Scale:

Eat Me Daily admires Mucca Design's "cheeky" (or super duper smart) packaging for Brooklyn Fare. Via @gruber

Style:

Slate Magazine joins the Typekit love fest. "Down with Verdana!" transcends "type designers and font fanciers".

Respond:

The discussion continues on City of Portland Web "design contest". McIsaac to Mayor's Communications Director.

Deliberate:

Kudos to Design Victoria's "Why Design?" series. Fifty well-considered responses from influential designers.

Embrace:

Now this is branding. The cutest damned story ever about two crazy kids and a closet full of Post-Its. @srfstn

Tell:

Eye Blog's Mike Radcliffe makes the case; brand agencies can teach designers a thing or two about storytelling.

Dear Roy:

Many thanks for your note. I do appreciate hearing directly from Mayor Adams' office about this; I supported Sam as a councilman and as a mayoral candidate; moreover, I continue to support him as mayor, this little hiccup aside.

I have of course reviewed the contest rules and FAQ, and as a fellow who has earned his bread as a brand and Web development practitioner for over a decade, I must tell you in all candor that the City's solution to the problem of redeveloping PortlandOnline is troublesome at best.

Breaking the process of developing an important (and as of now, inadequate) Web entity such as PortlandOnline into four discrete RFPs to be serviced by four discrete suppliers -- even if the user interface design was not additionally parted out to a contest -- reveals the cumbersome nature of the City's purchasing process in relation to creative (for the purposes of this note, I'll use "creative" to mean the generative side of Web development, which includes but is not limited to accessibility, information architecture, CMS consulting, messaging and user interface design).

The City, of course, tries to be as objective as it can in determining suppliers, grading proposals on an ostensibly objective numerical scale with respect to many laudable aspects of doing business.

But creative is not objective. It is not a manufacturing or simple procurement process. And parting it out like the City has done in this case, with the "fun" or "artistic" part tossed off to an open contest with no compensation, shows that the City has no earthly idea how important an integrated approach to delivering information to its citizens is.

Crowdsourcing may be superficially democratic. But it is bad business. Asking a developer (or layman) to come up with a good or even workable solution based upon a thin brief, a FAQ and no contact with research or the parties involved in the project is naïve. You'll get something that looks like a Web site, certainly. You may even get something looks better than what you have. But you won't have a solution to your problem.

User interface is among the last steps in a successful Web development project, not the first. How the site looks should be a function of how it works. And right now, PortlandOnline doesn't work very well. Oh, you can pay your water bill, and now you can pay your parking tickets and that's fine. But doing it is a pain. Finding the proper phone number to call the police takes ten minutes of clicking around. The URL structure is inaccessible and contains ten-year-old scripting cruft.

How do you solve the problem? By taking it seriously. By assembling a team of people who trust one another, and who can work hand-in-glove with one another over the long process of development. For example, accessibility is also a UI problem. Social media is also an architecture problem. All of this has to happen under the rubric of message, for which I notice you are not offering an RFP.

PortlandOnline doesn't serve the citizenry, and wouldn't even if it looked nicer. I don't mean to tell you your business, and I know that the City's purchasing process and this contest are meant to be exercises in democracy, but the mediocrity of the result will not serve the public and will devalue your work as elected officials.

The private sector doesn't crowdsource or balkanize RFPs like this for a reason: the results don't tend to be good. It's hard enough to get a workable result with a coherent, disciplined team. I would suspect that if the City went about redeveloping PortlandOnline without the contest and the clumsy proposal process and presented the public with a simple, well-considered, well-architected site, the public wouldn't notice the absence of this kind of direct-democracy kabuki at all. And I don't think it would care.

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the value (or lack thereof) that I perceive Mayor Adams' office places on creative. That's because I'm more interested in results. If Mayor Adams doesn't see the true economic (never mind cultural) value of the Portland's creative community, well, then: he's just another politician. John McCain, for example, holds a similar opinion. That also doesn't matter to me so much; I can make a living without dealing with such people.

But as a citizen, I am frankly embarrassed and frustrated by PortlandOnline. And I don't see that the City is taking serious steps to address it.

Apologies for the length of this note; one good outcome of this exercise has been to exercise our community a bit. I'm going to copy my business partner, Eric Hillerns, on this. As vice-president of the local chapter of AIGA (our professional organization), he has taken a leadership role in opening this issue to a broader audience. I hope that we can include the Mayor's office in this dialogue.

We engaged with the understanding that the real power of Twitter is in contributing to the conversation. As a small shop, we quickly grasped the commitment involved in responding (in real time) and attending to our billable work. And while only marginally conversational, the monologue model seemed an attractive compromise in that it might provide some value in terms of sharing what we know, what we're reading, what we admire, and what we hear. And that's it. A bit like the Pinch Digest used to be, yet more fluid and perhaps, less timely.

So now we simply ask for your input: How are we doing? What more (or less) would you like to see? Is @Pinch_Bespoke of value to you or is it our own vanity that keeps us posting? What can we do better? And should we continue? Your feedback is important to us and we hope you'll take the time to drop us a comment. In fact, if you do, we'll send you a heartfelt "thank you" (and a @Pinch_Bespoke shout-out).

Most of all, we thank you. We're learning from each of you.

If you have a break in the schedule, or are just getting your day started, I'd suggest heading over to Portland Farmers Market PSU. My favorite way to begin the day is with a wood-fired bagel from Tastebud or Pine State Biscuits and a hot coffee from Stumptown Coffee. The market runs until 2 p.m. With the weather a bit cloudy, it won't be as busy, but it's still a hub for activity on Saturday mornings. And yes, you can find bacon, if you must.

If you're looking for afternoon spots that are fairly near the hotel, I'd recommend Higgins (opens at 4 p.m.), Clyde Common or Kenny & Zukes (at the Ace Hotel), Typhoon!, or any of the foodcarts in the downtown area. (Check Food Carts Portland for locations.) Portland Food and Drink usually does a pretty good roundup of the week's food news and their review listing is also helpful.

If you're looking for more this evening, I'd suggest you check out Holocene's Anniversary party (1001 SE Morrison) tonight which will host a fine collection of Portland's more interesting bands (Talkdemonic is a personal favorite). Jens Lekman (Wonder Ballroom) and Neko Case (Crystal Ballroom) are also in town. If you haven't already, you might consider popping into Doug Fir for the later (9 p.m.) Handsome Furs and The Cinnamon Band show. The Portland Mercury has more. Julian Chadwick's PDX Pipeline just listed its Twitter-fueled "Best Late Night Food in Portland" and "75+ Portland Weekend Parties and Events", plus bits on the best Indian, Sushi, Thai, and breakfast spots. Hangover or not, you will have Sunday morning to think about.

You might also check Travel Portland's full listing of events as well as Dave Allen's (@pampelmoose) posts on the indie scene. Speaking of our friends at Travel Portland, if you're using Twitter, you might want to check their Twisitor Center or follow @travelportland.

While I'm not attending this year's retreat, the Portland chapter and Twitter is keeping me abreast of at least some of the happenings. Props to AIGA Idaho for keeping us all in the loop and AIGA Atlanta for some of the live feed action. I'll hope to see more of you this evening. Oh, and Phil Hamlett, I believe we have a beer or two on the books for this evening?

For those attendees visiting Portland, we've pulled together a very rough list of our favorite eateries, as well as a run-down of a few of the events happening around town. This list of events comes by way of Leigh Feldman's excellent e-newsletter LifeisaParty. I'd urge you to request it from Leigh by e-mailing: twocliche@gmail.com or leighfeldman3@gmail.com

So, attendees: we know you're at the Hilton and that's just fine. The New York office of AIGA had to pick a self-contained location cozy enough to host 250. But it's hardly representative of Portland. Not even close. Now, I know that time is limited and I'm not suggesting you pull yourselves from the retreat activities, but for chrissake, live a little. You might be interested why so many designers arrive here in the first place, and then why they end up calling Portland home. And I can tell you that it's not chain hotels, it's not the suburbs, and it's certainly not Macaroni Grill.

Matt Garland of Pet Theory: Flex-based Chat

Natalie Ramsland: Sweetpea Bicycles

Robert Lewis and Todd Greco of Fashionbuddha: Multi-Touch Table from Scratch

Chris Teso: Controlling Interfaces Without Interfaces

Stacy Westbrook of happy, inc.: Homebrewing

Matt Anderson of Struck Creative: How to Create a Global Panic

John Schreiber of Milkmuny: Making Products from Reclaimated Materials

Join Pinch, Substance, our presenters, and a collection of Portland's most talented (and friendly) folks on Friday, May 22nd at 6 p.m. Substance World Headquarters, 1551 SE Poplar Ave, Portland. If you use Twitter, you can track the event at #sntpdx. Please let us know that you'll be attending and RSVP at Upcoming.

On Friday, 22 May, Pinch and Substance invite you to meet and greet with other like-minded people. There will be plenty of activity in Portland around WebVisions and we wanted to be able to capture and contribute to that energy. So if you are still in town and would like to start your weekend off with some inspiration, we'd love for you to join in.

If you’re interested in presenting, send us your idea by Monday, May 11 and we'll sort through the pitches to curate an interesting evening. The format is simple: you have 10 minutes to share something that that explains “What are you working on?” We invite everyone to submit an idea and hope that everyone will. At our last event we had designers, coders, beverage and bacon entrepreneurs. What will we uncover this time? Send your ideas to: showandtell@findsubstance.com and we will start the conversation.

We’re looking forward to you joining us for an informative, enlightening and entertaining evening. If you’re planning to simply attend, we’d appreciate your RSVP via Upcoming. We plan on getting started around 6:00 p.m. with drinks and music. We'll begin the program at about 7:00. The event will be held at Substance World Headquarters, 1551 SE Poplar Ave, Portland.