Confessions of a Graphic Designer

L-R: Chris Pirillo ) PIRILLO top player; Empire Avenue CEO Duleepa Wijayawardhana (e)DUPS Empire Avenue (EAv) is a social stock market simulation game that has attracted players all over the world. Thanks to Chris Pirillo's EAv Seattle shareholders meetup last week, I had a chance to talk with Duleepa Wijayawardhana, also known as (e)DUPS , the real-life CEO of Empire Avenue . Dups has to be one of the nicest guys around, and I was really knocked out by his engaging personality and wonderful smile. He graciously agreed to this Q&A, during which I learned he is not just brilliant, but he's also charming and fun. Enjoy! When you and your colleagues originally conceived of the idea, what were you doing? I mean, were you sitting around having drinks somewhere and the notion emerged? What was the inspiration? And was it meant to be strictly a game, or did you have other purposes in mind? The founders of Empire Avenue are Niall Brown, Dr. Michael Mannion and m...

Last night I learned a friend's son was in a car accident and is in critical condition. After a soul-replenishing meal with the Sansei Lunch Club , my BFF Paula wanted to wait until after dinner to tell me the news. But before she could say a word, I asked if she knew Alexander, son of mutual friends, had just graduated from college last week and that his parents had flown to California to attend the ceremony? She looked at me and said, "Terri, he's been in a bad accident. They flew to California this morning." When I got home I asked my youngest son, Charley, if he knew about it. Alexander's dad usually drives their carpool to Google. A sad expression. Yes he knew. It made sense to me now. Charley had driven to work yesterday but I didn't know why. Trying to make sense of something so senseless, Alexander reeled through my mind as I tried to fall asleep last night. He was my first thought when I awoke. A bright young man at the beginning of...

Surviving Social Media Adolescence Illustration © Mits Katayama Popular kids, poseurs, drama queens, bullies, geeks and weirdos—all the the archetypes we came to love or loathe in junior high school—can be found on Twitter Although you'll find most people fit into the "normal" category, in recent months several occurrences took some of the shine off my otherwise happy Twitter experience: • A troll attacked me on the open time line. • Someone tried to undermine several online friendships. • I was accosted because I disagreed with an opinion. • A person unfollowed me because I didn't divulge a secret. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T KNOW, a troll is someone who gets their kicks by issuing inflammatory comments with the intent to provoke. Trolls are cowards and bullies.  If you've not experienced one firsthand, congratulations. When it happened to me, it reminded me of how I felt when I was in a car accident—shaken and freaked out. Except ...

Note: hyperlinks in red I think of Twitter as a cocktail party, and FaceBook as dinner party. Both can be fun, but they can also be noisy and full of drunk people. LinkedIn is a place where business happens. I’ve been on LinkedIn for four years. LinkedIn is a social network that allows you to make connections with trusted contacts and essentially create a personal Rolodex in the cloud. But it's much more than that. In addition to the convenience of finding your important business connections in one place, it offers a host of useful resources for job seekers, sales people who are prospecting, and recruiters who are looking for qualified people to fill jobs. There are too many benefits to enumerate, but it’s not just a social network—it is a database of people and companies that can be searched geographically—and most of what it offers is freely available. In 2006 my real-life best friend and fellow graphic designer started a job at PopCap , and she invited me to j...

My BFF Paula Wong and BTF Krystyn Chong. Photo by The Milkie Studio I've lived in Seattle most of my life and have friendships that span decades. My BFF Paula Wong and I are both sansei — third generation Japanese-Americans. We went to some of the same schools and through different paths we became graphic designers. Knowing each other for 45 years, we've watched our kids grow from infancy to adults. Professionally, we’ve gone from lead type, phototype and Exacto knives, to falling in love with our first Macs more than 20 years ago. In fact, I have Paula to thank for my tech addiction! When she worked for Aldus, Paula gave me a much-needed nudge to switch from traditional to digital design. Having shared history, knowing each another's families, being there to experience and support major life events means we share a friendship with great depth and meaning — a rare gift in an era where life moves so quickly that often all we can do is skim the surface. I th...

Written 5 August 2010 (Note hyperlinks in orange) Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk with entrepreneur Ben Huh , of I Can Has Cheezburger , Fail Blog and other memes. When I asked him about his ambitions, he responded without hesitation: “I want to lead a life worth living.” And since that day, his comment has continued to resonate in my mind. Recently our oldest son, Andrew, was home from Germany to spend time with us before his one-year deployment to Afghanistan begins next month. It was a joy for all of us to be together. Whenever he’s home, we make a pilgrimage to Hood River, Oregon , the breathtakingly beautiful place where my paternal grandparents settled after they immigrated from Japan in the early 1900s. As a teenager, Andrew spent summers working in the orchards during the cherry harvest. He is the only fourth-generation ( yonsei ) kid in the family to do so. Beside learning the ways of a new country, my grandparents' early days were physically tough—...

Ben Huh, CEO, Cheezburger Network I was going to write about some of the many innovative companies in Seattle, but when a friend helped me set up an interview with Ben Huh (@BenHuh) fearless leader of I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC) and other memes, my plans changed. So this piece is all about Ben Huh, the big cheese of a company that makes the world laugh. Questions are in bold. 23 July 2010 — Cheezburger Network, Seattle, WA Everyone has already written everything imaginable about you and ICHC. So I'd like to show you a Dewar's profile and a Playboy bunny interview from 1983. These are the inspirations for how I want to talk with you. I thought this would be more fun. So, is that OK? Fantastic. Dewar's Ad: Community Live Journal ; Playmate interview, Sept. 1983 Playboy So, basically, you’ll be like the Playboy playmate of the month. [laughs] First question—how do you pronounce your name? It’s “Huh.” Some pronounce it "Hugh," but it’s “H...

OK. When I got the invitation, it was a bit like, “WHY?” But on the ticket I was identified as a “Super Cool Person,” so how could I resist attending the Parnassus Group ’s Social Developer Meetup? And even though one of my specialties is getting lost on the east side of the "pond" (Lake Washington), somehow I got there in spite of the dead battery in my GPS! When finally I’d arrived, I looked around at the group assembled and wondered— what is this confab all about? Jason Preston (@jason_preston) VP of Strategy and Product Development at the Parnassus Group In describing it, Jason Preston (@jason_preston) VP of Strategy and Product Development at the Parnassus Group says, “Ever since we started putting together Twitter Conferences in March 2009, we at Parnassus have thought the next wave of digital innovation will be built by ordinary geeks on top of the rich and emerging foundation of social data platforms. All kinds of cool things are being built by lo...

I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about a new software release as I am about the new Adobe Creative Suite (CS5). Two years ago a friend, one of the software engineers, told me they were working on some very cool things for this release. What an understatement! The new features are unbelievably awesome, and seeing what is now possible made me feel as though my head would explode. The past two days I’ve been on the Adobe campus, learning about the main components in CS5, and today, specific presentations on InDesign. Why the focus on InDesign? Tuesday was the regularly scheduled bi-monthly InDesign Users Group (IDUG) meeting, which coincidentally took place the night before the “InDesignSecrets Print and ePublishing Conference” being held here in Seattle May 12-14. (For a complete list of speakers,) see: Speakers So there were a bunch of heavy hitters in town, and we were lucky to have a few of them share some cool things with us. (Note, there are usually maybe 100 peopl...

I’ll never cease to be blown away meeting tweeps in real life. Thanks to @kirste (Kirsten Mitchell), who told me about the #SM201 conference, I met a ton of people at the tweetup I would otherwise not know—including some of the conference’s top-flight speakers. It was especially fun to meet dynamic afternoon keynote speaker, Chicagoan @williger (Darren Williger), who gave a fascinating, fun and informative presentation spanning the days of bulletin boards (the first engaging social media platform) to the present. He also shared some cool information about tools available that can aggregate all of the social media streams we populate. Also great to connect with were morning presenter @Uschles (Udi Schlessinger), who talked about intelligent tool building; @mikewhitmore (Mike Whitmore) of Fresh Consulting; and afternoon panelist @digitalkvan (Nadia Aly) of Microsoft. Can I just say all of them were just terrific, not to mention friendly and nice? The lounge at the Belcarra Apartme...

OK, I guess I was nervous about attending my first large-scale gathering of tweeps. It wasn't helped by the fact that the same day I had to wake up at 5 AM to arrive in Kirkland to shoot a CEO for an annual report. Driving on the east side is anxiety-provoking enough, but the thought of getting to meet—in real life—people from Twitter, had me feeling like a 16-year-old girl waiting for a new boyfriend to pick her up for a date! The TweetHouse #140 Conference (#140tc) started at 8 AM, and I missed the keynote speech by Mashable's @BenParr, plus a few morning sessions. When I arrived I called my Twitter bud and Huffington Post blogger, @2morrowknight, to let him know I was there, but my call rolled over to his voice mail. So I went to the registration table where @sbroback (Steve Broback) and Kim Larsen introduced themselves to me, and I decided to grab a cup of coffee before venturing into the auditorium. The place was packed. The room was dark. There were laptop...

This interview is part of a larger article to appear in Munster Style, a magazine devoted to Kustom Kulture and vintage rock. Paint a picture of what it was like and what that experience was like for you. Starting in about the spring of 1966, they [Sandy Gillespie and Ron Gardner of The Wailers] asked me if I wanted to go on the road early part of the summer and I said yes. At that time the band had three vehicles. They had a new Ford station wagon that had "Wailers" painted all over the side of it. They had an Oldsmobile — it wasn't a limousine, but it was a great big sedan, and they had an Econoline [van] that also has "Wailers" painted on it. So the Econoline had the equipment in it, the wagon sometimes had the band and more equipment in it, and the Oldsmobile had the band in it. I usually was driving the wagon or the Econoline. Anytime I could be in their car and be seen in it, I would jump on it. One time I drove to Owens Beach, Point Defi...