I recently completed a website design for several non-profit organizations and there was a recurring theme: lack of focus. The clients were clear on what the purpose of their organizations and were dedicated to their cause. However, they hadn’t put much thought into how to translate their organization’s mission into an effective website that moved beyond that of an online brochure.

There is misconception that there is a direct correlation between functionality and cost. The result is that many clients start with simple design models in anticipation that requesting more will bust the budget. The truth is that you do not have to compromise functionality and design for cost purposes if you have a clear understanding of an effective non-profit website should function.v

You remember why we went to war in the first place, even? A reminder: it was because the American people were sold on the idea that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. And in a post-9/11 world, that wouldn’t stand! The only thing that would stand was crazy over-reaction to everything! Actual weapons inspectors kept telling us that they couldn’t find any WMDs

For months we have heard the cry of a split with the black vote with regards to the Cook County Board President’s race. The prognosticators suggested that fielding multiple black candidates would all but guarantee victory for the lone white candidate. This may have been true in the past but politics have changed over the past decade and politicians wage campaigns on old paradigms at their peril.

From The Grio:
The new year has come and like many folks, my number one resolution is to lose weight. Between my new job, traveling and writing, I started relying more on happy hour with co-workers to relieve stress, rather than hitting the treadmill. I finally admitted to myself that it was time to get it [...]

After ten years, Tavis Smiley is ending his symposium on the State of the Black Union (SOTBU). I enjoyed watching a lot of smart black people wax poetic about the ills of black people. For the first few years of the symposium I made sure to watch it but over the past three or four years it didn’t interest me as much.

In the spring of 1943 Donald Dohner, chair of the industrial design department at Pratt Institute, proposed to Charlie Whitney of Whitney Publications that he add an industrial design section in his magazine Interiors. Dohner asked his student, Budd Steinhilber to design the first cover of Interiors premiering the new Industrial Design section. Budd used a photograph of his brother Norman playing the role of a designer with T-square and triangle. Almost every issue after that Dohner contributed a section on industrial design and the illustrations were invariable either by my dad or Budd, since, according to Dohner, “they were by far the best renderers in the class–they could make a drawing that just sang.”

Progressives are very angry at the health care bill that is coming out of the Senate and for very good reason. It doesn’t have a Public Option, not even a weak one, and it has been stripped of the Medicare compromise. It seems as though we are getting nothing for having won the White House and both houses of Congress.

One thing we can say about the Bush Administration is that they kept their team in line. His administration faced very little opposition from inside the Republican Party. But that is precisely why for many us the Bush years are a failure.