I’ve been working on this campaign for a client…while I don’t t usually do this, I’d love you all to help.

Piece by Piece is way to show our support for breast cancer sufferers by aiding research (through the National Breast Cancer foundation) to help solve the puzzle. The online mosaic is made up of the faces or chosen images of those committed and caring people who want to donate a dollar, or more to breast cancer research.

So here’s the idea….

• I would like to give 10 of you 50 pieces for Christmas.
• I’d love you to share your pieces with family and friends in a pay it forward style and we will their match donations (or yours!) dollar for dollar.
• We’ve got $2000 to give away. And we need to give it away by the end of the year.
• All your readers/followers/friends and family need to do is to include #payitforward with their message in the comments box when they donate.

Let me know if you’d like to be part of this and I’ll set you up.

http://www.piecebypiece.net.au/

2. Share what you discover.
And be generous when you do. Not everybody went exploring with you. Let them live vicariously through your adventures.

3. Do something. Anything.
Dance. Talk. Build. Network. Play. Help. Create. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re doing it. Sitting around and complaining is not an acceptable form of ‘something,’ in case you were wondering.

4. Embrace your innate weirdness.
No one is normal. Everyone has quirks and insights unique to themselves. Don’t hide these things—they are what make you interesting.

5. Have a cause.
If you don’t give a damn about anything, no one will give a damn about you.

6. Minimize the swagger.
Egos get in the way of ideas. If your arrogance is more obvious than your expertise, you are someone other people avoid.

7. Give it a shot.
Try it out. Play around with a new idea. Do something strange. If you never leave your comfort zone, you won’t grow.

8. Hop off the bandwagon.
If everyone else is doing it, you’re already late to the party.  Do your own thing, and others will hop onto the spiffy wagon you built yourself. Besides, it’s more fun to drive than it is to get pulled around.

9. Grow a pair.
Bravery is needed to have contrary opinions and to take unexpected paths. If you’re not courageous, you’re going to be hanging around the water cooler, talking about the guy who actually is.

10. Ignore the scolds.
Boring is safe, and you will be told to behave yourself. The scolds could have, would have, should have. But they didn’t. And they resent you for your adventures.

So perfect. Love Jessica Hagy. From here

I like to remind myself that one of  the roles of the Creative Strategist is to promote collaboration and innovation, to lead the improv disciplines of “what if’ and “yes and” (and make sure the creativity killing Nupski monster doesn’t get fed too much)

What if’s….

Sydney’s pretty full of ‘what if’s” right now. This year, Art & About Sydney put out a call, asking people across Australia to send their responses, in ten words or less, to that one simple question – what if? – two words that put the power of imagining back on the agenda, and inspire us all to think beyond the here and now.…(see the entire list here).

Yes, ands

When it comes to creative and development, improv is critical….

Here’s another way of looking at it: Improvisation is all about viewing your failures (“I don’t like it” or “it doesn’t work they way it should”) as positives that lead you in newer and better directions. The messy, circular paths we have to take in order to reach our goals oftentimes show us things we normally wouldn’t have seen before. And that makes us a lot better at doing our jobs.

Build improvisation into your thinking. Saying “Yes” makes everyone into the good guy and gives you a better chance of delivering what you hoped to. It’s also more fun

Baking is a wonderous thing. I’ve been doing it for more than 30 years (yikes!) It’s both a wonderful way to show off and a deeply satisfying exercise of creating something from not much.

The I’ve learned so much

• The importance of balance and ratios.
• The impact of temperature
• Context. Recipes are designed for specific cake pans, placement in the oven is important, fan forced makes a difference.
• How lightness is achieved through chemistry
• How overworking something can start to diminish the result
• How fragile things are when they’re just cooked

I know how to bake, I don’t need a recipe now (but I love reading them for inspiration) and I can look in a pantry and see a bakery of the potentials.

And as I’m preparing to be chief baker for a weekend away with mates, it’s got me thinking: how do I remember stuff? How do I pull together what I know and what I have to get a treat on the table?

I’ve asked a bunch of people what their process is, and the response has been varied from “I don’t know how I do anything” to the lucky duck who has an eidetic memory.

I’ve written about personal taxonomies, my Bowerbird ways, and general bricolage and pirate treasure pursuits for crafting creative strategy before and now I’m wondering how great the impact is of the things that I do (and not just the things that I see, read and save) that help me create delights.

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” Marshall McLuhan

I love the video below. How are your tools helping to shape how you understand your world?

To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell;
to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a great fragment of thunder sets in motion
the rumble of the planet and the foam.

… freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.

– from “The Poet’s Obligation” Pablo Neruda

• “Don’t you think that the purpose of language is communication?”
•  Richard Feynman, to one of his pretentious colleagues

• Is the idea to inform your reader or making him feel like a fucking dunce?
• Al Swearengen, Deadwood

• “But he hasn’t got anything on!” the whole town cried out at last. The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.”
• Hans Christian Andersen, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”

Creative strategy time management plan:

• Watch 1
• Observe, read, reflect, see patterns, notice gaps.
• “our job is to turn human understanding into business advantage for our clients”
  “understanding of human behaviour is invaluable in creating advertising that truly works…we live lives full of irrationalities. The human brain is not the Oval Office, making authoritative decisions. It’s the press office — issuing post-rationalisations after the fact.”
• Watch yourself too
• “Empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble.”
  - Simon Baron-Cohen
• Do 1
• Make stuff. Get your hands dirty. Experience the stuff you make. Walk it through to the end.
• Don’t just make friends with the creative team- be part of the creative team
• “efficiency is doing things right, effectiveness is doing the right thing.”
•  Have experience of both
• Be active- see all kinds of music played live, watch plays, go to all kinds of markets, take every opportunity to taste  what people are doing for fun and to express themselves. Participate in the culture of your city.
•  Teach 1
• Share, present, mentor, write, and help people embrace new ideas
• One of my favourite ruminations at the moment is: “If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together”.
• There’s not much point in running ahead of the pack and streaking over the horizon if no one is with you.
• Embracing a teaching discipline will help you (and your project and your team) go far.

My inexhaustible crush on Jonathan Harris continues:

Data is extremely limited in what in can say about life.  There is a popular belief nowadays that roughly goes, “Give me enough data, and then I will understand.” This is only true for certain kinds of superficial insights.  There are other deeper, more essential and ineffable insights, which have to do with the heart and soul of things, and you will never find these hiding in data.  They are to be found only through personal experience, solitude, and contemplation

I’d have to agree with Mr Shirky that we don’t have an information problem but I’m not sure that answer is merely filtering. It’s what you do with it that counts.

“I wanted to get into show business because I thought it would give me close proximity to monsters.”
- Stephen Tobolowsky

Something I tell the team quite often is: “it’s not show friends, it’s show business“.

And it is true. While it isn’t a fairy tale there are monsters, there are things lurking in the darkness in all kinds of show business. I’m liking the notion that we need to remind ourselves that trolls hide under bridges (and sometimes in daylight, and sometimes inside ourselves).

The only way to disarm a monster is to laugh at it. And silly is a wonderful way to invite the monster to join in on the fun.

The sound sculptures and installations of Zimoun are graceful, mechanized works of playful poetry, an interplay between the artificial and the organic. This piece is a study of complex behaviors in sound and motion, examining the creation and degeneration of patterns.

I love that it’s cardboard and dime store electronics. I love the shadows. I like that you can walk around it, get inside it and that the sound changes depending on where you stand. It’s remarkably simple but it gives you a contemplation of complexity.

And it sounds like rain.

The best video you will watch all day, no doubt.
And if that’s not diverting enough there’s hours of awesomness to be had on Flickr with Lunchbreath

I am such a huge superfan of  Jonathan Harris. I saw Phylotaxis in 2006 when I was researching unique interfaces and ever since I’ve been entranced by how he tells stories: his own, like The Whale Hunt  ; or all our stories, like We Feel Fine or I Want You To Want Me , which I was lucky enough to see at New York’s MoMA in 2008.

This project,  Today begun when turned 30, encompasses a simple ritual of taking one photo a day and posting it to his website before going to sleep, along with a short story.

This is a short film about Jonathan’s project, made a few weeks after he stopped it, by his friend, Scott Thrift which I found to be a glorious contemplation on the passage of time and the nature of memory and flexing your remember muscles:

• your greatest creation is your life story
• story as a technique to organize your past
• I’ve grown as a result of this project, but I’m not sure what I’ve grown into
• we need time to create our stories and time to make sense of our experiences
• we need privacy and space to grow

The whole piece and Harris’ thoughts reminded me of a marvelous concept: the Japanese notion “Ma”

Ma (間) is a concept of absence and in-between.  Apart from space, ma is applied to the discussion of time as well, revealing that in Japan there was ‘not even a distinction between space and time like in modern Western thought’. The word ‘ma’ essentially refers to ‘an “interval” between two (or more) spatial or temporal things and events. Thus it is not only used in compounds to suggest measurement but carries meanings such as gap, opening, space between, time between…

This spatio-temporal principle of ma underlies all traditional Japanese art forms. However, Like other Japanese aesthetic principles, ma goes beyond just being a ‘way of seeing’, but is a ‘way of life’ as well, for, as Japanese architect Arata Isozaki puts it, it is a ‘fluid term able to encompass many aspects of life in Japan. [Ma] describes both time and space through a notion of interval. (source)

The Taoist philosopher Lao Tse wrote extensively on the concept of Ma including his poem The Uses of Not :

Thirty spokes meet in the hub,

but the empty space between them

is the essence of the wheel.

Pots are formed from clay,

but the empty space between it

is the essence of the pot.

Walls with windows and doors form the house,

but the empty space within it
is the essence of the house

I’m a big believer in making the time and space to look at the clouds drift by…and now I know I’m just drinking in the ‘ma’ and letting myself grow.

If you work in creative strategy or planning your daily diet may encompasses exposure to  this toxic pyramid:

You are not alone. (thanks to this post Getting Real. For Real which reminded me I probably should say this more often.)

If you’re feeling like this you understand the landscape that you work in very very well.

And as  result you might get called ‘difficult’ or ‘unapproachable’ or ‘aggressive’.

It’s really hard not to give yourself permission to let that toxicity out.

But when people are coming to you  for education and inspiration and insight how appropriate is frustration? How effective is is? How is it working for you?

Punching people in the face for not understanding is momentarily satisfying, sure. Do you really want to be that guy?

But again, you are not alone in struggling with this.

I am fiery. Shouty. The volume goes up to 11 when I get excited.

Which is why I find this to be pretty helpful this week (edited):

Feel the fire … don’t get burned.

Emphasise with words, not volume.

1. Feel the fire, but don’t get burned. If something really excites you or makes you angry, effectiveness lies in creating comfort. Share your exhilaration or ire with words, not volume.

2. Speak how you want to be spoken to. Doing so will set the tone for the entire conversation. If you start out with an attack, you could end up in a war. If you begin with kindness and clarity, you will have a much easier time.

British designer Samuel Wilkinson and product design company Hulger, have won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2011 for their stunning redesign of the low energy light bulb.

Low-energy light bulbs have never been regarded as a stylish product but the Plumen addresses this by creating an aesthetic bulb which works just like any low-energy bulb. Announced yesterday at the Design Museum, Stephen Bayley, the 2011 Jury Chair said of the winning entry ‘The Plumen light bulb is a good example of the ordinary thing done extraordinarily well, bringing a small measure of delight to an everyday product.’

Hell yeah- that’s a mantra:

Do an ordinary thing done extraordinarily well,

Bring a small measure of delight the everyday

This Kinetic Typography project was created by Jacob Gilbreath from the dialogue of Conan O’Brien’s final episode of The Tonight Show on NBC. In this farewell address, he describes his feelings towards the situation at hand, promoting positivity and humor, hard work and kindness.

Lovely message, relevant to us all from Sebastián Baptista

We are starting the new year with some new projects, new goals and new challenges.
Whatever you do, always try to be the best you can be. Spread the word.

Good luck!

A lovely piece of work from the Soap Creative team.

This isn’t the holy grail; but rather a road-tested ’cheat sheet‘ for quick wins on your Facebook page

Click on any of the images to link directly to the Fan pages they’re referencing.

It reminds me of the work of Dr. BJ Fogg of Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab.

They infer that to change human behavior you must merge three factors into one moment: motivation, ability, and triggers—e.g., prompts and calls to action. Essentially:

”Put hot triggers in the path of motivated people”.

Defining a hot trigger as something one can take immediate action on, this concept easily translates to the world of online marketing tactics such as “Click this link, hit this button to share, or enter your information here.”

Or “like” bait.

The trigger is characterized as hot because you can take this action now, versus cold triggers, which are calls to actions you can’t act upon immediately.

It’s funny how we can only associate growing with pain. Take a couple of minutes to watch Jesse Rosten‘s lovely piece above. Maybe if we all took things a little more slowly…..

Philosophy helps. From Thinking Aloud:

Philosophy, as the great American philosopher Stanley Cavell puts it, is the education of grownups.

It is my view that philosophy must form part of the life of a culture. It must engage the public and influence how a culture converses with itself, understands itself, talks to other cultures and seeks to understand them. It has been enormously gratifying to see this pursuit flourishing in today’s agora — the virtual one — confronting, engaging and even embracing the fluid, ambiguous and frenetic nature of the electronic public realm.

But more importantly, this paragraph reminds me of meals around my family table growing up:

… philosophy is a shared activity, it is dialogue. And dialogue is not the simple exchange of opinions, where I have my faith, my politics and my God and you have yours. That is parallel monologue. One of the goals of dialogue is to have our opinions rationally challenged in such a way that we might change our minds. True dialogue is changing one’s mind.

And growing.

I hope you’re sharing something lovely with people you care about today.