Last week, Diligent attended Compostmodern, a biannual gathering by AIGA SF that brings together the design community to talk about sustainability issues. Except sustainability isn’t sexy anymore and honestly never was. Who gets excited about “sustaining?” Continue reading →

Diligent takes the long view in most things so it follows that we strive for sustainability in our own operations as well as what we provide to clients. Since pixels are pretty different from toothbrushes, sustainable web design is pretty different than sustainable industrial design.

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If you’re trying to accomplish something big, it only makes sense to break it down into smaller parts. When Diligent says that we prefer to work iteratively, we’re talking about something more specific than just working in phases. Continue reading →

It’s what makes turbulence vomit-inducing and roller-coasters fun. It’s the physics equivalent of “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” It’s change in location divided by time, divided by time. It’s acceleration… and it’s what makes you dread working on your website. Continue reading →

Diligent’s mission is to harness the inherent power of the Internet for social change. We do this by partnering with mission-driven organizations like non-profits or social enterprise. Some days I like to imagine the web as a wild pegasus that I’m trying to saddle and drive toward the future… but honestly it’s the web’s nature to be a powerful ally to organizations working in social change. Continue reading →

The architect Daniel Burnham is quoted as saying:

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.

Burnham’s concept of “no little plans” is nothing short of the city of Chicago—a city well acquainted with grand projects (let’s not forget that time in the 1860s when entire city blocks were elevated by engineers to make room for sewers). His quote is repeated as motivation to reach for the stars, put a dent in the universe, or other astronomical metaphors for success. The melancholy “and probably will not themselves be realized,” is often omitted but contains just as much wisdom. Continue reading →

When I was ten, pondering a future where I was a comic book artist or computer programmer or maybe an anthropologist, my mother gave me eerily prescient advice. She put a reassuring hand on my knee and said, “I bet you’ll do a job that hasn’t even been invented yet.” Continue reading →

When we imagine a creative act, we picture a prologue of frustrated brainstorming followed by a sudden spark of unrestrained brilliance. Such a story fails to celebrate the vital evolution of ideas from continued effort over time. Continue reading →