I’m lucky enough to have some very creative friends. I thought I’d share a few things we’ve worked on together.

Music

En Route to Traverse City

I travel a lot for work, and have started toting my musical apparatus with me. This is an idea laid out in a hotel in Traverse City, Michigan.

Immediately after recording this, I walked outside and watched an entire family flop over their canoe in the lake, scream at each other, and then burst into laughter. It was entirely too cold that day to be canoeing.

Liquid Lunch Theme Song

Almost a month ago my buddy and colleague Matt Davis gave birth to the weekly BlogTalkRadio show “Liquid Lunch.”

This little intro piece is musical collaboration with my brother Drew (you’ll recognize the beat from “Frost/Dixon” just below). Everything you hear is either a mouth or a cup of water.

Frost/Dixon

This is a musical collaboration with my brother Drew we began over Thanksgiving. The lyrics are from the Robert Frost poem “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things.” Hence, the bad joke for a title.

I hope we finish it over the Christmas holiday.

Videos

Below are a few videos I worked on with Daniel Miller, Carter Martin, and Charlie Trotter for CTCE’s brand new (massive) in-branch TV screens. Some of you have seen a couple of these on Twitter.

Doodles

And just for fun, here are a couple of doodles snapped with my iPhone.

There’s a Kurt Vonnegut short story about an alien named Zog who visits the planet Earth. He comes with the noblest cause: to explain how war could be prevented and cancer could be cured. His home planet is Margo, where everyone communicates through farts and tap dancing.

Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap dancing, warning the people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained Zog with a golf club.

(from Breakfast of Champions)

What a nice picture of the relationship between credit unions and young people. Both need to reach each other, badly, but both tend to completely miss each other. And then someone gets clubbed and a house burns down.

Gen Y needs help.

Here are some snapshots of the state of the union (pulled from the Filene report “Reaching Generation Debt“):

• By 2004, people under the age of 25 were the fastest-growing age group in bankruptcy declarations ¹
• Also in 2004 (the latest year with national data) 25 - 34 year olds with credit card debt used an average 25% of their income to pay off debt, and 45% of them used credit cards for day-today-living like rent and groceries. ¹
• As if we need another crisis: “Analysts say rising defaults, coupled with federal subsidy cuts, are beginning to strain the student loan industry…the question is whether a similar crisis [to the mortgage crisis] is on the horizon for student loan borrowers.” ²
• More than half of Gen Yers aren’t saving for retirement because they’re busy with other financial obligations…like paying down their massive debt. ³
• Financial products are more complicated - 401(k)s, IRAs, student loans, and credit cards are all relatively new - and financial literacy is as dead as a doornail.

I could go on, but you get the picture. The situation is dire. Because credit unions’ actions are driven by people and social responsibility, and not lining the pockets of stockholders, they are the group to get us out of this mess.

All growns up (too growns up).

Because credit unions and their members are dying (sadly, I mean that literally). Here are some bits that most CU industry folks have heard before:

• The average age of a credit union member? 47 years old. The average age of a board member? 52.
• Prime borrowing years are 25 - 42. And as the older members continue to age, their borrowing needs dwindle and they want a higher yield on investments.
• I don’t know the stat offhand, but I do know that credit unions are merging and shutting down like crazy. Maybe one of you can help me with that in the comments.
• Only 6% of people ages 19 - 24 have said they’d use a credit union for their next financial product. ⁴

To quote Cornerstone’s Steve Williams:

The point is, we’ve got to replace the old customers that we lose – God bless ’em – with new, younger ones.

Again: The situation is dire.

What can we do about it?

Let’s get our hands dirty.

I’m completely floored to announce that I’ve partnered with the Filene Research Institute for the next year and a half to lead their Young Adult Implementation project. The project picks up where Ben Rogers and the 30 Under 30 (not a bad band name) left off - I’ll work with credit unions to put Filene’s Gen Y products and strategies into action.

I’ll be working alongside some of the smartest people in the industry helping to solve the problems that get my belly all firey. It’ll be hard work, it’ll be exciting, and together we’ll make people’s lives better.

Let’s do this. Who’s in?

Tomorrow morning, earlier than anyone in the world should have to be up, I’m hitting the road for a couple of weeks to speak at a few events and spend some time with family. I realized today during a cold-pizza lunch that I still hadn’t designed business cards for myself…and that I probably should for this trip.

So after spending some time tossing around ideas, I went to Kinko’s (yup, I took the ghetto printing route), and came back with these:

What do you think?

If we meet and I hand you a card, I hope you’ll use it to goof off (if only for a little bit). I only had one hundred printed. When these run out I’ll redesign and print some “real” cards. But for what they are, I’m pretty happy with the result.

And now I need to go pack.

Last night (bleeding into early this morning) I made some big fat changes to my site. What do you think?

I’m really excited about the new banner, because it gives me a legitimate excuse to doodle now. Hopefully I’ll be switching out new sketches every few weeks or so.

After many requests, I’ve finally added a portfolio (albeit a miniature one) directly to the site. Click it! Fun things happen.

As the title mentions, this new design is a first step. Over the long haul, as time allows, I’ll jazz up the site’s design below the navigation to be just as organic and hand-drawn as the banner. Right now I feel like there’s a slight disconnect. But I’d rather launch now than wait until it’s perfect. It’ll never be perfect, you know.

There’s also lots of content to beef up - including adding more design and commentary to the little portfolio on the right.

My goals with the site are twofold:

1. To be a place for good conversation, and
2. To showcase my design business. Since leaving Trabian in April to go independent, I’ve relied on handshakes, cups of coffee, and pints of beer to be my business cards and marketing. It’s worked well enough so far - I’ve been able to eat at least one whole packet of Ramen a day - but this will help.

Speaking of that, I have a couple of posts in the cannon about kicking off a small business. It’s been a ride. I have a lot of questions for some of you.

So that’s that. As always, I covet your feedback and comments.

So I lied. I moved my portfolio from Coroflot over to Carbonmade. Check it out here:

» Design by Brent Dixon

Why’d I switch? Because Carbonmade…

• …is a much simpler presentation. In viewing designs, context is important. Coroflot’s busy-ness distracted from the actual design work. My Carbonmade portfolio is unbranded and the only strong design elements are found in the work.
• …is faster. Coroflot kept locking up and taking for-doggone-ever to load my images. Because of my self-diagnosed A.D.D, this stressed me out.
• …allows you to install Google Analytics on your portfolio. Coroflot had some built in stat tools, but nothing like Google Analytics. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, Carbonmade just opened themselves up to an awesome tool that already existed. Good call.

What do I miss?

• Coroflot’s navigation is better. It’s much easier to hop from section to section (Web vs. Print, etc) in Coroflot’s interface.
•  I wish Carbonmade had some heirarchy built into the blurbs associated with each design. As in “Title” and “Description,” that’s it. Right now all of my text is slapped in one place, and can’t be formatted. It’s not very scannable, and just looks messy.
• Coroflot lets you customize icons for each design, and that was nice.

There’s a list of several more design portfolio hosts on Listible.com.

I’ve been slowly but surely adding some samples of my design and art direction work to my online portfolio.

One internal debate I tossed around was whether to develop a custom portfolio design or use an existing tool. In the name of expediency (big word! two points!) I decided to host my portfolio with Coroflot. It’s a free tool, and if you’re job hunting also hooks you up with job listings and a place to add your resume. The interface is very simple to use. So far I’ve been happy with the decision.

They also let you create a badge, which I sadly haven’t gotten to work in Wordpress. But the badge would look like this:

Hope you dig the work. I’ll be adding more and more pieces as time allows.