October Custom Publishing Facebook page

I’m building a Facebook Fan Page for October Custom Publishing (my company), in order to try and get us out there a little more. On there you’ll be able to view almost every page of every magazine we’ve either published or been hired to create thus far. I’d really appreciate you becoming a fan, and I’m happy to return the favor! Take a look at the page here. Introduce yourself!

Visual Aid books arrived from Amazon!

I ordered two Visual Aid books from Black Dog publishing. They’re chock full of fantastic infographics on a random and very wide variety of subjects, and perfect for stealing ideas from…I mean looking at for inspiration. They’ve also recently started selling posters of their infographics, so now I have to figure out how much I have left on my credit card, what I’ll tell my wife, and where I will hang them when my house is in foreclosure. Take a look at their site here.

Wish List jersey giveaway

I forgot to mention in the GivingCity 4 post that we’re giving away a Wish List Jersey, the proceeds from which benefit a multitude of charities local and national. From the Wish List site:

A total of 1,600 jerseys have been printed and sold and over $56,000 raised for various charities both local and nationwide including Communities In Schools – Central Texas, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Susan G. Komen Foundation, The Breast Cancer Fund, American Diabetes Foundation and various AIDS organizations in Dallas, Austin and around the country. People from all over the country and the world are part of the Wish List family. Texas, California, New York, Colorado, Washington D.C., Georgia, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, Minnesota, Maryland, Florida, Virginia, Alabama, Utah, South Carolina, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, Missouri, Connecticut, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.

To win a jersey, download GivingCity Austin magazine issue 4, then go here to enter your password (that you’ll find in the magazine) and comment on the post, telling us why you participate in a ride, run, or walk for the cure – any cause or organization will work, as long as it’s a race that benefits a health-related nonprofit.

Texas State employee charitable contributions graphic

In the latest issue of GivingCity we ran a story about the thousands of state employees who donate millions each year to Central Texas charities. We made this sample of different organization’s contributions from a random selection of agencies. I thought the contrast between the different agencies was shocking – even after you take into account the number of employees per agency. In the magazine I had to make this graphic fit to the spread, but I made this version so that I could show all the information unhindered by the page-size. After realizing I had all this empty space on the right, I also decide to place the actual pages from the story on the graphic – they remain readable. You can see the original after the jump, or download the whole issue here.

GivingCity Austin magazine issue 4 available for download

It’s that time of the year again where in-between neglecting duties to my family and multiple full-time job deadlines, we somehow managed to crank out another issue of GivingCity Austin. Please hit this link to download, and PLEASE send it to as many people as possible. We’re probably not going to do another unless we can find someone willing to bankroll it for us, so the more people that see it, the better chance there is that someone may want to.More pages after the jump….although I’d really rather you went here and just download the thing.

GOOD magazine infographic contest

I know this is older now, but this is a great idea. GOOD magazine had a contest that asked designers to create an infographic showing how top CEO’s are paid. That’s the winning entry above, but there are a ton of cool submissions, so take a look at more of them here.

GOOD magazine issue 17 cover in progress!

I talked about the new issue of GOOD here, in particular their awesome cover and the models on the cover that were used throughout the magazine. Today on GOOD’s Twitter feed they posted a link here to images of the cover in production. Nice!

Iron Man Goes Retro-Cool With New Look (via 109.com)

Yep, so this is a comic book and not a magazine. These covers look great, and I can’t wait to see how long they can maintain this kind of look… I’d love to see (or steal and try myself) this kind of look in a newsstand magazine – something like a MAKE magazine could use a retro-future look and maintain its functionality (covers via io9). Another cover after the jump.

GOOD magazine issue 17

I’d stop buying GOOD magazine a while back – partly out of an effort to spend less money (no ladies, I’m not independently wealthy, contrary to popular belief. Nor am I a Formula One race car driver, and I have never saved the earth from certain destruction) – and partly because it just wasn’t making me want to buy it. Anyway, I saw this issue and picked it up because of the cover. Despite the almost unreadable cover-lines up there in the top right corner, this cover made me want this magazine. Totally imaginative and different cover, obviously advertising content that’s slightly different from what they usually put out. Digging the 3-D set made from props used throughout the magazine – although I wonder why they didn’t make the ‘GOOD’ logo in the same way – or all the cover-lines for that matter. Regardless, very cool. I like the visibility of the white strip of information at the bottom of the cover, but think some the information in there could have been a little more interesting.