Ideas + Makers

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