“Why doesn’t America value art? I ask myself this question often, and the answers I come up with are the obvious ones: Works of art have no productive function in our economy. Art is politically dangerous. Contemporary art is too difficult to understand. So I asked the owner of my favorite café, because he’s Italian. He pointed to my notebook and said, ‘In Italy, school children have notebooks with grids. In America, you have notebooks with lines.’ In other words, we are taught to think in a linear manner, while they are taught to think spatially.”

“Paper enables a certain kind of thinking. Picture, for instance, the top of your desk. Chances are that you have a keyboard and a computer screen off to one side, and a clear space roughly eighteen inches square in front of your chair. What covers the rest of the desktop is probably piles — piles of papers, journals, magazines, binders, postcards, videotapes, and all the other artifacts of the knowledge economy. The piles look like a mess, but they aren’t.”

“Whether you are tying a bow tie or tying a shoe, the steps are the same. Here are some helpful hints if you are learning to tie a bow tie.”

“This site is dedicated to the artists, designers and musicians who create amazing gig posters to advertise shows and events. The art of gig posters, flyers, and handbills showcases the aspiration of the music as well as the talent of many artists who see little to no profit for creating gig posters.”

“Whether you are tying a bow tie or tying a shoe, the steps are the same. Here are some helpful hints if you are learning to tie a bow tie.”

“This site is dedicated to the artists, designers and musicians who create amazing gig posters to advertise shows and events. The art of gig posters, flyers, and handbills showcases the aspiration of the music as well as the talent of many artists who see little to no profit for creating gig posters.”

“Paper enables a certain kind of thinking. Picture, for instance, the top of your desk. Chances are that you have a keyboard and a computer screen off to one side, and a clear space roughly eighteen inches square in front of your chair. What covers the rest of the desktop is probably piles — piles of papers, journals, magazines, binders, postcards, videotapes, and all the other artifacts of the knowledge economy. The piles look like a mess, but they aren’t.”

“These days, though, there seems to be a measurable deceleration in high-tech innovation. Sure, PC’s are getting slightly faster, palmtops slightly brighter, and DVD players slightly cheaper, but where are the big, bold new ideas for consumer products? Where are the inventions on par with the pen scanner, the discount Web drugstore and the robot dog?”

“The Chicago urban environment is layered with graphic signage that crosses boundaries of time and culture. On a single city block it is possible to see elegant, vintage signage from the early 1900s juxtaposed against modern, color-saturated awnings. Signs designed by the slickest of graphic designers are placed next to handwritten scrawled messages… The exuberance of this signage makes the city a visually exciting place to live.”

“Why doesn’t America value art? I ask myself this question often, and the answers I come up with are the obvious ones: Works of art have no productive function in our economy. Art is politically dangerous. Contemporary art is too difficult to understand. So I asked the owner of my favorite café, because he’s Italian. He pointed to my notebook and said, ‘In Italy, school children have notebooks with grids. In America, you have notebooks with lines.’ In other words, we are taught to think in a linear manner, while they are taught to think spatially.”

“Most internet users have monitors that can display more colors than the 216 that are used in the traditional ‘browser-safe’ palette. moreCrayons is a bigger box of crayons; 4,096 colors for the web.”

“Founded in 1968, Lambiek (derived from the Willy Vandersteen comic character, Lambik) is more than just Europe’s oldest, and Holland’s largest comix shop — it is probably the oldest dedicated comics shop in the world. On the Lambiek website, online since the end of 1994, you will find the Comiclopedia — our online encyclopedia of comic strip artists, with biographies of over two thousand comic artists from around the world, with lots of underground comix artists.”

“Innovation doesn’t just start at the top. You don’t have to wait for the CEO or the Executive Management Committee. Most of the best innovation initiatives we’ve seen were grassroots innovation teams (GRIT) and came from ordinary people in the middle of the organization… people who somehow came to understand the importance of innovation and wanted to do something about it.”

“An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.”

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, that explains why savvy marketers are beginning to pay much more attention to the graphical presentation of their business proposals. Prospective clients facing the prospect of wading through stacks of proposals filled with hundreds of thousands of words usually welcome efforts designed to make their lives easier.”