Ideas + Makers: 5Great : changing how you think

October 12, 2007

5Great : changing how you think

Let's hit a couple of classics and and some sidestreet moments that take us to new places. Other suggestions welcome:

1 -- TED conferences
Come on, you know this one or you should. Every click offers a new perspective for creative thinkers using design, science, art, culture, technology as fodder for making your own ideas. I loved the guy talking about all the cultural references to 4am...poetic. Some others I've recently loved:
• Steven Pinker on language and thought
• Jeff Skoll makes movies that change thinking
• Carolyn Porco on Saturn
• Stefan Sagmeister shares happy design
• Mena Trott tours her blog-world

2 -- Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Life
This has been around for a couple of decades (!) but oh man is it good. Read and study. Apply it to your work. Look through his design projects. All salute Bruce!

3 -- Edward Tufte and the love of visual information
Tufte is a Yale design prof (emeritus which shows respect, longevity and leadership in the area after retirement) who focuses on design of complex data. His books are intellectual, thick with examples and thought pieces. His courses -- I took one in Portland this summer -- are 8 hours of brain candy (and you get all 4 books...awesome).

4 -- Coudal Partners Video Wall
Intriguing short movies on delicious topics. Look at the keyboard piece. Interesting that Coudal Partners offers this on the site: a design, advertising and interactive studio in Chicago, as an ongoing experiment in web publishing, design and commerce. Which means they are creating content to see how it works and where it lives. Inspiration!

5 -- I dare you to watch the entire speech. Think of the death threats he had received, you can see the fear in his face but it is not in his voice. Look at the audience dressed in Sunday best. Consider that no such gathering had ever occurred. Understand that if you are a woman, gay, a person of color, a white man looking for justice, you are affected by the seeds planted on this day. This is about you.