Hang around the designers’ corner of the internet for any amount of time and you quickly are overwhelmed with great work and lame work, sound advice and bad advice, rules, ideas, maxims, quotes, plagiarism, inspiration and inanity.
Over the last few years all of these things have been getting mashed up and spread around, especially on Tumblr, Posterous and sites like FFFFOUND. I can’t even count the number of simple but lovely posters, graphics and sketches featuring an inspirational quote or a set of rules or a piece of advice set in a condensed gothic font and overlayed on a moody photograph. Don’t get me wrong — for the most part I like them. Sometimes they make you think or give you a needed kick in the butt — or at the very least give you a peek into another creative person’s head.
I’ve had the above poster hanging in my home workspace for several years now. It’s a constant reminder, and I like that.
But it seems that pretty much everywhere I go online lately I am being told what to do…
As you may remember, a few months ago Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers hit shelves. Today, I’m excited to share with you a new XPLANE video that offers a sneak peek into the inner-makings of the book and why it is so unique, and useful, in today’s business world. The three-minute video, created by our ever-brilliant creative team, can be seen on both Vimeo and YouTube:
For the most part, the video was created with markers, whiteboards, sticky notes, paper and other “low-tech” tools commonly used in Gamestorming.
Written by XPLANE founder and business design mastermind, Dave Gray, XPLANE consultant James Macanufo and Sunni Brown of Bright Spot Information Design, Gamestorming is a collection of 80 games to help teams break down barriers, communicate better, and generate new ideas, insights, and strategies.
In case you haven’t seen it, a TED talk has been buzzing around lately, given by Jason Fried, co-founder and president of 37signals and “workplace expert.” (Coincidentally, Fried’s company produces software that enables teams to work together online.) Here’s an opinion piece by him on CNN, along with the TED video clip.
So, I’ve been stewing over it for the last few days. Well, maybe stewing is a bit of a stretch, but I’m definitely leaning toward some defense of the office and its environment. I’m not disagreeing with Jason on the number of potential distractions in a day (notice the key word choice of “potential”). What I am disagreeing on is the office worker’s ability to navigate their day in a way that allows them to be productive.
I happily operate on the vaguely defined belief that there are benefits to serendipitous interactions that happen throughout the day. The simple fact is that we need distraction sometimes; we need breaks. I’m not buying the parallel that Jason is trying to set up where concentration works like sleep patterns. While we need to sleep deeply for a good period of time, our attention spans are not built like that. At least mine isn’t. I’m pretty sure I’m unable to hold a single line of thought for longer than an hour. Regardless of my lack of hard data, I’m not convinced we need to be socially isolated to get the benefit of deep thought. In fact, the opposite can happen.
Seen on Dave Gray’s site: “A short, 5-minute chat with Jason Fried about nature and how it influences his work.”
A refreshingly different and light podcast touching on design and creativity, nature and springtime, inspiration and solutions, evolution and adaptation, complexity and simplicity — with sketches!
The pairs of images in this “Similarities” set are similar visually in one way or another. They are presented without judgement as to the motives of their creators. The viewers of the pieces can form their own opinion(s) about what they see.
Interesting. For me, sometimes a familiar place is conducive to creativity (my office, library, favorite coffee shop or wine bar) — but I also like to go to unfamiliar, unrelated places to think on creative problems.
Creativity is commonly thought of as a personality trait that resides within the individual. We count on creative people to produce the songs, movies, and books we love; to invent the new gadgets that can change our lives; and to discover the new scientific theories and philosophies that can change the way we view the world. Over the past several years, however, social psychologists have discovered that creativity is not only a characteristic of the individual, but may also change depending on the situation and context. The question, of course, is what those situations are: what makes us more creative at times and less creative at others?
“Dear Members of the Cult of Done, I present to you a manifesto of done. This was written in collaboration with Kio Stark in 20 minutes because we only had 20 minutes to get it done.”
I’m a project guy. As an artist, entrepreneur, educator and amateur philosopher, I always have a number of projects going, both personal and professional. Sometimes they go somewhere, sometimes I get bored and abandon them. One of the beauties of the internet is that even abandoned projects continue to exist and can be picked up or reenergized at any moment. Here’s the definitive list of projects that I am working on or have worked on in the past (A work in progress). The list is alphabetical because I don’t work on these projects in any kind of linear way. They are like a busy kitchen: there is always something simmering, something boiling, something set aside to cool for awhile, something in the deep freeze, and something being served. In fact I am still working on this list. If you see something with no explanation it’s because I haven’t finished writing the description yet :)
Awesomeness from Merlin Mann: “’Making Time to Make’ is a 3-part series about attention management for people who do creative work. It’s designed to help you firewall the time and attention you need to get out of the lite communication business and into your studio.”
Check out this video we made for Kronos to help celebrate International Women's Day, 2011. Learn more in this xBlog post or jump over to YouTube and watch it there.
Azure poster
XPLANE | Dachis Group developed a A vibrant, engaging poster showing how Microsoft Azure enables developers to run applications and store data on Microsoft servers. The poster recently took top honors in the American Business Awards.
Hang around the designers’ corner of the internet for any amount of time and you quickly are overwhelmed with great work and lame work, sound advice and bad advice, rules, ideas, maxims, quotes, plagiarism, inspiration and inanity.
