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Chicago based poster designer Jay Ryan of the Bird Machine has an exhibit on display at the University of Illinois’ I Space gallery down in River North. If you’re unfamiliar with Jay Ryan’s work he’s known for his whimsical hand drawn posters promoting rock band shows which often include images of an assortment of animals. I believe the exhibit focuses on some of his newer work from 2005-2007.

Luckily the exhibit just started last week (Dec 7th) so there’s plenty of time to check it out. The exhibit is running through February 12, 2008, check the I Space site for the gallery address and hours.

Last week I attended the PhizzPop Design Challenge in Chicago. The event was sponsored by Microsoft and and it was pretty much a big marketing event to raise awareness of Microsoft Expression Suite and woo the creative web community into trying the product. I’m not one for attending events as such but I decided to give it a shot since I heard about it through the IxDA group. I was pretty much clueless as to what was to take place other than the vague description of designers competing in some type of challenge. The event was held at the Underground and I figured at the very least it would be worth attending for the free drinks.

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If you missed the first SEED conference in Chicago with Jason Fried of 37 Signals, Carlos Segura of T.26 and Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners like I did, this is your chance to catch it the second time around. From what I read and heard from an old coworker, the conference focuses on design and entrepreneurship, and it definitely sounded worth the money. Unfortunately I’m out of town that weekend so I’m missing my chance to go again! Doah!