Received my copies of Bruce Schneier’s Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive for the creative concept work I did related to the book’s cover.

Story behind how it transpired here and on Bruce’s blog here.

Thanks to Lewis Shepherd (Director of Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments), Gunnar Hellekson (Red Hat Public Sector Chief Technology Strategist) and Hart Rossman (SAIC CTO Cyber Security) for introducing me to Schneier’s work.

Final cover:

When he asked readers for feedback on working titles and covers for his upcoming book, Liars and Outliers, I spent 20 minutes designing a prototype of what I thought would communicate ‘security’ and still appeal to a broader audience.

I sent my prototype to Bruce, and he shared with his publisher, Wiley. To my surprise, they took the prototype and refined it.

Thank you Bruce and Wiley for the great honor in letting me contribute in this way.

My prototype:

Final:

Logo:

Icon:

The dark secret behind the City of De Leon, TX, Website was that it was designed, developed and deployed in 24 hours.

As part of the manor.govfresh ‘City Makeover,’ I re-designed and developed the new De Leon Website using the free GovFresh WordPress Theme as the foundation.

I did some simple customization on the flight from San Francisco to Austin. When I got to my hotel in Texas that night, City of Manor CIO Dustin Haisler and I set up the WordPress site, installed the theme and added content from the legacy site. We also integrated 311, social media and Google Docs features. All of this was done via Skype chat.

There was no design by committee, and I didn’t make it my personal art project. This was a rapid-development process and a practical approach to modernizing one town’s Web and social media presence.

De Leon officials knew they were getting a WordPress-powered site using the GovFresh theme and that it would resemble the City of Manor Website. They weren’t concerned with color or design minutiae. They wanted a Website they could easily manage themselves and update immediately, and that’s what they got.

It wasn’t perfect on Day 1, but within 24 hours a local government had a modern-day Website. Within 48 hours, De Leon published its first blog post and began using Facebook and Twitter to communicate with its citizens.

This is a perfect example of how local governments can use new technology to save money, empower themselves and better serve their citizens. See also the White House Blog post about the De Leon Makeover.

Sample logos and icons:

CityCamp (Main site)

CityCampLDN (London)

CityCampSF (San Francisco)

CityCampCO (Colorado)

For some reason, the result is ‘painfully pretty’ as kibird says.

Website:

Led new brand theme of ‘Building an Honest Economy,’ worked with video production company to develop membership recruitment video and developed crowdsourcing site for generate ideas, interest.

Green Chamber of Commerce Website:

‘Building an Honest Economy’ video:

‘Ideas for an Honest Economy’ Website:

Promo video for ‘Ideas for an Honest Economy:’

Logo:

Demo site:

Website: