Open House: Archives

Designers, when you post comps for open critique, switch on the hot box! It's like raising the flag on your mailbox. Never again will your amazing, creative, ground-breaking work hang on the whiteboard, unnoticed. Read on, if you want to know why and how I made this.

PBDH encourages open-collaboration, cross-pollination and a lot of other great hyphenated phrases relating to idea sharing. One way this is accomplished is by posting new design comps on the whiteboard in "The Core" - our primary public space where we hold critiques, eat lunch and argue about last night's episode of Lost. Often a designer will hang up a few design roughs or ideas before the "real" internal review, to see what other folks have to say and get some fresh perspective. The system works fairly well, but I have noticed one flaw: Sometimes I pass right by those comps without realizing they are posted there for public critique. For all I know, they are just left over from a previous meeting and commenting is closed. There is nothing to draw my attention to them. Never again. Post your work, pull the chain and get ready for an influx of insightful, relevant, meaningful feedback.

And if you see the light on.... please take a look at what's on the board and offer your thoughts. That light is somebody's beacon asking for your input.

No doubt somebody will ask "How did you make that" which is usually a long answer, but I can give you one hint. I found a little laser-cutting shop right around the corner from our office. Take them a vector file and they can cut your design out of wood, paper, plastic - a lot of things. Check out Metrix Create Space, it's a haven for tech geeks, "makers" and design-nerds like myself.