. The Southwest team has been fantastic and very appreciative of our efforts to design with their message in mind. As always, our development team’s work has also been exceptional. Even when I asked to have no definable masthead, no real grid structure and peanuts all over the live content, the coders came through with flawless CSS. I’ve never been happier with a completed online project.

I look forward to more projects with Southwest and more opportunities to push for concept-driven design on the web.

*Full disclosure: we presented a concept with an airplane on it. Thankfully, the Southwest team saw beyond the traditional choice and went with the peanuts.

For the past couple of days I have been out in San Jose, California. I have been watching the stats, reading my e-mails, listening to the exciting voice mail messages and watching the press. Only today have I been able to really let this one soak in. This is truly one of the coolest and most unique stories we have in our portfolio. I just cannot wait to see how the rest of this unfolds. The real purpose for my post is simply to congratulate the team and thank them for the support. Thank You Angela, Linda, the RD2 team (you know who you are), and, of course, Andy Lark. Stay tuned, I have asked for the team to give a general snapshot on this experience which will, of course, be on our weblog. Thanks again for the hard work and congrats to all.

Last week I wrote about having the opportunity to teach some talented people about blogging. Now, we can talk about our project. Presenting: Nuts About Southwest, the airline industry’s first corporate blog.

The people at Southwest have been dreaming up the blog for quite a while now, and brought RD2 in a few months ago to share our experience in blogging, web design, and development.

One of our recommendations was the use of WordPress to run the blog. It was an easy recommendation to make: we use WordPress on this blog, it is robust, and it was easily customizable for some special needs. For example, Southwest needed a user level that would leave all posts in draft mode, yet allow for uploading of photos. With WordPress’ default setup, you can have one or the other. With some quick searching, I located the Role Manager plug-in, which lets admins configure user capabilities simply.

After our team built out the site, I went out to Southwest’s campus near Love Field and taught a boardroom full of people, most who had only heard of blogging because of being tapped for this effort, how to use WordPress to blog. It was a fun hour, full of questions about blogging and jokes about what types of posts would work for the site. All in all, it was a great look into the potential that this blog has. The room was full of talented, creative, and gregarious people who love working for Southwest and are excited to share it with Southwest’s current and potential customers.

I’m very proud of our collaboration in the two blogs RD2 has built for Southwest: the Adopt-A-Pilot Blog and Nuts About Southwest. It will be fun to watch this new blog take off.

This was during my ride up Old La Honda Road. Chris Hipp took this photo and I decided to post it since I am so blurred out that you cannot see how huge I am….more like a blurry figure just dancing up the hill. From the right angle, and if I squint my eyes just right, I think it resembles…Lance.

That’s right, Woolly Mammoth. A name that was given to me some time ago. I think it was early in the season, before I shaved my legs. It was probably an icy cold morning and some of my 150 pound friends on bikes half jokingly called me the Woolly Mammoth because I was really big and kind of furry.

Then there’s Der Hipptler. (more…)

Officials at RD2, Inc. are reporting a steep drop in coffee consumption this week. The drop has averaged at just over 7 cups. Massive amounts of the caffeine rich substance are going down the drain at the end of each day. To counter the trend, RD2 designer Brandon DeLoach prepared less coffee this morning. Unfortunately, an unexpected trip to Starbucks countered DeLoach’s efforts and by the time you read this, more coffee than ever will be wasted.

Researchers have tied the drop to the recent simultaneous absence of RD2 front man Chris Ronan and head of operations Candice Paddock. Their departure has exposed the fact that they collectively consume 90% of all RD2 coffee on a normal working day. Plans have already been made for a strong dip in coffee production for the remainder of Ronan and Paddock’s west coast trip to preserve this precious RD2 resource.

• Wikis and blogs transforming workflow
  “Wikis, as well as the more established blog, are experiencing the same kind of grass-roots adoption within businesses that the Internet and e-mail did when they first emerged on the scene.”
  (tags: wiki blog)