Saturday we had some mind-altering-design-theory conversations with Dirk Fowler. Dirk is a professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX and he has a design firm, along with his wife, called F2. We took some time to discuss the repercussions of design. Dirk shared some personal stories from when he was first getting into advertising/design, which were really inspiring.
Design is power. As designers we create visuals to produce a message. That message positive or negative affects a given audience in some way or another. It is up to us to be honest with everything we create, right? It is something to think about…
Dirk is also a genius with a letterpress and creates gig posters for clients all over the world. Check out the video for a little letterpress tutorial and a bit of us rambling about design.

Here are a few of our favorite pieces of his. He also sells limited runs of his posters on his website so make sure to check those out!

We arrived in Albuquerque last night. Here is an example of how awesome people are. We met Aaron, for the first time ever, for lunch on Friday, in Dallas. We chatted for about an hour, somewhere in the conversation we said that we were stopping in Albuquerque, but we didn’t have a place to stay. Two days later he set us up with his parents. They have an amazing place tucked away in the mountains, 15 minutes outside Albuquerque. They’ve already spoiled us and we’ve been here less than 24 hrs. Woo thank you!

Here is a bonus video since our last post was lacking one.

While we were in Dallas, we also met with Brian Linder, Creative Director at Clickhere.com which is the interactive division of the Richards Group. They have a huge building in Dallas and needless to say we were a bit intimidated when we walked in. Clickhere was on the 15th floor and it housed about 100 designers/developers/flash gurus/CDs/ADs/ and other distinguished position titles. This was the first time we had experienced a design firm of this size. Upon stepping out of the elevator, there was a farm of cubicles that looked to be adorned with some pretty cool stuff, but we weren’t allowed to roam (apparently there was some kind of theft in the past). So it was very cool to be inside this monolith of a design firm but sadly we didn’t get to see much. We did get to talk a lot about the incentives of working at the Richards Group. If you’re interested, take a look at their website. Follow this link and then click on “Our Pay”.

Brian talked a bit about portfolios. One great piece of advice was to make sure that when you present an idea, you explore every possible angle. Show as many different uses for the design. For example, you create an identity for, say Llama Wear, a fashion label. Do the standard college class stuff, logo, letterheads, business cards, but then be sure to think about where we are today. What about social media? Explore things like facebook applications, twitter backgrounds, web presence, iphone apps. How could you integrate your fashion label with the local community? Print advertisements, sponsorships, etc. The more applications of your design that you can explore and show in your portfolio, the better your chances.

We wanna thank Pete and Brian from taking time out of their day to chat with us about design and about working in a large firm. We def. feel like we took a lot away from our time at the Richards Group.

Today we met with Ben Jenkins (Founder / Creative Director) and Christine Weber (Sr. Business Director), at ONEFASTBUFFALO. A strategic branding agency, no, seriously these guys are branding rock stars, with a sweet set-up in downtown Dallas. You’ll see what we mean when you watch the studio tour video.

We had some awesome conversation about how inspiring it is to get away from the office. How it is essential for creatives to be confronted with new surroundings and visuals, not just from our computer screens. Ben recently got back from a surf trip. It wasn’t a vacation, it was a temporary relocation of his work space — he surfed during the day and worked his ass off at night, right on the beach.

This may be an extreme example, maybe not so extreme. We’d love to hear any stories you might have for altering your day-to-day work environment. As wireless cards become more accessible, the local coffee shop isn’t going to be the only work-space refresher.

For us, we’re so lucky to be exposed to so many new people/visuals/work-environments. This is one of the most amazing things about what we are doing. “New” is awesome.

HUGE thanks to ONEFASTBUFFALO for letting us come hang out for a bit. If you haven’t already checked out their work, you’re not quick enough. We recommend checking out the work they did for Red Jak.

Here are a few stills from their office.

Thanks to all the guys that came out to the Flying Saucer for the dallas tweet-up. We had a blast. It was great to meet everyone and it really set the momentum for the beginning of the trip. We are stoked!
Thanks again to @kylesteed for setting the whole thing up and letting us crash with him. Very cool guy.
Oh and check out the sweet monsters we all drew on the back of our coasters.

Recently we were also contacted by a Pro Video Game team to bang out a logo for them. We’re pretty stoked on how it came out.

We also got our new company debit cards in the mail, complete with our company and personal names. It may seem trivial but to us its a big deal. Again, we’ve used our high tech blurring system to blur out all the super secret information.

In this episode you see that we finally got a legit business set up, Drifting Creatives is now official. Look for a post on how we did it in a couple days. Pretty simple, but it might save you some time running around.

Tonight is the Dallas Tweet up! The Fyling Saucer (Addison) from 6-8 pm, please go RSVP immediately. Anyone is welcome to come hang out.

Oh and we’re picking up the drift-tees friday, shipping them out soon after. Sorry about the delay, but thanks to everyone that picked one up.

See ya tonight.

Round 2 is officially underway. Huge thanks to everyone that has been helping us out, especially everyone that has put a pin in our map. Woo! So excited to meet you all.

If you are new to our site, thanks for stopping by. We are designing our way across the country. Stopping in cities and helping out small business owners with design work for the price of gas/food just enough to get us to the next town. The economy sucks, but we want to spread some design love to whoever we can. Help us spread the word if you can. We are also going to be talking with a TON of designers, creatives, artists, developers, students, business owners, etc. Be sure to check us out, we’re going to spice things up this round.

We will be in Henderson, TX till the 4th and then we are heading to Dallas. If you are in the Dallas area you should RSVP for the tweet-up August 5th, 6PM. It is going to be magical.

We’ve made a few minor changes to the site, as always if you have any recommendations, let us know. You can check out all the interviews we’ve done and will do over at fuelnetwork.tv. There is now an “interviews” link up top, so check it out. The Fuel Brand Network is really helping us out and we are looking forward to producing some very cool content with them.

So here is the deal, we have a tentative schedule worked up. We still have a few gaps and a handful of flexible dates. If you are one of the people that stuck a pin in our map please check out when we will be in your area.

Sat Aug 1
START DATE

Tue Aug 4
Leave Henderson – Arrive Dallas

Fri Aug 7
leave Dallas – arrive Lubbock

Sun Aug 9
leave Lubbock – arrive Albuquerque

Tue Aug 11
leave albequerque – arrive Pheonix

Fri Aug 14
leave pheonix – arrive murrieta

Mon Aug 17
leave murrieta – arrive san fran

Wed Aug 19
leave san fran – arrive Portland

Fri Aug 21
leave portland – arrive seattle

Mon Aug 24
leave seattle – arrive hayden, Idaho

Thu Aug 27
leave hayden – arrive glacier national park

Fri Aug 28
leave national park – arrive Billings Montana

Sun Aug 30
leave billings – arrive bismarky mark

Tue Sep 1
leave bismarky marrk – arrive minneappolis

Fri Sep 4
leave minneappolis – arrive omaha

Mon Sep 7
leave omaha – arrive Kansas City

Thu Sep 10
leave Kansas City – arrive St. louis

Sun Sep 13
eave St. Louis – arrive Murray State Univ

Mon Sep 14
leave Murray – arrive morehead, ky

Thu Sep 17
leave morehead – arrive Cleveland

Sat Sep 19
leave cleavland – arrive toronto

Mon Sep 21
leave toronto – arrive rochester

Thu Sep 24
leave rochester – arrive pittsfield

Sun Sep 27
leave pittsfield – arrive new york

Tue Sep 29
leave new york – arrive Washington DC

Thu Oct 1
leave washington – charlotte

Sun Oct 4
leave charlotte – arrive atlanta

Wed Oct 7
leave atlanta – arrive savannah

Fri Oct 9
leave savannah – arrive st. petersburg

Mon Oct 12
eave st. petersburg – arrive panama city

Wed Oct 14
leave panama city – arrive new orleans

Fri Oct 16
home

Cheers!

Here’s the deal — we need your help. This next round is going to be pretty epic but we need help spreading the word. We are going to be traveling West(from texas) and then zig-zag our way back across the US. We will be dominating the entire US on this round. So, design community, spread the word. Tell every single one of your friends, we will take whatever help we can get. If you have a place for a us to sleep or a design project for us to work on, or you just want to talk design, let us know!

T-shirts! Leave comments if you want a shirt. We need a bit of seed money to start this next round and so we thought we could print some shirts. If you dig the shirt, leave a comment with your shirt-size and we’ll figure out how many to print. Then you can pay us 15 bucks and we’ll send you a sexy drift shirt. We really appreciate your support.

P.S. Martin is engaged! Woo!

We got to spend a few days/nights with Eric Downs. He was kind enough to let us sleep in his basement! We were lucky enough to grab an interview with him in his home studio before we left. You can check that interview out over at Fuel Network TV.

Eric Downs (via facebook)

Company : Downs Design
Age: 26
Location: Omaha Nebraska
Specialty: Branding, Print, Web
Degree: Graphic Communication Arts
Favorite Client: 91 Rounds
Favorite Font: Knockout
Least Favorite Font: Papyrus
Company Age: 1 Year
Relationship status: Single / hey ladies
Downs Design Blog