Love the logo! Bryony, Armin or both?

You silly kids, always coming up with the most fun little ways for me to distract myself even more than i already do...

Couldn't you have waited for the 100th anniversary...it would have been so much more, how do you say it? Centennial, symbolic, epic, probably blown out of proportion...

Looks like fun though!

Chingón! Gracias por esta información siempre tan interesante.

Thanks...

Jeff... I'm gonna have to hog the credit and take it all for myself. Bryony can attest to the (over)time spent fussing with it.

Keith... Yup, we thought about it, but it was still a month and a half away and we couldn't keep the site sitting there until then. Plus, this way, Vol. 1 is January, so it has a nice "beginning".

Vuarnet... Gracias.

Quipsologies is not about conversation, refrain from commenting on other contributions.

I'm surprised by the above statement - why wouldn't you want the ability to have comments? There could be some interesting entry points for discussions.

re-brands and quips were my favorite Speak Up sections - makes me sad to see them gone :-(

Michael, because it's not a discussion site. Speak Up and Brand New are for discussion; Quipsologies is for pointing out stuff, not discussing stuff. No real ulterior motives... Just a matter of objectives.

That's one lean, mean, linkin' machine, guys. Nice work.

(And rife for brand extensions: Quipipedia, Quipr, Quiptime... get registering those domains!)

Si,

they are not gone, we are giving them the space they deserve as they get stronger.

Great idea, guys! Cheers!

I always thought these would be nice as a column on SpeakUp's home page. Still, having their own site is nice as well.

Only complaint: They are all titled without any context if one reads it via RSS. I end up with a feed that looks like this:

Vol. 1 | No. 29
Vol. 1 | No. 28
Vol. 1 | No. 27
Vol. 1 | No. 26
Vol. 1 | No. 25
Vol. 1 | No. 24
Vol. 1 | No. 23
Vol. 1 | No. 22

May I suggest adding some more text to the titles...even if you hide it on the web page itself? This would be MUCH more useful:

Vol. 1 | No. 29 : Colbert on Cingular
Vol. 1 | No. 28 : Reutors photo policy change
Vol. 1 | No. 27 : AIGA NY Small Talks
etc...

Linking there hasn't grown on me yet.

That verbicization of quip still bothers me : ) "quipped by,"

Shahla, if you ain't quippin' there, there ain't no quippin' here either.

Darrel, that's a good point. On the authors side it would be an easy fix, on the community side, it might need more tweaking and maybe even a plug-in that captures a title for the comment (unless that's a regular feature of MT)... Sorry just thinking out loud. I'll look into it.

Personally I liked this more when it was an integrated part of Speak Up. It's much like Coudal's 'Fresh Signals' and made a valuable contribution to the Speak Up main page.

I wonder if UnderConsideration is spreading itself too thin? Do people really want to be going to 3 separate sites instead of just 1? I have been visiting the sites far less as they seem to have become less interested in really making a positive change in the way we think about our profession and instead going for the 'big brand' blog approach—spinning off sites for the sake of becoming the online design empire regardless of content or cohesion.

Next thing you know we will have:
http://www.underconsideration.com/wordit

I just don't really see the content of Speak Up becoming so focused or strong as to need these spin offs. But I would absolutely love to be proven wrong if getting Brand New and Quipsologies off the main page can indeed improve focus.

Steven, thanks for the comments, which never fall on deaf ears. And a thoughtful comment deserves a nice response...

Brand New was a very needed spin-off... Speak Up was starting to get the fame of being nothing but logo bashing and much of the other content just suffered from the stigma of this, so moving these discussions into a place where it's all unashamedly : ) about logo bashing seemed the way to go. This also has allowed us to cover many more and much broader redesigns; in three months we have covered 26 identities, of which we would have probably covered 4 or 5 here on Speak Up. Also, overall, on Speak Up we were starting to do more considered articles on other topics so whenever we presented a logo with little backstory (because, trust us, sometimes there is none) we would get complaints, so having Brand New as a more relaxed environment allows us to present identities with less pressure.

Then Quipsologies... We thought a lot about having it as a sidebar like Coudal or Design Observer but a) they were already doing it and b) we would use it as a crutch for content-filler while we write main posts and we didn't want to fall into that routine. Also, in the one week that we've been live, we have featured almost 75 quips, almost five times what we usually do, and half of those 75 are from the community. I for one am loving these incredible contributions.

This brings us to Speak Up... moving logo discussions and quips out of the picture certainly lessens the output and the one-post-a-week schedule is as scary for me as it may be a turn-off to some of our readers. With so much writing on design now online and with so many people doing it we need to re-find our voice and figure out the best way to deliver it. Removing two things that are crowd-pleasers will force us to get out of our comfort zone and mold Speak Up in its 5th year.

So, in due time, I think we'll be able to – amicably! – prove you wrong.

And, for the time being, there are absolutely no plans to spin-off Word It.

Armin,

Thanks for the response—I hope I didn't come off sounding rude. I can totally understand the reasons you and Bryony have for moving UnderConsideration in this direction.

I do feel there was a time when concentrated logo 'smackdowns' cheapened the mission of SpeakUp (and continues to plague the design profession—but that's a soapbox for someone else to climb on). Perhaps it is still in a 'recovery' phase—trying to become what you want it to be. But I think that is something you owe to your readers (and yourselves) to get out in the open. Have a post discussing where SpeakUp has been, where it is going, and if your mission has changed since the beginning.

I have been reading the blog since the very early days and I have to admit I have been visiting less in the past year. I sincerely hope that SpeakUp can once again find it's voice and really stimulate the design community. You certainly have a loyal readership and are poised to make a substantial contribution to the profession. I for one look forward to the day when I am again anxious to see what is being said on these pages.

Again I hope you decide to share your short and long terms plans of SpeakUp. I am sure everyone would love to hear where things are going and you may very well be inspired by the resulting feedback.

All the best to the both of you.

Steven.

Steven, I disagree with you on one point alone —as a place for any of the Speak-up authors' fruits-of-browsing labor, the volumes of links didn't really fit with the rest of the articles. And commenting on them was not a real 'thread.' So the parallel format for their audience to participate is very nice. Where I would've preferred it, is as a 'we quip,you quip' portal (like wordit) integrated within UnderConsideration's famous Speakup brand, with it's own tiny 'quippin' counter. You are right that it does thin out the 'SpeakUp' brand. It should still be nested within the same folder so-to-speak, also because those who quip on the left hand side are authors who's bios you access through SpeakUp.
Armin and Bryony have a great 'history of...' going at UnderConsideration, and in my book they are a graphic design 'power couple,' who can take constructive criticism.

Nice dialogue.

It should still be nested within the same folder so-to-speak, also because those who quip on the left hand side are authors who's bios you access through SpeakUp.

I meant 'whose bios you access through SpeakUp.'

Besides, nothing beats that clean white background.