I like making custom greeting cards for people. But I hate, hate, hate rotating the individual “pages” and lining them up correctly in programs like OpenOffice Draw.

Thus: Real Cards Win.

Draw your pages in the graphics program of your choice (heck, even Windows Paint will do), then select and upload them. Real Cards Win scales, rotates and positions them correctly and generates a ready-to-print, ready-to-fold PDF file in which everything lines up just so. Doesn’t get a whole lot simpler than that.

While I’m on the subject, I’d like to praise ServerGrove for their excellent, cheap VPS web hosting. $19/month for full root access to a box of my own on which PHP 5.2.11 and MySQL 5 are already configured properly, with the gd library, the APC cache and everything else serious PHP geeks demand for performance. Can’t beat that. isitrainingout.com and realcardswin.com are happily sharing a VPS at present. It’s possible to secure so-called “shared hosting,” but it takes a lot of extra work, and at this price there is no reason to put yourself through it.

The start of a new year allows us all the chance to reflect on all the things we did in the last one. In this age of ubiquitous data collection methods, this habit manifests itself ways that can be exciting and sublime.

Perhaps the most classic example of this is the Feltron Annual Report. This year’s edition is maybe less visually impressive than in years past, but it’s still both a beautiful demonstration of information design and a fascinating look into someone else’s life. Really spend some time going through his data and in your head you might find yourself imagining all those dinner parties, cab rides and drinks out with friends. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many is a book of statistics worth? Can a year really been distilled into eight pages?

I found myself even more excited about Feltron’s progress with his Daytum project. Still in private beta, it opens up the tools for any user to collect this same kind of data about themselves. Simple and elegant, just like the Feltron report itself. (Mycrocosm is another tool that does this.) And people are into it:

“It’s a natural progression from people sharing things like movies, photos and videos,” says Dennis Crowley, founder of Dodgeball, an early social-networking service for mobile phones which was sold to Google in 2005. “What’s left to share? Basic data.”

Even more: this year, Dopplr is sending personal annual reports to their members that show “data, visualisations and factoids” about their travels for 2008.

For my money, the most beautiful of these long zoom moments come in a form that is a hybrid between this data sharing and those more typical mediums from which it has progressed.

Every day in 2007 my friend Sonja took five seconds of video. She then edited them into a single, linear timeline and exhibited them in a Swiss storefront. The result was wonderfully effective. I can only imagine what kinds of detailed memories will be evoked when she goes back to watch it in a decade or so. Really, who needs a journal anymore? (I’m still waiting on her 2008 montage to be finished.)

For 2009, I have my eye on One Sound Each Day. It’s these tiniest of details that can really snap the bigger picture into focus.

What other year-end recaps have you been enjoying?

The year-end holidays are always a good time to spread some cheer.

Last year, we silk-screened on coffee bags and worked with local roasters, Old City Coffee, for our gift. This year we took the opportunity to work with a local baker, Zoë Lukas, owner of Whipped Baked Shop. She had “our” apostrophe fabricated into a cookie cutter and then baked and decorated 100 of these beauties.

Not only did they look great, they were delicious.

Most importantly, we were reminded of the old adage, “it is better to give than receive”. It was great to get so much warm feedback from our clients that received the gift, and the experience of working with Zoë was fantastic. Supporting other creative entrepreneurial people is its own reward.

Looking forward to figuring out next year’s project.

Haiku must contain
Five syllables, then seven,
Then five on line three.

Sometimes restrictions
Excite creativity
Through economy.

We are flexible:
We welcome your deep insights—
Silly haiku too.

Sometimes poets wish
To pass judgement on their peers.
Click the little stars.

Reader, do your part
To keep up local standards:
Flag the non-haiku.

Tom Boutell built this.
He works at P’unk Avenue,
Building useful sites.

5seven5.com

When Francis Geminiani comes home from Harvard to his working-class neighborhood, he faces his biggest challenge yet: coming out to his macho father, Fran. Based on the long-running Broadway comedy, Gemini the Musical features a cast of unforgettable characters and a score as tasty as good South Philly gravy.

After premiering at the Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia, the show had been accepted into the New York Music Theatre Festival, an intense musical theater showcase that happens each fall. Our job: to design an identity that would help the show stand out among its peers at the festival.

We based the concept of the logo off of a central element in the show: the main character’s birthday, and the climactic scene that develops around it. After several revisions of the logo, we turned to Brian Biggs and his exceptional illustration skills to refine the image into its final form. The rest of the show’s identity incorporates the same birthday cake theme through the use of photography.

We are all looking forward to the New York premiere of this show. Tickets go on sale September first, so take a look at the dates and see if you can make it.