WSDIA is a very talented group of people that take design seriously. On a recent trip to New York I was introduced to a small, but very talented firm: WSDIA. According to their website: "Our name WeShouldDoItAll (WSDIA) is simply a goal. Designers and all other professionals alike should not feel constrained to some singular expertise. To survive our own creative game, it is imperative to know that there is not one absolute solution to a given problem. To immerse oneself within different avenues of creative production and mediums forces you to consider the otherwise unconsidered. It's that method of working that’s exciting and motivating to look forward to the next transition."

The company that used to be called AOL, and was recently spun off from Time Warner, is shrinking in size in order to survive...and now its name and logo are shrinking as well. Perhaps as a reflection of its intention to cut about 2,500 jobs, AOL has changed the UC treatment of the acronym to one that includes an upper case "A" and lower case "ol". And, in an attempt to communicate that the company is in the internet space, it is adding a "." after its moniker. "AOL" is now "Aol."

On Wednesday night I attended an event at the Thomson Reuters center in NY featuring Roger Martin, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto; Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO; and Will Setliff, VP of Strategy, Insights and Innovation at Target. The three panelists were joined by Bruce Nussbaum, from BusinessWeek – who helped moderate the conversation, often making it more interesting through humor and memorable anecdotes.

That is big news! We're very excited about sharing this information with our clients and partners. We've been working on this merger for a while. We wanted to make sure that it would benefit our clients, and we're certain that it will. In fact, the combination of the strengths of Neutron and those of Liquid definitely yields more than the sum of its parts.

Austin Howe is a writer that was referred to me by Dave Williams, Liquid's Creative Director in Portland. We were pitching a job for Microsoft, and we needed a writer on the team. Dave suggested Austin, and also told me about Austin's recent book, "Designers don't read"...which I bought and started reading immediately.