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Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Business Model” goes to Editor of CNET’s News.com, the veteran technology journalist, Dan Farber.

The cartoon was originally from a print series I did earlier this year to commemorate SXSW 2010, which I attended. I thought it would make a very groovy business card for anybody working in his space.

I’ve known Dan for a while; we used to appear on The Gillmor Gang together. We’ve hung out a few times in San Francisco; a very cool guy.

[Every weekday I give away 100 free printed “Daily Bizcards” to people and companies that I admire. If you’re in my firing line I will also send you an email from gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com, to find out what details you want printed on the back. Thanks!]

July 5, 2010

daily bizcard 048: jeremy schoemaker

9 Comments

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Recession?” goes to affiliate marketing maven, Jeremy Schoemaker, the fellow behind Shoemoney.com.

Jeremy’s done very well. Apparently that wasn’t always the case. One day it seems that some sort of switch went off inside his head and since then, there’s been no looking back.

I like it when switches go off. Makes life far more interesting, not to mention enjoyable…

[Every weekday I give away 100 free printed “Daily Bizcards” to people and companies that I admire. If you’re in my firing line I will also send you an email from gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com, to find out what details you want printed on the back. Thanks!]

July 2, 2010

daily bizcard 047: nancy lublin

1 Comment

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “That Kinda Girl” goes to Nancy Lublin, author of “Zilch: The Power Of Zero In Business”.

Nancy’s message is simple: you don’t need a lot of money to do well in business, you jut need a lot of smarts, creativity and sass.

Nancy’s background is in working for nonprofits. They never have any money, but they can get amazing results anyhow, just by having, like I said, a lot of smarts, creativity and sass. Nancy’s career has been the embodiment of that.

It’s something I can relate to. I’ve always been a shoestring/bootstrap kinda guy, and I have no intention of ever changing. Neither does Nancy, from what I can tell.

[Every weekday I give away 100 free printed “Daily Bizcards” to people and companies that I admire. If you’re in my firing line I will also send you an email from gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com, to find out what details you want printed on them. Thanks!]

July 1, 2010

daily bizcard 046: omar l. gallaga

[You can get the print here etc.]

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “CFA” goes to Austin-American Statesman tech writer, Omar L. Gallaga.

Besides his newspaper beat, he’s also a contributor to NPR’s “All Tech Considered” segment, which airs Mondays on “All Things Considered.”

What the hell, it looks like I’ll be spending a lot more time in Austin this year, so I might as well get to know some of the techies here. Omar seemed like a good place to start.

Although I don’t know Omar personally (we did meet once during SXSW, but that evening’s a bit of a blur, to be honest), I thought I’d turn the “CFA” design into a business card, even if there’s a chance he might find the card a wee bit rude for his tastes. Though Lord knows, as a journalist, Omar will run into tons of CFAs every day, so he might find it as funny, instead. We shall see.

[N.B. Every weekday I do a Daily Bizcard for people and companies I admire for free — if you’re in my firing line I will also give you 100 printed for free as a thank you for being an inspiration to me — but obviously only once I’ve emailed you from “gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com” to find out what you want written on them ! Thanks.]

June 28, 2010

daily bizcard 045: adam ostrow

1 Comment

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, goes to Adam Ostrow, the Editor-In-Chief of Mashable, the world’s third largest blog.

I remember (and it wasn’t that long ago) when Masahble was just a small blog, run by Pete Cashmore out of his bedroom in Aberdeen, Scotland, while he was still living with parents. Now Mashable’s “bigger than Elvis”- the rise was meteroic– faster than Huffington Post’s or Techcrunch’s, even.

I hung out with Pete at a conference in Amsterdam a year and a half ago. Nice guy. Polite, unpretentious, driven and sharp as a tack.

Mashable, as you probably know, covers everything to do with new media and Web 2.0. Nobody owns that space as firmly as they do. And when I think of new media and Web 2.0, I think of “Small Pieces, Loosely Joined”, as David Weinberger would say. Hmmm.… that’s pretty much how I draw my “all-over” abstracts. A cloud of tiny elements, all fitting together cohesively. So this gave me an opportunity to do something with the Daily Bizcards that I haven’t done before– design a totally abstract, non-representational one. Fun!

[Adam, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 24, 2010

daily bizcard 044: dr. donald m. berwick

9 Comments

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Pick Two”, goes to President Obama’s nomination to run Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Donald M. Berwick.

[Commission a “Cube Grenade” from Hugh]

[Dr. Berwick, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 22, 2010

daily bizcard 043: rick webb

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, goes to Rick Webb, COO and co-founder of The Barbarian Group.

I love creative hot shops like Barbarian. To me, they’re the future of advertising… which I see less as creators of “messages”, but more more about being essential in helping their clients think and act more creatively… which I believe will be the one of the 21st Century’s most valuable tradeskills to have.

The cartoon above is an old mantra of mine, from my advertising days. It always served me well. Rock on.

[Commission a “Cube Grenade” from Hugh]

[Rick, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 18, 2010

daily bizcard 041: macon phillips

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Obama”, goes to the White House’s Director of New Media, Macon Phillips.

Phillips’ new media efforts during the 2008 United States presidential election helped raise vast sums of money for the Obama presidential campaign, while his text messaging, online videos and social networking skills led the campaign in many organizational and informational ways.

i.e. Philips was instrumental in making Obama the first truly “wired” President. He did a splendid job. Even if you didn’t vote Democrat, it was amazing to watch.

[Macon, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 15, 2010

dailybizcard 039: a.v. flox

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “This Is Not A Bed”, goes to my favorite saucy vixen/sex blogger, AV Flox.

AV and I met at the Techcrunch Party in Paolo Alto last year, and have been good friends ever since.

I’ve never been much of a sex blog reader, but AV’s writing is so sharp, so funny and SO DAMN GOOD, I’m a huge fan.

AV likes to let people know that sex is a VERY spiritual act for her, so I thought this cartoon would work well. Rock on.

[AV, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 14, 2010

daily bizcard 038: arianna huffington

“Content Is King”, so the saying goes. Unless of course, you’re the recipient of today’s “Daily Bizcard”, the legendary blog media magnate, Arianna Huffington, of Huffington Post fame.

Well done, Arianna. A lot of people tried to do what you did, most of them failed. “Content Is Queen”, indeed. Kudos.

[Arianna, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 11, 2010

daily bizcard 037: ashton kutcher

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “I’m Not Getting”, goes to movie-celeb-turned-Twitter-celeb, Ashton Kutcher.

This is a colorized version of a cartoon I once gave to my old friend, Lee Thomas, the guy who pretty much single-handedly brought Web 2.0 geekery to the British film industry. He works for Simon “Shaun Of The Dead” Pegg’s production company these days…

The film business is a funny old thing. Imagine a large pyramid scheme with a few rock stars like Ashton or Quentin Tarantino on the top, with HUGE LEGIONS of slave labor/waiters on the bottom, with a thin layer of weird-ass, paranoid “Neither/Nor’s” separating the two.This is just as true in London as it is in Hollywood.

Even at his level, well… Ashton wasn’t always famous, he too was a member of the “HUGE LEGIONS” at one point, so he should be able to relate to the cartoon. Rock on.

[Ashton, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 9, 2010

big, oily slick

Well, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg didn’t want my first business card design, how about this one? Just askin’…

daily bizcard 036: sally singer

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Disposable”, goes to Sally Singer, the new editor of The New York Times’ T Magazine, who was until recently the fashion and features editor of Vogue Magazine. Backstory from the NYT:

Ms. Singer, 45, will take over in July, according to a note Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, sent to staff members on Tuesday.

The move essentially completes a swap of editors between The Times and Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue. The T job opened up after its first editor, Stefano Tonchi, moved to another Condé Nast fashion magazine, W, in April.

Ms. Singer worked in a variety of roles for different publications before joining Vogue in 1999. Her stops have included a stint as fashion director at New York magazine and as an editor at the London Review of Books, and she has written for The Economist and The Atlantic Monthly. She studied at the University of California at Berkeley and Yale.

Basically, one very tough, smart, talented lady etc.

“Disposable” is a color version of one of the cartoons that appear in “Ignore Everybody”. I drew it soon after a brief stint in LA in early 2000, where I was helping a friend with his indie magazine start-up. An interesting experience, but man, is that ONE TOUGH little business. Totally brutal and totally underpaid. To rise to Sally’s level is quite an impressive achievement, to say the least, so good luck to her with her new gig.

[Sally, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 8, 2010

daily bizcard 035: clay shirky

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “The Trick To New York”, goes to one of the world’s foremost thinkers about how the Internet ACTUALLY works, Clay Shirky.

I know quite a few world-class Internet ‘gurus’. Seriously, without exception, they ALL borrow heavily from him, sometimes shamelessly. And the ones who say they don’t are liars.

Clay has a new book, “Cognitive Surplus”, which comes out in two days. Anybody who cares about the Internet will be reading it in the next few weeks, trust me. Actually, anybody who really cares about the Internet (and actually knows what they’re talking about) makes it their business to read every single word Clay ever writes. Again, trust me… [UPDATE: Good interview of Clay on NPR].

This is a re-working of a very old cartoon of mine, drawn back in my New York days, which also borrows heavily from another New York-era cartoon. Clay lives in New York City, where he has a part-time professor job at NYU. He’s always liked this cartoon, so why not? I can think of no finer recipient. Rock on.

[Hire Hugh]

[Clay, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 7, 2010

daily bizcard 034: tony hsieh

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Green Purpose”, goes to CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh.

Zappos is the online retailer– which first made its name selling shoes– that was recently sold to Amazon for over a billion dollars in stock. Tony has just written a book, “Delivering Happiness”, which comes out today.

One of the publisher’s charming marketing gals gave me an advance copy back in March at SXSW, which I happily read. Inc. Magazine has a nice extract here: ‘Why I Sold Zappos”.

Two things that stood out for me in the book were, 1. Tony’s firm and well-articulated belief in making the improvement of the company culture their top priority, ahead of profits. 2. That none of it was easy. Zappos didn’t just become big and rich overnight, it was a real slog– long hours and lots of stress, over many years. He really captures that well.

The cartoon is a re-working of a print I made recently, “Business Is…” I like the way how Tony explains in the book how he always had a very strong sense of purpose for is company, and how having that at the very epicenter was what made his company ultimately so successful. So I wanted to articulate that.

Congrats on the new book, Tony. Thanks for the inspiration!

[Hire Hugh]

[Tony, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 4, 2010

daily bizcard 033: scott belsky

5 Comments

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Making Ideas Happen”, goes to author and entrepreneur, Scott Belsky.

Mark’s personal catchphrase is “Making Ideas Happen”, which is what I used for the base of the cartoon.

And as it turns out, it’s also the title of his new book, which came out in April. [Disclosure: The book is also published by the same publishers I have i.e. Portfolio Imprint, Penguin Books.]

Besides writing books, Scott has two other businesses up his sleeve, The Behance Network and Action Method, so he’s a busy guy. Another one of those very bright people, like Tom Peters or Seth Godin, where the job titles “Author” and “Entrepreneur” get increasingly blurry. A quality that makes their books far more interesting in the long run, I would say.

[Hire Hugh]

[Scott, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 3, 2010

daily bizcard 032: john battelle

I was thinking this gapingvoid print would also make a PERFECT “Daily Bizcard” for today’s recipient, John Battelle.

Besides being the founder of Federated Media (a service I’ve happily been using for a while now), John is a bit of a Renaissance man: College prof, journalist, co-founder of Wired Magazine, founder of The Industry Standard magazine, co-moderator of the Web 2.0 Summit with Tim O’Reilly.… Not bad for one lifetime, not bad at all.

[Commission your own ‘Cube Grenade’.]

[John, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 2, 2010

dailybizcard 031: umair haque

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “It’s Not Enough”, goes to the writer, intellectual and Harvard Business Review contributor, Umair Haque.

I got turned onto Umair by something he wrote back in February, “The Great To Good Manifesto”:

Umair makes a simple point: You may be great at making, distributing and selling sugar-water (he uses Pepsi as an example), but unless what you’re doing has some sort of ethical backbone i.e. a sense of moral good, then why bother? How much REAL value are you actually creating?

A culture of meaning. Discipline, hardwired into culture, is necessary to go from Good to Great. But being more disciplined than rivals at making sugar water only yields sugarier (and perhaps waterier) water. It cannot help you go from great to good. Going from great to good requires a culture of meaning. Production and consumption are meaningful when they actually yield durable, tangible benefits to people, communities, and society. When meaningful work — not just meaningless (yet disciplined) drudgery — is hardwired into a company’s culture, it becomes nearly unstoppable. That’s what’s special about Apple’s products — their focus on making the beige boxes of yesterday’s computerverse meaningful to people has upended industry after industry. Pepsi’s great failing with Refresh is this: merely investing marketing dollars in worthwhile causes can never make up for something as economically meaningless as merely selling sugar-water. A culture of meaning means that Pepsi needs to refresh the idea of Pepsi — not just how it’s marketed.

The cartoon is a play on the well-worn, aspiring artist cliche: “It’s not enough to be good, when you know you can be great.” And right next to the line, is one of my trademark existentialist characters, as usual, stewing in his own boiling vat of unrealized potential.

I made the drawing using a VERY thin line– to somehow express the fragility of the human condition, especially when it comes to confronting said unrealized potential etc.

I’m an optimist. I believe the majority of us actually do want to be “a good person”. But it’s a hard thing to pull off sometimes, for all of us. Doesn’t matter if we work for Pepsi or not…

[Commission your own ‘Cube Grenade’.]

[Umair, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]

June 1, 2010

daily bizcard 030: jeff paiva

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Wake Up”, goes to one of my favorite old clients, Jeff Paiva.

It was Jeff who got me to go down to Sao Paulo early last year, who got me my cube grenade commission with his then employer, the Brazilian ad agency, agenciaclick.com.

Jeff has since moved on, and after a brief spell in London, is now head of social media at Young and Rubicom, Brazil.

I had a splendid time down in Brazil. A really amazing country– I REALLY liked the people I met down there. I CAN’T WAIT to go down there again, maybe one day…

[Commission your own ‘Cube Grenade’.]

[Jeff, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 31, 2010

daily bizcard 029: kara swisher

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Roger Had A Plan”, goes to one of my favorite tech journalists, Kara Swisher.

I met Kara in Paris two winters ago, at Le Web. What can I say? Damn good tech journalist. Damn nice lady. Damn good to see women like her and Sara Lacy rise to the top of what is traditionally a very male-dominated trade. Rock on.

The thing I like about Kara’s writing is, unlike Roger in the cartoon, you get the feeling that there’s one helluva smart, interesting human being writing this stuff, who is genuinely interested and inspired by the material she covers. That quality in tech journalism is more rare than you’d think, sadly…

[Kara, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 28, 2010

daily bizcard 028– megan mcardle

20 Comments

[Download the high-res image here etc.]

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Socialism Is Evil”, goes to the utterly brilliant political journalist, Megan McArdle.

Legend has it that somebody was once so impressed with her old amateur blog, Asymmetrical Information, they offered her a job at The Economist, one of the most respected news organs on the planet. She now works at The Atlantic, where she has a massive fan base of super-smart people.

I met her in London in 2005 at a geek dinner I had organized, back when she was doing The Economist gig. She was a most fun and welcome addition. I remember introducing her that evening to Gia Milinovich, another very bright American expat in town. I thought they might get along.…

Growing up in Edinburgh in the 1970s and 80s, I eventually left for University in Austin, Texas with a very grim view of Socialism. Though I hadn’t seen it at its worst (we’re talking Scotland here, not East Germany) I’d seen enough of it not to like or trust it. To me it seemed not so much a political system, more like a sad, bitter, venal cultural suicide note.

Even nowadays, if I tried hanging a poster of this cartoon around Edinburgh or Glasgow, I’d still probably get lynched. Which is EXACTLY why I like this cartoon.

Besides that, there’s something rather amusing to me about a beautiful, cultured, sophisticated Washington journalist handing out “Socialism Is Evil” cards at swank, East Coast soirees. Exactly.

[Megan, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 27, 2010

daily bizcard 027: carl-henric svanberg

11 Comments

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Thank You Sir”, goes to BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, who’s having, shall we say, one bitch of a week.

Oh well, I guess that’s why he gets paid the big bucks…

Of course the current oil slick is horrendous. In spite of that, I’m no more one of those anti-big-oil people than I was before. My father, a geologist, was in the oil business for a good chunk of his working life. I also used to work in the oil business when I was a kid in college, offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

At the end of the day, oil is dirty, nasty, dangerous stuff to get out of the ground. And every now and then, sadly, we are reminded of this. “Cut down our dependence on oil”? If that lever existed, we’d have pulled it long ago. Don’t get me started…

[Carl-Henric, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 25, 2010

daily bizcard 026: mark frauenfelder

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “200 mph”, goes to another fellow author from my publisher’s stable, Mark Frauenfelder.

Mark’s got a new book out, “Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World”, which I’m halfway through reading (The publisher kindly sent me an advance copy etc). As editor in chief of Make magazine, Mark’s in a good position to write about the spiritual and social merits of DIY culture…

But if that wasn’t enough to place him high up on the geek pantheon, BOM BOM BOM Mark is also the co-founder and co-editor of pretty much the coolest blog on the planet, Boing Boing.

I only have eleven blogs bookmarked on my browser in the “Favorite Blogs” section. Boing Boing is one of them. I’m getting picky in my old age.

While designing this bizcard, I was thinking about what it was about Boing Boing that always appealed to me since Day One… It wasn’t just all the cool, geeky stuff they were linking to, it was something about the way they did it. Like it was the ideas and human drives behind the cool stuff that mattered, not the actual cool stuff itself.

This high-speed, voracious appetite and enthusiasm for new ideas… that’s what makes the internet, at its best, so much damn fun. And nobody does it better than Boing Boing. “Driving 200 mph on the highway of ideas” pretty much summed up their ethos to me.

[Mark, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. And if your Boing Boing co-editors, Cory and Xeni do likewise, I’ll extend the same offer to them as well. Thanks!]

May 24, 2010

daily bizcard 025: john jantsch

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Purpose”, goes to John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing fame.

John’s a very clever fellow– one of the most respected marketing bloggers in the business. He could easily make lots of money helping big companies solve problems, instead he prefers helping out small businesses. Which he does, very well.

John has a new book out: “The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself”. It only came out last week, and since he has the same publisher and editor as me, I thought it would be cool to dedicate today’s business card to him. Easy.

The carton was inspired by a great little recent blog post of John’s. “Is Your Purpose Patent Still Pending?” And no, I’m not just saying that because he used one of my cartoons to illustrate the post, the idea of “Purpose” in business is something very close to my heart. John writes about it well:

I firmly believe that one of the foundational secrets to success in business is to invent, discover, and connect what we are doing with a sense of purpose that drives the entire enterprise. You’ve certainly heard many people talk about the idea of doing work you love, but this is more than that. I’m suggesting that you must connect with some reason beyond the fact you enjoy the work, that you must be able to feel a greater sense of value that drives your entire strategy and filters your decisions at the highest level.

Congrats on the new book, John, and keep on fighting the good fight etc.

[John, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 21, 2010

daily bizcard 024: ice t

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “The Utter Terror”, goes to my favorite rapper, Ice T.

I’ve been listening to Ice T for two decades. “Body Count” is one of my favorite rock albums.

I’ve never been much into rap per se (I’m more of a Lester Young fan), but I always liked and admired Ice T’s approach– raw, honest, truthful, uncompromising, interesting, thoughtful, intense, original… with a playful sense of humor, buried deep in the apple like a razor.

i.e. The man is no phony. The man is an artist. All art springs from that “utter terror”, whether we care to admit it or not, so I’m thinking he might like this cartoon.

Besides that, it seems we’re both Iceberg Slim fans. Rock on.

[Ice T, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 20, 2010

daily bizcard 023: alex de carvalho

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “South Beach”, goes to Alex de Carvalho, one of Miami’s most active social media evangelists.

Alex and I have known each other for a while. We first met at Le Web Paris 2005. He was living in France at the time, he moved to Miami a couple of years later, about the same time I first started going there on a regular basis.

As my business got more and more Miami-based (I now visit there once a month, for around 4 – 10 days), we became good friends. When I’m in town Alex, Maria and I will usually meet for drinks at least once or twice, probably at Monty’s. It’s become part of my Miami ritual.

I drew this cartoon back in January, while I was staying in South Beach, Miami. Up to that point, it was the longest I had ever stayed in that town– ten days or so.

It was quite an experience. South Beach is full of random people– tourist and local– walking around, almost aimlessly. I wandered up and down Ocean Drive again and again, trying to see stories in the faces. All their faces seemed to tell stories. Not all of them were happy ones.

[Alex, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 19, 2010

daily bizcard 022: the bloggess

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Doughnut”, goes to Jenny Lawson a.k.a. The Bloggess.

What can I say? She’s probably the funniest blogger writing today. Her stuff is hysterical. I’m addicted.

Besides that, she’s also part of the Houston, Texas posse. Nice to see there’s first rate stuff coming out of my home State, not just from places like SF and New York.

Jenny and some of her crew (including Katie Laird and Monica Danna) were visiting out here the other week. We met up and hung out in Marfa, sitting around the fire pit at Padre’s. Within half an hour she had my friend, Ty Mitchell (who’s got a pretty wicked sense of humor himself) eating out of her hand. A great evening.

[Jenny, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 18, 2010

daily bizcard 021: joi ito

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Empires”, goes to Joi Ito, web visionary, ICANN board member, and CEO of Neoteny, his own private investment firm.

If you ever hear a new good idea about the Internet, chances are Joi heard it five, maybe even ten years before you did. Yeah, he’s that good; he’s that ahead of the curve. And besides that, he’s always been a kind and helpful friend to me, and countless others.

If he doesn’t grok this cartoon, probably nobody will. Oh well, that’s how it rolls…

[Joi, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 13, 2010

daily bizcard 019: tim o’reilly

8 Comments

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Life Is Too Short”, goes to Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media.

What’s there to say about Tim that hasn’t been said already? He’s one one of our great Internet and technology visionaries. I was fortunate to meet him a few months ago at Supernova in San Francisco. A really charming, well-mannered guy in real life.

The cartoon above was DIRECTLY inspired by a personal mantra of Tim’s, “Work On Stuff That Matters”. And of course, it’s the fact that we’re mortal (and life is short) that gives Tim’s mantra its sense of urgency. If we lived forever, we’d be more inclined to just sit on our butts all day long. That was my thinking behind it, anyway. The cartoon was also the first one I sent out in my daily newsletter, back in January. You can also buy the print here etc.

[Tim, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 12, 2010

daily bizcard 018: lindsay manfredi

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “I Want To Sing”, goes to musician and “ghost blogger”, Lindsay Manfredi.

Lindsay plays bass guitar in a band, Neon Love Life, but like many artists, she has to hold down a day job to pay the bills. She calls her day job “Ghost Blogging”, i.e. anonymously writing blogs and social media on behalf of her clients.

I can think of worse ways to make a living; very “Sex & Cash Theory” etc.

[Lindsay, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 11, 2010

daily bizcard 017: mark earls

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “All Control”, goes to one of my favorite marketing thinkers, Mark Earls.

Mark is one of the most respected advertising planners in the UK. Nobody besides him and Cluetrain have done more to credibly trash the idea that “The Brand controls the conversation”. He was one of the very first people in the agency world to take that sacred cow out the back and shoot it in the head.

I came across Mark’s books about five years ago and it changed my life. Since then we’ve become really good friends. To get an overview of his work, check out the interview I did with him back in 2008.

[Mark, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 10, 2010

dailybizcard 016: amrita chandra

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Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Make Love To My Imagination”, goes to my art-world buddy in Toronto, Amrita Chandra.

Amrita ran her own art gallery for a while, which is how we first got talking. We were on the same SXSW panel earlier this year, talking about how Web 2.0 affects the art world. She has some very interesting thoughts on the subject. She also has a day job as Marketing Director for Asigra, a computer cloud backup service.

I guess we’ve been kindred spirits in this whole “Art World 2.0″ thing for a while now. It’s still early days for us all, but there’s A LOT of artists currently out there, trying to figure this new world out. An exciting time to be alive.

[Amrita, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 7, 2010

daily bizcard 15: george papandreou

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Staying Young Forever”, goes to Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who’s having a very, very long week.

The line in the cartoon was originally about aging New York hipsters. But then I saw strong parallels between that and current European politics. “Yeah, but what are you ACTUALLY going to do about it” etc.

[Mr. Papandreou, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 6, 2010

daily bizcard 14: clive thompson

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “I Am Not Normal”, goes to journalist Clive Thompson, who I met briefly in March at SXSW in the Hilton Hotel bar.

Clive writes for both Wired and The New York Times. Meeting him, I had the impression of an extremely active, original mind. Somebody totally engaged in the world around him, somebody not beholden to Boredom. A quality we could all use more of…

[Clive, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 5, 2010

daily bizcard 13: ross mayfield

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Everything Is Marketing”, goes to Wiki Pioneer, Ross Mayfield, the Chairman, President and Co-founder of Socialtext.

Ross and I have been hanging out together at blog & social media conferences for almost as long as they’ve been around. Our first one together was Les Blogs, back in Paris, 2005. Our last hanging out was at a bar during SXSW, watching Jake Dilley and The Color Pharamcy (a favorite band of mine) play live. The lovely Deanna Zandt was also with us that evening.

Ross is a bit like me. At conferences, you’re more likely to find him hanging out in the corridors or the bars, than running around, networking like crazy, or sitting in the lecture halls for hours on end, live-blogging endlessly. He just kinda hangs around nonchalantly and lets people find him.

Sometimes these conferences can get a little crazy– especially the large ones– but Ross is always an entertaining oasis of good-natured calm. Damn good company.

Another quality Ross has that I really like, is that he gets tired of buzzwords and “the latest trends” faster than most people I know. He can always tell when the me-too bandwagon is just about to descend on something like a pack of wolves and remove all the fun from it.

The “Everything Is Marketing” riff is at least a decade old in most Internet circles; I’d wager Ross has been sick and tired of it since long before that. So this one is for him.

[Ross, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 4, 2010

daily bizcard 12: james governor

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “I’m Not Dying”, goes to my favorite tech consultant, James Governor.

James and his partners have a small tech consultancy firm, Redmonk, which handles blue chip clients like Microsoft, SAP, Dell etc.

Redmonk have an interesting (and highly effective) way of marketing themselves. Because they come up with so many ideas, they can only realistically execute on 10% of them.

What do they do with the other 90%? Easy. The give them away for free on their blogs. Simple, but it works.

James probably knows more good consultant jokes than anyone I know. So I thought maybe he could use another one, hence the cartoon above. Exactly.

[James, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

May 3, 2010

daily bizcard 11: fred wilson

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Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Puck”, goes to one of my New York blogging posse, Fred Wilson.

Fred is very successful venture capitalist, a partner in Union Square Ventures. I first became aware of him via his blog, AVC.com, which I was turned on to by Nick Denton.

Besides always having an interesting and entertaining take on the tech industry, what separates Fred from the other VC bloggers (and I believe he was the first to do this), is that he talks about other stuff on his blog besides his business. He talks about his family with great love and affection, he likes talking about his hobbies, and he REALLY likes sharing his music collection with people, turning folk on to his favorite albums etc.

i.e. He writes like an affable human being, not like a hard-nose businessman.

This makes people like him. This makes people trust him. This makes people want to give his relatively small firm early access to the best deals out there. Which helps his business no end.

I know from talking to Fred that Wayne Gretzky’s famous quote, “Skate to where the puck is headed, not to where it’s been” is a favorite of his. So I incorporated it into the design; I also used the same olive green from his USV website.

Keep blogging, Fred. We need more like you out there…
[The Daily Bizcard archive is here etc.]

[Fred, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

April 30, 2010

daily bizcard 10: andrew keen

Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “I Have A Pen”, goes to yet another Brit, Andrew Keen.

Andrew has made his name these last few years being contrarian about the Internet and Silicon Valley. He points out that, with all this new technology and all these barrels of Kool-Ade waiting to be drunk, there is still a dark side to it all. He has a point, of course.

We’ve debated in public before, taking opposing sides. To borrow heavily from Lord Leverhume, “I disagree with half of what Andrew says. The trouble is, I don’t know which half”.

All in all, though, he’s a terrific guy with a sharp mind and an equally sharp angle. Glad to have him around.

As an antidote to all this Gee-Whizz-Internet-Techie stuff that Andrew likes to rail against, I was thinking about what came before it, back in my youth, when creating “content” was a bit more elitist, a bit more of a “gentleman’s profession”.

It reminded me of some of the foppish, intellectual, aesthete types I went to school with..

Word processors? Delete buttons? Ha. They liked gold-nibbed fountain pens and 1929 Royal Typewriters. Trying to re-live F Scott Fitzgerald, everything tinged with sepia. Ah, Youth! Wasted on the young etc.

[Andrew, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

April 29, 2010

daily bizcard 09: mike butcher

I thought today’s Daily Bizcard, “Terribly Important” should go to the person who LEAST reminds me of the guy in the cartoon. So that would mean Mike Butcher.

Besides being the Editor of TechCrunch Europe and a very bright technology journalist all round, Mike is one of the nicest guys you’re ever likely to meet. He and I used to bump into each other all the time at geek parties, back in my London days.

[Mike, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the card, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

April 28, 2010

daily bizcard 08: chris brogan

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “God Created” goes to Web 2.0 guru, Chris Brogan.

Chris is in that enviable position of not only “totally getting” social media, he also makes A LOT of money helping other people do the same. He’s a bit of a rock star/poster-child success story in this space.

Chris prides himself on being very open and accessible, which he is, in what we both believe to be a very democratic form of media. That being said, human beings can only scale so much, so you don’t want to start taking it and yourself TOO seriously. This card plays around with that.

[Chris, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with the details you want on the back of the card, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

April 27, 2010

daily bizcard 07: robert phillips

Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Apple Seeds” goes to another Edelman dude, Robert Phillips.

Robert is the CEO of Edelman UK. We hung out in Berlin a couple of years ago. Considering it was a working weekend, it was serious fun all round.

This cartoon is about the nature of PR. Unlike most marketing, the game isn’t about writing a check, pulling a lever and waiting for the sales to come in. It’s a wee bit more subtle and long-term than that.

And educating the client about the long-term view is probably the hardest part of the job…

[Robert, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with the details you want on the back of the card, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

April 26, 2010

daily bizcard 06: tim ferriss

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Today’s Daily Bizcard, “Reality Is Negotiable” goes to Tim Ferriss.

Tim wrote probably the most inspiring and maddening book on extreme lifestyle design in twenty years, “The Four Hour Work Week”. It’s the “Play Power” of our generation. It’s a HUGE bestseller and deservedly so.

“Reality Is Negotiable” is one of his favorite quotes that he wrote himself. So I designed the card as a little “molecular mantra” for Tim to give out to people, on his travels.

[Tim, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with the details you want on the back of the card, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

April 24, 2010

daily bizcard 05: jason calacanis

Today’s Daily Bizcard, “Soup” goes to Jason Calacanis.

Web 2.0 serial entrepreneur Jason is one of the smartest people I know. Some people find his manner abrasive, but eh, that’s just his high-energy, take-no-prisoners, no-bullshit way. He’s a real gentleman and a sweetheart if you ever actually spend time around him.

The cartoon is all about cutting corners. It’s a really tempting and easy thing to do, especially when business is slow. The downside is that inevitably people do notice eventually. Of course they do.

[Jason, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with the details you want to see on the back of the card, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

April 23, 2010

daily bizcard 4: loic le meur

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Today’s Daily Bizcard goes to Loic Le Meur. [You can buy the print here etc.]

Loic and I first met circa 2004, back when he lived in Paris and I lived over the Channel in England (He’s now based in San Francisco). We’ve been good friends ever since.

Loic is a bit of a bad-ass Web 2.0 entrepreneur. The guy behind the web client, Seesmic.com. Before that he was an investor in companies like Six Apart and other high-profile Web 2.0 companies. He and his wife, Geraldine (one very cool lady) also organize the annual Le Web conference in Paris every December.

Loic, like me, is one helluva busy guy, so I’m guessing, like me, he’ll be tired all the time. So I designed this card for him. Voila!

The Daily Bizcard archive is here etc.]

[Loic, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with the details you want to see on the back of the card, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

April 22, 2010

daily bizcard 03: david brain

Today’s Daily Bizcard, “Evil Plans” goes to my old London drinking buddy, David Brain, who I mentioned in a very recent blog post.

David, who taught me a TON about PR over the years, is CEO of Edelman Europe.

Anyway, back in London David and I could often be seen drinking at the pub, hatching what we called “Evil Plans”. That’s where the idea of cartoon came from originally.

“Evil Plans” went on to become the title of my second book, which is coming out in April 2011.

Also, now that I think of it, the guy in the cartoon kinda resembles David a wee bit, just a tad.…

[David, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with the details you want to see on the back of the card, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]

April 21, 2010

daily bizcard 02: pam slim

13 Comments

[“Permission”. You can buy the print here etc.]

Entrepreneur/Author Pam Slim did such a good job guest blogging for me the other day I thought, why not? Give the gal her own daily bizcard.

She gave me some themes to work with: freedom, claim your own authority, you don’t need permission. I went with the latter.

Pam has the same book publisher and editor as myself (that’s how we got to know each other). Her book, “Escape From Cubicle Nation” is wonderful.

[Pam, please send me an email (gapingvoid@gmail.com) with the details that you want to see on the back, and I’ll print up a free batch of 100 bizcards for you. Thanks!]

April 20, 2010

daily bizcard: brian clark

14 Comments