Coudal Partners admiration
I've long admired Coudal Partners because they're a design firm that puts a significant amount of effort into doing fun things for themselves: movies, online features, the Museum of Online Museums, a great website. They also have a [growing] array of design-centric business projects: JewelBoxing (CD/DVD packaging), The Deck (think-they're-better-than-you ad network), Pixie discs (live recordings of The Pixies), lowercase tee (kids t-shirts), pinsetter (letter pins). They went from doing design for regular clients to doing design for themselves. From an article on Coudal Partners in the Chicago Sun-Times:
"The whole work-for-hire thing in design and advertising, where the client owns everything outright, is a broken model," he said.
Since 2002, Coudal, 46, has stitched together a number of projects where his eight-employee firm enjoys an ownership stake.
