Clubbin'.

Yesterday afternoon my colleagues and I went on a sort of tour of local design departments. I wore an annoyingly loud tie. A swatch that I simulated in Illustrator is here:


Our tour started at Focus on the Family. I'd never been in there before, despite some weird thing where lots of people who come out here just have to see it. As I was walking in the front hallway, or "Main Street," I couldn't help but think to myself that there are thousands of people in this country who couldn't think of a more evil place than where I was treading. Kinda made me feel like a hard a**. We had lunch in one of their three cafeterias. I was surprised at how awesome a hamburger they can throw together. Honestly, if you have the time and the fortitude, have lunch at Focus someday. Our host, Ray, kept referring to Dobson as "the Doc." I found that quaint. Apparently the Doc is a Mac guy. Who knew? Focus's design department is pretty freakin' awesome, honestly. They do good work. They have a lot of space. They have a lot of very creative people. They have several IT guys who devote themselves to Macs. I'll admit, I coveted. I still maintain that I wouldn't want to work there though. Despite all the perks, I couldn't devote myself to a company that I was largely fundamentally opposed to. Shame.

Our second stop was CMA (Christian and Missionary Alliance). They also have a nice setup, especially their project management system. I sure hope we can come up with a system that works and that people will buy into. We keep hearing that the larger an organization is, the more problems can arise if you don't have a good system in place. And we just merged, so... You know who you are.

Our last stop was downtown at TKA. They were your typical small-scale ad agency. It was about what I expected, and of course they had all the legs up on our little rinky-dink non-profit design department.

So after seeing these places, I feel a little worse about myself as a designer. I really want to start pushing myself again, being better by the end of the day than I am now. I'd also like to start bringing the Christian designers in this town and across the country together as a community more. I've registered a blog for just this purpose but I haven't put anything together just yet. We'll see.

Enjoy your Thursday and remember: National Get Your Girlfriend Pregnant Day is only two weeks away. So you know.