This video is a few months old and most of you have probably already seen it, but I came across it again this morning and it has me all fired up to travel. Having two young boys limits our opportunities at this stage of life, but there’s still plenty we have yet to explore nearby in Austin and the Texas hill country. Plus, we still have many years ahead of us and plans and dreams for showing our boys the world. 

Another amazing video, this one done using stop-motion techniques and Google Street View. The complexities of managing all of the moving pieces for stop-motion video boggles my mind, but then you pair it with a great little story, lighting, and camera angles and I’m beyond impressed. Very very well done Tom Jenkins! 

This is mind blowing. Miguel Endara draws a portrait of his dad with 3.2 million dots. About halfway in I thought the piece looked pretty good, but it wasn’t until the end that I truly amazed at how photo-realistic it looked from a distance.  

Yours Truly on The Great Discontent I am honored and humbled to joint the ranks of interviewees on The Great Discontent, which is quickly climbing the charts as one of the premiere sites to visit among the design community. Ryan and Tina Essmaker made me feel at home during the interview and I had a blast watching the design come together.  Speaking of design, I cannot say enough nice things about the design of TGD. I love how it focuses solely on the content, the asides and callouts are handled with care, and the large hero shot at the top of each interview always beckons me in. So inspiring!
Pop-upView Separately

Yours Truly on The Great Discontent

I am honored and humbled to joint the ranks of interviewees on The Great Discontent, which is quickly climbing the charts as one of the premiere sites to visit among the design community. Ryan and Tina Essmaker made me feel at home during the interview and I had a blast watching the design come together. 

Speaking of design, I cannot say enough nice things about the design of TGD. I love how it focuses solely on the content, the asides and callouts are handled with care, and the large hero shot at the top of each interview always beckons me in. So inspiring!

Satchel & Sage on Etsy My good friend Gerren Lamson and his wife Morgana have been working hard on crafting some beautiful Christmas and holiday-themed items for their Etsy store. These cards are gorgeous and I also love these gift tags and the prints from their Artifact Series. They continue to produce top-notch products and will have many on show and for purchase at West Elm on December 1st from 6pm to close. Read Gerren’s post for more info. I love seeing my friends put their amazing talents to work and I hope they sell every single item! :)
Pop-upView Separately

Satchel & Sage on Etsy

My good friend Gerren Lamson and his wife Morgana have been working hard on crafting some beautiful Christmas and holiday-themed items for their Etsy store. These cards are gorgeous and I also love these gift tags and the prints from their Artifact Series. They continue to produce top-notch products and will have many on show and for purchase at West Elm on December 1st from 6pm to close. Read Gerren’s post for more info.

I love seeing my friends put their amazing talents to work and I hope they sell every single item! :)

I want to go back to NYC. (via Gimmebar)
Pop-upView Separately

I want to go back to NYC. (via Gimmebar)

bybrettjohnson:

One of the coolest things I’ve seen.

This video has been making the rounds recently and I finally stopped to watch it. It’s absolutely breathtaking!

Everyday Photos by Kristian Hjelle

I’m loving this photo blog by Interactive and Graphic Designer Kristian Hjelle. Not only are the photos excellent, but the presentation is spot on. Photographs deserve to be viewed like this. While you’re at it, you should check out my friend Naz Hamid’s photo blog, which follows a similar format and is equally impressive!

Thanks to Tim Van Damme for the heads-up on Kristian’s site.

This morning I posted the following tweet: @philcoffman Friends: I am beyond excited to tell you that I’ve stepped out into the great entrepreneurial adventure: elementcreative.com  /cc @element I’ve been waiting patiently to send that tweet for over 2 months. It was early September when Element first took root. I was working at Springbox, actually in the middle of the client meeting, when I got the email. It was from Dan Isaacs, one of the co-founders of Springbox who had left the company the previous summer, and in it he mentioned that he wanted to grab a drink and chat about an “opportunity”. A couple beers and a few emails later I had agreed to leave Springbox to partner with him on a new, yet-to-be-named venture. The decision was tough, yet I’ve never looked back. My time at Springbox was fantastic. I learned so much and was overseeing a solid team of people, yet I’ve always had the idea of venturing out on my own. I had the support of my friends and family, I just didn’t know when the right time would be. When Dan’s email hit my inbox and we began discussing what this company could be and do it became clear that this was the next step for me. My final weeks at Springbox were bittersweet to say the least. I’m not one to jump around from job to job, so I was leaving friends, the culture, and client relationships I had built over the years. Thankfully Austin is really a small town in a lot of ways and I’m only a few blocks from grabbing lunch or coffee with the Springbox team. So what is Element? Glad you asked. :) We are a digital studio specializing in web design, mobile application development, and marketing strategies & campaigns. Our plans are to do what we do best, which is take care of client needs, guide them through the ever-evolving interactive landscape, and grow with them. I’m excited about leading the charge creatively, not only with our executions but also with building a great culture internally.  Here’s what you can expect to see from us over the coming weeks. We’re currently at work on a more detailed website which we plan to launch soon. We’re also working on a few job postings which we will list soon too. I’m busy wrapping up our branding work and can’t wait to show you especially what we have planned for our business cards. Follow me on Dribbble and on Instagram to see sneak peeks. :) Most importantly we’re open for business. If you have a project you’d like to talk to us about, send me an email. Also you can follow along with Element on Twitter and Facebook for all the latest news. So now hopefully you understand why I made the switch to a more manageable publishing platform yesterday with my personal site. I’m heads-down on Element (and Method & Craft), but don’t want to neglect my personal site. It’s my hope that Tumblr will help me be more efficient in my updates and remove distractions so I can focus on publishing content that makes your time investment worth it. I might clean things up here over time, port some of my previous design elements over, etc. We’ll see. Lastly, thank you ALL for the kind words, encouraging comments, and well-wishes on Twitter, Facebook, and email about this new change. I’m ecstatic about where I’m at professionally. Let’s do this!
Pop-upView Separately

This morning I posted the following tweet:

@philcoffman Friends: I am beyond excited to tell you that I’ve stepped out into the great entrepreneurial adventure: elementcreative.com  /cc @element

I’ve been waiting patiently to send that tweet for over 2 months. It was early September when Element first took root. I was working at Springbox, actually in the middle of the client meeting, when I got the email. It was from Dan Isaacs, one of the co-founders of Springbox who had left the company the previous summer, and in it he mentioned that he wanted to grab a drink and chat about an “opportunity”. A couple beers and a few emails later I had agreed to leave Springbox to partner with him on a new, yet-to-be-named venture.

The decision was tough, yet I’ve never looked back. My time at Springbox was fantastic. I learned so much and was overseeing a solid team of people, yet I’ve always had the idea of venturing out on my own. I had the support of my friends and family, I just didn’t know when the right time would be. When Dan’s email hit my inbox and we began discussing what this company could be and do it became clear that this was the next step for me. My final weeks at Springbox were bittersweet to say the least. I’m not one to jump around from job to job, so I was leaving friends, the culture, and client relationships I had built over the years. Thankfully Austin is really a small town in a lot of ways and I’m only a few blocks from grabbing lunch or coffee with the Springbox team.

So what is Element? Glad you asked. :) We are a digital studio specializing in web design, mobile application development, and marketing strategies & campaigns. Our plans are to do what we do best, which is take care of client needs, guide them through the ever-evolving interactive landscape, and grow with them. I’m excited about leading the charge creatively, not only with our executions but also with building a great culture internally. 

Here’s what you can expect to see from us over the coming weeks. We’re currently at work on a more detailed website which we plan to launch soon. We’re also working on a few job postings which we will list soon too. I’m busy wrapping up our branding work and can’t wait to show you especially what we have planned for our business cards. Follow me on Dribbble and on Instagram to see sneak peeks. :)

Most importantly we’re open for business. If you have a project you’d like to talk to us about, send me an email. Also you can follow along with Element on Twitter and Facebook for all the latest news.

So now hopefully you understand why I made the switch to a more manageable publishing platform yesterday with my personal site. I’m heads-down on Element (and Method & Craft), but don’t want to neglect my personal site. It’s my hope that Tumblr will help me be more efficient in my updates and remove distractions so I can focus on publishing content that makes your time investment worth it. I might clean things up here over time, port some of my previous design elements over, etc. We’ll see.

Lastly, thank you ALL for the kind words, encouraging comments, and well-wishes on Twitter, Facebook, and email about this new change. I’m ecstatic about where I’m at professionally. Let’s do this!

Simplifying

Yep. The redesign that I spent 74 days building has been replaced with a basic Tumblr theme. Why? Because the system I had built and designed for was something far too cumbersome to manage given my current life stage. When creating work for clients it’s our job to not only build something usable, functional, stable, and delightful, but also manageable. I failed to fulfill that last requirement for myself.

So what exactly is my current stage of life and why did it prompt me to downsize my digital digs? Part of it has to do with an overall mission to simplify my life in general. I have a wife, two kids, friends, family, and countless other responsibilities and the brainpower it took to write custom posts, hand-coded HTML, figure out how it’s all going to fit into a responsive design, etc etc was giving me a headache and prohibiting progress.

The other part has to do with a change I made professionally two weeks ago. Some of you know the news, some of you don’t. But all of that will change tomorrow. 

So for now, hang tight, and we’ll chat again soon.