On good days it all works so well

bio-diversity from christoph niemann :: leaf collection

I love collecting inspiration. These are exquisite. Visit his site and the nytimes.com link to see more.

Christoph Niemann's illustrations have appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration. His work has won numerous awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Art Directors Club and American Illustration. He is the author of two children's books, "The Pet Dragon," which teaches Chinese characters to young readers, and "The Police Cloud." After 11 years in New York, he moved to Berlin with his wife, Lisa, and their sons, Arthur, Gustav and Fritz. His Web site is christophniemann.com.From the NYTimes.com today, part of the beautiful collection:

via niemann.blogs.nytimes.com

5 books that promise to rock my world

Interesting that the academic life offers intense periods of work and production with bookends where you find your life again and make some sense. Maybe. I try to return to books on the night table and keep adding to the list, finding things for class or writing that bring our thinking to the next level. (A note here: Dan Morrison reads two books (at least) a week, so I'm the weak link in the Morrison chain. He'll read Voltaire's biography and another history of VietNam, along with a book on military strategy and be able to recall all. Wow.)

So here are my picks for this break, after I finish Gringa by Melissa Hart (wonderful UOregon SOJC Lecturer), a lovely memoir of growing up bridging cultures. Great read.

Lord, we live in an interesting world. Read these:

Daniel Goleman's Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything (2009) is proving to be a great guide for the new Green Brand Strategies course we're offering in the Winter. I listened to the audiobook on a drive to Portland, realizing that advertising professionals need this thinking. Great inspiration.

Grant McCracken's Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation (2009) should be required reading for anyone involved in an evolving organization (which, of course, makes you wonder why anyone would be in a non-evolving org). This is marketing, responsibility, future thinking, digital relevance, and anthropology come together.

Warren Berger's Glimmer How Design Can Transform Your Life and Maybe Even the World (2009) puts meaning to the concept of Design Thinking and how it pushed relevance in what we do and where we do it. Berger is a master at taking ad-think stuff and showing us how it indeed changes culture and people. By focusing on the awesomeness of Bruce Mau, grand thinker, he has a winner here. I can't wait to dive in.

"Design is the glimmer in God's eye."

Garr Reynolds is so dead-on with Presention Zen Design (2009). The reviews I've read and spreads I've been able to see will make it required for a professional finishing class for our Creative Strategists. It takes the real design thinking of presentations he introduced in PZ and gives it meaning with a stronger design push. Famed Nancy Duarte (duarte design -- beautiful site) and slideology) loves it too, which is good enough to make it required reading for us.

Must do this: The Creative Process Illustrated: How Advertising's Big Ideas are Born by Glenn Griffin and Deborah Morrison (2010) has been sent to our HOW Books editor, a 350-page manuscript. It's a wonderful collaboration, but I have to tell you Glenn Griffin is pretty much a genius. When such a robust, inspiring work comes grows from a dissertation chapter and is done with such ferocious attention to detail and spirit, you have a winner. If you want to see the creative process thinking of Bogusky, Mainwaring, Roddy, Azula, Howald, Kennedy (yes, David Kennedy, the icon), Mountjoy, Rice, and about two dozen others, get ready for the book out from HOW Books in Spring 2010. To that end, I'm reading the manuscript one last time in the next week.

 

lovely art directors club + texas::oregon mashup

So honored by the Grandmaster status conferred by The Art Directors Club of NYC. It shows what happens when you work with brilliant people.

A photo from that night below. Oregon and Texas alum together; I saw some of the best parts of my life meet and mingle. With that I learned 3 important things:

1 -- there's something absolutely affirming about seeing people excited about their careers and this possibility

2 -- your old friends and your new friends can indeed end up in a happy place together, on the same day

3 -- do good work, love your family, don't be an asshole

simon mainwaring :: how to navigate the future of advertising

If you're planning a career in advertising or the creative world, take 10 minutes and listen to this. He hits the importance of failure, the knowledge of social media and its strengths, inventing in a media landscape that is constantly shifting. As a permalancer, he's his own brand: great takeaways here from a seasoned, smart creative leader.

Thanks, Isaac Viel, for shooting and editing. Thanks, Julie Nelson, for interview. Thanks, production team of Josh Quinn, Jessica Stuhr and Gabe Toth-Fejel for all the work. What a team!

lemonade :: the unerring optimism of creatives in advertising

So many industries, so many people have taken hard hits in the past year. The advertising profession is not alone. But I am always taken with the optimism and the get-back-up-and-try-again force of nature that happens as creative people decide they must do something to make meaning, even as their lives change. They sculpt that new direction. An inspiration.

Lemonade makes that statement.

"More than 130,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs in this “Great Recession.” Lemonade is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives."

via lemonademovie.com

Idea Industry just laying there, waiting

Some wonderful UOregon students visited IDBranding in Portland and Ashly Stewart played hostess and instigator (my new favorite label for what we do). Isaac Viel took this of Idea Industry laying happily on a desk. Nice to see (thanks, Ashly and Isaac).

By the way, the content IDBranding has on their site is so smart -- I've said this before -- and serves as a great place for smart thinking.

boches brings it :: fail fast

Always, always impressed with Edward Boches and his perspective on the future.Required reading.

There is no shortage of discussion these days about the future of marketing, communications and advertising agencies. Claims and predictions abound. Outbound marketing is dead. The age of interruption is over. Mobile is all that matters.

via edwardboches.com

10,000 Words :: blog recommendation

A must-read everyday. Mark Luckie aggregates his own ideas, smart thinking from around the journalism/media universe. This particular post gives another set of tools for data visualization.

One of the most popular trends in online journalism is taking publicly available data and translating it into visualizations or infographics that readers and viewers can quickly and easily understand. A large percentage of the visualizations you see on the web were built from scratch, which can take a considerable amount of time and effort. The following sites allow you to mash your data in record time.

Widgenie lets users upload data from a variety of sources such as Excel spreadsheets, CSV files or Google Spreadsheets and using a drag and drop interface to create custom charts and graphs. Once the data has been arranged and styled, it is presented as a widget that can be embedded in web sites and social networks.

Like the previously mentioned sites, Verifiable allows users to upload, mash and visualize data. Verifiable just launched earlier this year and has fewer publicly available data sets, but it does offer greater flexibility on how the data is styled and presented. Graphic designers will appreciate the ability to change and tweak the presentation and add details like custom labels and shading. Verifiable is free to use if you keep your charts public, but also has a inexpensive pricing plan for those who want to keep their work private.

DataMasher There are a lot of cool things about DataMasher: the available datasets, the community built around that data, the unique visualization tools, and the easy-to-use interface of the site. What is truly intriguing about the site is the way users take two different datasets and create visual hypotheses. For example, to visualize the Most Reproductive States (US), one user combined the number of US births witH population figures from the 2008 US Census. At the very least, DataMasher and the other sites listed here are great resources for generating ideas on how to mix and remix various datasets.

Also on 10,000 Words:• Data centers, APIs and what they mean to journalism• 12 ways to find the best in data visualization• Where to find the best online interactive maps• News databases: Turning numbers into knowledge• 5 Ways to take your map mashups to the next levelLabels: database, design

via www.10000words.net

intersection of pdx energy :: today

Great intersection of Portland energy, great work + workplace, smart thinking. Last week I visited IDBranding and saw wonderful things happening in a beautiful space.Their sense of brand culture thinking and working to show that in all content is impressive.

Today, I'll swing by MUTT Industries and see how a    startup with all the potential in the world works on a November Monday. Mutt got me early on with their scrappy approach and beautiful work. Even their opening page shows their humor and sense of who they are.

More intersection :: I'm teaching the Strategic Creativity course for our Master's cohort and we're hearing tonight from the Oregon Humanities and the new message and identity created by the inimitable Jelly Helm.

Look at the latest video on The Power of an Idea:

Finally our cohort will talk about Neumeier's The Designful Company How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation. Bright manifesto on how design and innovation should skewer through all parts of the company. Not easy work, but when it happens...wow. And it all comes together.

www.typography.com

Hoefler + Frere-Jones, a type foundry, has a site full of elegant faces and information. Look at The Proteus Project and Gotham as beautiful moments, but their entire list deserves a readthrough. In fact, I heard them speaking on npr -- they were speaking about Gotham, the elegant font used in the Obama campaign -- and I realized how much they care about the invisibility of their craft. They want typography to be a support system, unnoticeable because it does it's job so well to help the reader and convey info. Lovely.

Their Troubleshooting and Info Guide in ASK H+F-J is full of good info (the OpenType post, as example).

 

 
Leviathan

and back to the blog :: three things we should do

After playing with how to think out loud / share / build community with all the tools we have at hand, I've come to this, the blog will get richer in content for thinking and sharing. I talk alot about cultural and creative themes in class and this will be my place to archive those. Facebook will be quick shares of an array of readings and cool stuff as I've been doing for the last few months. Twitter is for short bursts and retweeting smart stuff from others. Delicious and Zotero (sort of social) are for organizing. I just know you needed to know that.

And so, the three things I know as I sit here and finally make good (or actually better...I've just been flinging it out there and this organizes the process) are three smart concepts, all of them handed to me yesterday. It was "watch out for hidden messages" day as I sat through meetings, ran errands. I want to make them more apparent in my life.

SKATE TO WHERE THE PUCK IS GOING TO BE, NOT WHERE IT'S BEEN.  A Wayne Gretsky paraphrase, this gem should be embroidered on pillows, tattooed on foreheads all over j-schools and the media professions. Doing that -- even now, when the future acts much more like a golden snitch than a hockey puck -- will assure our success. How do we anticipate where things will be? How do we teach and learn and hire for next year rather than last year? How do we take the leap, change things up, give others the lift to do the same? I look at Victors & Spoils and what it probably took to get them there. Jay Chiat would approve.

MORE WAG LESS BARK. Really, get along and make things happen together. Even if you're in the midst of discussion and change, it works better to have the teamsmanship model rather than the bitching+moaning approach. I've done both. B+M not only cuts energy, it stops progress and when I do it, I know things will spiral. This is not to say love is all we need and skip along, but does make the case for a roll-up-your-sleeves approach. When combined with bravery and taking a stand, you have magic.

THINK GLOBAL, BUY LOCAL. Works for potatoes and sunflowers (have you been to a farmer's market lately? talk about real stuff...wow), but it also stands for working relationships. We look to thought leaders and icons for inspiration, but the real stuff comes in the hallways and what we do there. How do we invest in our people and build that to make better thinkers? It also means we can't define ourselves by the budget or the title, something I've learned from watching some of the best creative thinkers in the world do their stuff.

Back to work.

Studio20 Skills: What j-school students should know about setting up and running a website : Learning The Lessons of Nixon

Web self-relianceWhat it is: the ability to set up and run a web site without assistance, permission, or support1.Why you want it: Because begging sucks; because you’ll try far fewer experiments even if you can get a friend to help you for free, because doing so costs social capital, and that capital isn’t infinite; because if you don’t, you’ll be more dependent on an employer for a job and your livelihood, and who knows? You, yes YOU, might save journalism. And even if you don’t, you will have grand adventures on the Web and be able to Make Things, which is only the best thing ever.

via www.cadence90.com

Good notes on understanding the tools of web design and web thinking.

meaningful content multitasking

There is such remarkable opportunity in our writing and thinking lives: we can share what we've created, how we're thinking, what we're inventing through so many outlets. Twitter becomes a tool to help ignite quick connections, get the word out, read and react quickly to ideas. Facebook is a hub that lets us talk ritual and connection and see what others are doing. Vimeo and youtube give us a platform. Blogs allow us to think out loud and archive. We text and fill ideabooks and take notes. All good, except that I'm writing to fuel the process rather than writing to tell stories or frame the next idea. I note that there are now creative tools that help you crossplatform and prioritize. But damn, I want to clear the table and just write the story.

psfk asks: can planners be the new creatives?

The January PSFK London conference has a series of great videos. This one found via twitter -- three different tweets in 15 minutes on this one -- and asks a smart question in this transformational time:

sketchbook from sxsw :: ideabook as art

Go here for amazing flickr capture of all 70 pages of notes. Designer Mike Rohde makes note-taking an art.
His blog shows process -- as example he designed the word cloud on the SXSW bag everyone carried -- and his wonderful sketchbook proves that we can make wonderful content from the simplest assignments.

5 ways advertising can save journalism + the people who do it

From sxsw to the halls of every journalism school in the country (including Oregon's SOJC), the dilemma is clear. How do news organizations -- newspapers + magazines -- make the digital leap and stay solvent? How do those organizations pay to keep writers and visual journalists of authority working at what they do best (and what our democracy needs)? How does advertising play an important role in the

setting type :: old technology with such possibility

My friend has set type for decades, even as he was an investigative reporter for various papers and now as he publishes a hand-set, self-printed 16-page journal. A beautiful piece. He's teaching me to set type and use his small, elegant printing press. What an honor. Some photos of this morning's lesson.

 He's so fast and nimble in his moves to set lines of type -- 10 point Kennerley here -- and moves deftly. A craftsman.

visualizing 2008 in numbers :: wow

Good Mag and volumeone.com, you are so wonderful with your transparency, your flash, your visual poetry. This Always inspiration:

good advice for creatives

Three things I read this morning that strike me as best advice:

Get a great blend of people with different core strengths and perspectives to collaborate.  As ideas develop, it's important to have "no-bullshit" sessions to challenge the ideas from the outset.  It's also important to know when to pull the plug…this is tricky because persistence is often the key ingredient for success but in the end, so is good judgment.
cloudraker And so much fun to look at.

This essay presents a concept called confluence culture to describe the changes that the advertising industry is currently undergoing relative to the rise of digital culture. We argue that all advertisers, in order insure their relevancy, must recognize the role confluence culture plays in their work.
Sheehan + Morrison in First Monday
Beyond convergence: confluence culture and the role of the advertising agency in a changing world

Visualize information so that everyone in the organization can see concepts, flow, energy, and ideas. Have a board that dedicates space to this.
From my notes during Scott Belsky's Behance talk at sxsw Making Ideas Happen

5 big takeaways from sxsw

Though I have a ton of content to think about, I took some time to consider all on the way home. So here's a first glance at what went on for me. The SXSW Interactive gathering is amazing, inspiring, smart; 12000 people strong all considering the digital space. Used to be only nerds and coders. Now, designers, agencies, brands, bloggers, activists, digital thinkers, public intellectuals, writers, journalists, and artists gather to talk about digital and interactive.

All that said, a few takeaways. More later today.

1 :: Terms + Trends that were used handily from one session to another. Administrivia (used by a Harvard Digital Natives Project student who explored real digital issues of the university classroom). Backchannel (used cross conference) which we saw real time as twitter was used in the best and worst ways: twitter used so much -- many times mindless or self-serving stuff -- that AT+T had to bring in extra towers to service all the iphoneage twittering going on (it was a Mac conference almost exclusively), and twittering that enriched sessions with backchannel side conversations, explanations, exploration. Very interesting. Deadtree media (used often and pointedly) during conversations about what news organizations (i.e., newspapers often at forefront of this conversation) will be doing to form a sustainable business plan to bring news to society.

2 :: Smart inspiring speakers that were there to bring transformation to the audience. Steven Johnson on The Ecosystem of News offered the thoughtful, informative position that old growth media -- print and appointment television -- will fade as new growth media grows to fill in and grow in its place. It's happening quickly now but the growth is healthy. Now to find the business model that supports the people and thinkers involved. Advertising + news must work togetehr to do that. Alex Bogusky on a bike share program but the real point was that creative people -- and orgs such as advertising agencies, design firms, pr agencies, universities -- should be curious and confident enough to use their expertise in other ways, to stick their noses in to new and different problems and offer solutions.

3 :: Behance with actionable creativity and products that support that. Wow. A network, a community, a thoughtful and smart digital discussion. And tools. Great presentation and ways to make ideas happen in organizations and meetings.

4 :: Toolkit importance. To be a strong participant, notetaking plus twitter (at its best) plus flip and cameras plus. That means a strong inclination to report on the sessions, to connect and share. Very interesting to see people blogging throughout a session, making content. I couldn't help but compare that to classrooms where open laptops usually means someone is checking facebook. Two sessions really stoof out as important in the tools area. One was Behance as noted above, another was a great session on presentation that explored how to make presesntations more interesting and vital to the information. Big takeaway there: kill the bullet points, pictures means more than words, there is no research done on the effectiveness of ppt or keynote. Wow on the Keynote Presentations that used mindmaps drawn as the talk went on, real time creative info management. This is the one for the Nate Silver Keynote:

 

5 :: Interesting, energetic people who believe in ideas. It was everywhere. The sense of creative energy that wasn't confined to things or titles, but to people engaging in something big. Even the discussions of news and journalism -- and for our purposed this is big -- was met with excitement and enthusiasm for the reinvention of the model. Newspapers would be well served to attend, listen to the Steven Johnsons of the world, think about invention rather than the sadness of end eras.

All in all amazing. I'm proud that our Bedbury Scholars used their time wisely, immersing themselves in the culture of the digital energy. They'll be bringing that home in presentations and big platforms.

5 takes on curiosity

We've been talking. The fuel we use as creative strategists, as writers and thinkers, as risk-takers, doers + makers of things is our intellectual curiosity. Why? and What if? become the tools of invention, our saving grace when we find ourselves stuck or without hope or searching. So, let us find those things that pique and provoke.

1 :: Begin with a premise. The creative process is steeped in wondering. The rational tools of research methodology, collaborative approaches, scientific inquiry are used by asking pertinent questions repeatedly to find answers. Curiosity leads us to answers, to more questions, to bigger conceptual platforms. Interesting research:
Kashdan + Steger (2007). Curiosity and pathways to well-being and meaning in life: Traits, states, and everyday behaviors. Motivation + Emotion 31 (3), 159-173.  Keywords: Curiosity Happiness Hedonism Pleasure Positive emotion
Much good info here, but this is the takeaway: "Greater trait curiosity and greater curiosity on a given day also predicted greater persistence of meaning in life from one day into the next." Being curious, the data suggests, predicts more meaning in life. When we wonder, we grow.
And using this as a personal and professional building block? Wow. Click here for a collection of what ifs. Click here for discussions on curiosity and creativity. Of course, listen to the astounding Ken Robinson talking about human creativity and education :: 20 minutes that can change your life.
But maybe an interesting way to imagine curiosity as creative prod is to listen to a poet who curiously delves into time and humanity. Poet John Rives asks :: Is 4 a.m. the new midnight?

2:: The Curiosity Group gives us a tour of imagination and smart thinking, letting us connect curiosity with strategic ideas. After all the best work happens when it's built on strong curiosity. Wonderful, whimsical and they're in Portland? With a flying elephant? Move that couch into the bathroom. A screen grab of their work page.

3 :: Our new School of Journalism Advertising curriculum is built around the creative strategist model we've created. One of the classes that help tell that story is Curiosity for Strategists, a course built on creative and conceptual thinking, mythology + archetypes, anthropology, storytelling, and performance. Beautiful, fun stuff that leads to people like Mark Lewis, Professional Storyteller, coming to class.

4 :: To be curious is to build the architecture of meaningful ideas. Digging for insights is part of the the Strategic Planner's DNA, finding the conceptual nuggets that lead to smarter, honest work that is compelling and memorable. When we visited Nike, we saw the trappings of good work everywhere.  This piece is part of a campaign that started with a simple question: how do sports affects the millions of girls on the planet in ways other than competition?

 

5 :: Curiosity then invention. Quintessential W+K Portland. If we're curious, we weave together ideas, invent. We make things.

type curiosity

Since we've been talking typography and since we're curious about the interesting, the new, the unexpected in type design, I searched a bit tonight and found these. Always giving attribution when found.

Also: some twitter connections got me here: very cool links from @usetypography and @typedirectors.

From Typecon 05 New York Crystian Cruz flickr account:

or this from Deviant Art's site (culled from somewhere else I believe...honor to the creator) ::

mashups + sweet connections

Very cool idea and site -- The Best Mashups on the Web Mashup Awards -- that lets you see the power of connecting conceptually. Some favorites from the archives here:

1 -- Helveti-Tweet :: a stylish stream of Twitter updates mentioning Helvetica

2 -- Pixelpipe :: liberate your content is the line they use. Basically you can push all content you produce into one pipeline and deliver to multiple platforms...video, audio, text. wow. from their site:

3 -- Twitter Venn :: oh. my. word. This is fantastic. "Enter two or three search terms separated by commas and press the 'Search' button or type Enter/Return. After the data is retrieved a Venn Diagram is shown which illustrates the rate of tweets containing the search terms in the various combinations. See the Neoformix post on Twitter Venn for more details."  This was created by Jeff Clark. Dear Jeff Clark: yes. Here's a screen grab from the site...homage to the authors.

4 -- TubeGraph :: Talk about your interesting feedback models. Lets you review certain pieces of a youtube video for rating.

5 -- Joblighted :: Certainly apropos for today. Mashing twitter, aggregate jobs postings via keywords, and mapping to let you see how and where jobs are popping up and where to contact. You know...there is some energy out there.

w+k radio

Hilary Jones reminds me that Wieden's radio grooviness lets us in on all things creative and compelling. Staffed by  W+K media/creative/support types on a daily basis, the shows range from feature pieces, new genres, cool bands of the hour.

It also reminds me that the best advertising agencies are thought leaders, able to come up with new ways to morph media, new ways to get everyone engaged. Who else might use this model? Are newspapers out there racing to reconfigure an old medium to a new and interesting use? Could in-house radio be the perfect magnet for getting a community of employees working and playing together? How many other agencies are building cultural connections like this?

This is the front piece to the W+K Radio site. It'll lead you to good stuff.

making data come alive

Good Magazine -- always a favorite and worth a lengthy discussion due to smart design and inspiring content -- posts an illustration (here) and an accompanying Flash piece to show us what the war really costs. The design and info are by Matt Owens, principal at volumeone and a partner in the design collective Athletics, and Jason Bishop, a designer at the School of Visual Arts (always an inspiration).

See the video here.