Attention all Los Angeles based Account Planners, Ms. Angela Cross and I will be hosting the first ever Los Angeles Coffee Morning next week, in the vein of LikeMind and Russell Davies:
Bluebird Cafe
8572 National Boulevard
Culver City, California 90232
Bring only yourselves and a little conversation.
Despite my cold and unfeeling exterior, it seems that I have developed a soft spot for bunnies. Who knew?
My first inkling was when I went gaga for the Bunny Letter Opener....
Then as I was completing my holiday shopping today I found a retailer displaying Kozyndan bunny posters, and I went into covet overdrive....
The Japanese woodblock influence! The bunnies! The colors! The bunnies! I was clearly overwhelmed with cuteness and have consequently found my Achilles Heel. Please use this information for good instead of evil.
My job requires that I know a little bit about statistics. I know just enough to make me dangerous, but I try to pick up better techniques whenever I can. I normally use it for mild bouts of target profiling and attitudinal leanings, thank goodness; because if I had to go into probability theory like this guy I would be completely lost.
Have a healthy respect for statistics and know your source. It matters.
Jerusha of Unholy Smell has launched a new venture - she has started podcasting. Considering that I have no idea how to record anything on my computer, much less put it on iTunes, I am very proud of my acerbic friend.
The subject is mostly about reality television, but she ended her last post talking about her family and knitting projects. It's pretty entertaining and only a little rambling, but that's to be expected with podcast-newbeies. Subscribe and be entertained by her biting commentary on TV and life in general.
I think she needs to take up knitfiti.
Russell Davies posted the results from the APSotW Assignment 10. Since there were 49 entries, they couldn't comment on each one and post it back to the web, so he posted the best entry (not mine, I'll have to work on that) and an audio file discussing a few of the best entries.
I think a big part of what I missed is making the statements short and memorable and it also comes down to inspiration again. It's not necessarily about finding new ideas; it's about finding original, inspiring, and expressive ways of expressing powerful and truthful ideas in as few words as possible. An elevator pitch for the brand.
I was guilty of providing marketing ideas instead of propositions with a few of my "propositions," but the rest were actual propositions.
Here are my entries. When you compare them to the ones the judges thought highly of, they're not very good. Oh well, room for improvement for next time.
1) Promote the variety of English apples like wine makers promote varietals of wine.
2) Even in the middle of summer, it’s still apple weather.
3) Have you tried that dish with applesauce? (like having applesauce with latkes)
4) Who said apple pie was all-American?! Reclaim the pie.
5) A different taste for every pallet and mood.
6) Not feeling like a draft beer? Pull a hard cider.
7) A little pick-me-up without the caffeine withdrawal of coffee/tea.
8) Locally grown apples help protect the English countryside.
9) It feels good to bite into a crisp juicy apple.
10) All-in-one nutrition for your whole body. (reduces blood pressure, chance of prostate cancer, asthma, diabetes, and also assists weight loss and digestive function)
I read the latest issue of Wired on the New Atheism. Lots of fun stuff as usual. My friend rolled her eyes at me when I told her that I was about to read an article on lithium-ion batteries, but it was actually really interesting. Definitely a product the will see radical changes in the coming years, considering that the evolution of technology is being constrained by the stagnation of the battery.
I'm still excited about seeing Darren Aronofsky's new film even though the writer of the article was strangely compelled to mention the director's summer vacations tripping out in Mexican sweat lodges and following the Ganges river to it's source. It just made DA come off like a pretentious hippie jerk-off. Ah, to be artistic, rich, and bored.
The article on atheism was very hard hitting and left me wondering if my own fence-sitting agnosticism is in fact enabling the resurgence of fundamentalism. As someone close to people of faith, I can't bring myself to completely disrespect their beliefs. That would be the equivalent of disrespecting them.
Business 2.0 on New Business Disruptors was also good. The op-ed on the opportunity cost of freelancers taking time off for personal time or vacations was particularly interesting. Apparently, the rise of freelances has also brought on a decline in personal enjoyment. People can't drag themselves away from work because they see every hour they're not working as money that they are not making. I experienced during my brief tenure as a freelancer. I was less likely to accept an interview when I knew that it would cost me a day or half a day's pay. I became much more selective about the opportunities that I would explore.
Another article was on satellite track-able cars. Pay-as-you-go insurance companies can track your driving habits and charge you more if you speed on highways prone to traffic accidents. Cities can charge you precisely for the amount of time you spent parked at a metered site and raise the cost exponentially if you stay there too long. Cities can also charge you for using freeways during rush hour to try and get you to flex your hours and drive during off-peak times.
The whole concept didn't sit very well with me. It seemed too Big Brotherish. I could see it being beneficial on a societal level, but the loss of privacy that comes with anything recording my whereabouts at all times is disturbing.
Marbella was wonderful. We had an amazing time and although I'm not sure how much of it I will blog about, we did take lots of pictures, which you can see here and here.
One of the nice parts of being in Spain was being able to open a bottle of wine and sit down in front of the TV and take in the Spanish, English, and German broadcasts. I tortured my fellow travelers with a night of Grand Prix Show Jumping until 2am one evening, we all sat down for a sumo tournament another evening because what other opportunity were we going to have to watch sumo (which is particularly entertaining in slow motion in an I-can't-look-away-from-the-disgusting-waves-of-blubber kind of way), but the most entertaining foreign show of all had to be Celebrity Scissorhands.
A bunch of D-list celebrities with two weeks of training cut hair and practice beauty treatments with little to no supervision in a studio/salon located in the BBC 3 building. Where and how they got the people willing to victimize themselves for a haircut was beyond my level of comprehension.
There was one trainee, Steve Strange, former 80's New Wave rocker/bloated heroine addict who was by far our party's favorite. His haircuts were so atrociously bad that he made one poor girl cry and the salon "supervisor" called a haircut a la Steve as getting "Stranged." He would create bald spots with nothing more than a little pair of scissors and a set of shaking hands. You would watch him meticulously weedwack his clients' coifs into submission and be completely unable to look away as you cringe in empathy for the poor thing in the chair as the announcer calmly narrates how it has been two hours since the person first sat down.
It was glorious.
Yvonne can't wait until the American version is eventually broadcast. She's already picking out whom she wants to see be the US version of her beloved Steve Strange. Courtney Love is at the top of her list. I personally would love to see Rob Schnieder give it a go. I think he would funny and level of irony that the sight of him working in a solon would bring to the table would be priceless. Unfortunately he may still have too much of a career to be considered D-list enough for the show.
Just you wait. I'm telling you that it's the next big thing.
Russell Davies gave out an unofficial assignment today asking people to become more interesting and therefore better creative generalists. We have to pick three of ten options and do them consistently over the next three months....
1) Take at least one picture every day and post it to Flickr.
I haven't been very good about this in the past. I usually save them on my phone for long periods of time until I have enough to do a massive dump that no one ever fully looks at. But, I think I can do this one. It's going to be tough with the long commute (I won't have a lot of free time to find something worth taking a picture of), but I think I can make this one work.
2) Start a blog and write at least one sentence every week.
I don't do this, but I should. Hence, I will be doing this one too. (In my defense, I posted six entries this week alone.) (So there.) (Ha.)
3) Keep a scrapbook.
I don't do this either, but I like the idea of it, so I'm going to give it a shot. I have an extra notebook that I can use and carry around in my massive computer bag. Now all I need is a glue stick and some bits of inspiration.
4) Every week, read a magazine you've never read before.
I like this one too. I'll start with the November issue of Wired for the plane ride to Marbella this week and an old issue of Business 2.0 for the flight back. Now, I know that these aren't new, but the issues themselves are new to me. Doesn't that count?
Oy. This list is getting long.
5) Once a month, interview someone for twenty minutes and work out how to make him or her sound interesting. Podcast it.
Not going to happen.
6) Collect something.
No way. I'm anti-stuff.
7) Once a week sit in a coffee shop or cafe for an hour and listen to other people’s conversations. Take notes. Blog about it. (Carefully)
If only I had the time.
8) Every month write 50 words about one piece of visual art, one piece of writing, one piece of music and one piece of film or TV. Do other art forms if you can. Blog about it.
Probably not. It would be a good exercise, but I hate making critiques on something I have little direct experience with.
9) Make something.
I'm not much of a maker. I'm more of a doer. Besides, this infringes on my policy of being anti-stuff.
10) Read: Understanding Comics - Scott McCloud, The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker, The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information - Edward Tufte
All books that I would love to read, but I doubt that I would get to them in time. I'm still working my way through Testing to Destruction and then I'm committed to reading John Steele's Truth, Lies, and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning. I'm also a slow reader. I'll put them on my wish list instead.
.... Okay, so that is four things that I'm committing to do for the next three months. This is doable. I can handle this. I won't be overwhelmed. (I hope)
(ps - the title is an inside joke for geeks regarding Flickr's move to patent "interestingness.")
Sam Hecht (Industrial Facility) - Product as a Landscape
- Products with no connection to the user or the environment
- Products need to have relevance to the domestic landscape
- The time you are not using the product is just as important as when you are
- Products communicating with the environment independent of the human being
- Muji ~ no marketing, all about design simplicity
Henry Myerberg (Rockwell Group) and Richard Smyth (JetBlue) - JetBlue Terminal Marketplace: Design for a Higher Plane
- Iconic NY elements (steps, bleachers)
- Bringing humanity back to the terminal
Kierstin De West and Jason McCormick (Conscientious Innovation) - The Shift Report (Short Story)
- Research on sustainability
- Understanding sustainability is about understanding culture and environment
- Sustainability = meeting current needs without screwing up the future
- Pillars of Sustainability = Personal, Spiritual, Social, Environmental
- "We're living the American Dream and we're drowning in it. Marketing has done a great job and it's getting better." ~ Consumer quote
- "If you can show me the business case, you're too late." ~ Bill Gates
- Help me be a conscious consumer.
- Barriers to conscious consumption = time, price, knowledge, disposal
- Integrity Brands
Doug Powell (HealthSimple) - Inspired by Necessity: The Business of Design
- Designers & Healthcare
-- Designers & entrepreneurship
-- Scale
-- Communication design
- No simple, visual, kid-friendly educational tools for families with Type 1 Diabetes
- Lack of design is an epidemic problem in healthcare
- Design is a key element for success
- Low barriers to entry because it's all print, but they do have advantages
-- There first
-- Open to partnership
-- Brand story and authenticity
Maria Giudice (Hot Studio) - Design Like You Give a Damn
- Heard the story of Architecture for Humanity at the TED Conference and their plea to create an open source international architecture design community
- Set to create that community through her design studio using web interfaces and templates that could be customized to each regional chapter but still keep the look and feel of AH.
Tom Kelly (Ten Faces of Innovation)
- Anthropologist, Experimenter, Cross-Pollinator, Collaborator, Caregiver, Director, Hurdler, Set Designer, Storyteller, Experience Architect
- People don't store data, they keep stories
- Innovation roles battle the Devil's Advocate role
Michael Stanat - Understanding the Future of China
- China's Generation Y has an affinity for Western values
- Much change in the last 10 years
- Largest socio-economic gap
- Sea of Western influences (ideas, brands, internet)
- Not willing to sacrifice cultural ideals
- Family oriented
- Third World consumers with a First World appetite
- Motivted and optimistic but dissatisfied
- No roadmap to the future
- China's Little Emperors (results of the single child policy)
-- Limits social skills
- Generation Gap, escape through the internet
- Education is memorization, desire for Western style of teaching individuality and creativity
- Suicide is cause of 90% of young adult deaths
- Unable to what you really want to do, pressure for all around excellence
- Spend 1 - 12 hours/day on the internet (games, chat, email)
- Excessive internet usage is medically diagnosed as Internet Syndrome (superstition)
- Copies of Western TV shows (Supergirls = American Idol)
- Dreams of the good life = white collar, nice cars, travel, want to buy houses for their parents)
- Exciting careers (celebrity, cartoon design)
-- Disconnect from older generation with a desire of a life outside of a career
- Impact on diesgn's future (own voice vs. Western influence)
- Piracy will prevent design community reaching it's full potential
- ChinaGenY.com
Nell Daniel (Sweat Equity Enterprises)
- Teens have creative power
- Creative sector is growing faster than Wall Street
- Lack of quality creative training in schools
- 85% NYC school drop out rate due to lack of relevance
- Use areas of interest (products, fashion, music) to engage students
- Companies having to go overseas for creative talent
- Link youth with industry (they can learn from each other)
- Lauch awareness campaign BigFatF.com
- School systems are tough to change
- We are all interested in public schools
- Cultivation of a diverse, talented workforce
- Partnership with Marc Ecko, considered to be a hot new business model
- 100% return rate
- Entrepenurial philanthropy
- For-profit and non-profit agendas working together
Roger Martin (Toronto Rotman School of Business) - Designing in Hostile Teritory
- Reliability (consistent, replicable, minimize judgement, business people) vs. Validity (outcome meets objective, disverse variables, integration of judgement, designers)
- Take "design unfriendliness" as a design challenge
-- Bring the same level of enthusiasm
- Empathize with diesgn unfriendly elements
-- Understand fears of not going with norms
- Speak the language of reliability
-- "this is cool" vs. best practices
-- Turning up the volume doesn't work
- Use analogies and stories
-- Something in the past is consistent with idea/solution
- Bite off as little a piece as possible to generate proof
-- It doesn't have to be all or nothing
LiAnne Yu (Cheskin) - Exporting Fast Food to China
- Connect brand to China's New Culture of Cool
- Ethnographies in Guatemala and China
- Focus Groups
- China's familial ideals
- Latin America represents a freedom and a sexiness that China is aspiring to (a world outside their own)
- Pollo Campero ~ in Guatemala it is cheap food with great service, a great equalizer
- Pizza Hut ~ in China it offers a dining experience, people make salad sculptures using the all-you-can-eat salad bar (big hit), they save money so that they can go on weekends
- Cheap not necessarily the way to go to appeal to the growing middle class
- Restaurants represent windows to the world
-- Most Chinese can't afford t go abroad
- Child's needs comes first
-- Wherever the kids want to go
-- More because of socialization, lonley, no peer context
My article for Fashion Tribes - Downtown Dolls is up. This month's assignment was "festive," so I wrote about a subject currently near and dear to heart - blended holidays.
As the Zen Master and I talk more and more about moving in together, the subject of how we balance our two faiths has become a concern. A minor concern for a secular couple, but a concern all the same.
In some ways it makes it easier. We'll never argue about where we spend Christmas, and even Thanksgiving is a no-brainer with Canadian Thanksgiving being in October. But then the "what if's" get in the way. What if we have children? What if religion holds more importance to us later on? Are Peeps kosher for Passover?
We've talked it out and we think we have a good plan for the worst-case scenario of "finding religion." (I didn't know it was lost.) It helps to be dating someone who has the same rational outlook on faith that you do. It just makes the relationship seem that much more sustainable because you always know that there will never be anything that you can't talk through. Not argue out, just talk through.
Todd DeGarmo (Studios) and Lauren Eckhart Smith (IAC) - Challenging Design Convention at IAC/InterActiveCorp's New Headquarters
- Completely useless. No notes or insight.
Fritz Doody (Elias) and Neil Franus (Sun Microsystems) - Audio Branding: Boosting Value Everywhere the Brand Lives
- Sound is everywhere.
- Using music, sound, and voice to create cognitive associations
- Music is the shorthand of emotion
- Audio mood boards create a context for critique (I like it, and this is why, and because it's true to the brand)
- (Results echoed Russell Davies lecture on brand polyphony almost exactly) A basic extended melody (audio logo) played broken down and played different ways depending on the primary audience and delivery device
- Potential for urban sound spam?
- Intentionalaudio.com/blog
Harry Rich (Design Council UK) - Trust Me, I'm a Designer (A Short Story)
- We need to make a case for good design in a more strategic and quantifiable way.
- Business class costs 7x the price of coach for a trans-Atlantic flight.
- Design s a process of communication and appreciation.
- Small/mid-size companies are able to compete, survive and be profitable through design
- Businesses that embrace design are likely to grow at 2x the average rate and can avoid competing on price
- Managers accept a level of uncertainty in decision-making, but a certain level of proof is required
- "Trust me, I'm a designer." vs. "Trust me, I'm a professional who gets results."
Michael Conforti (Assisi Conference) - Archetypes, Image and Design
- Experience is the backdrop of universals.
- Humanity is image making. We have ingrained associations with pictures.
- Image ties us into the wisdom traditions (Judaica, Hindu, spirituality) because it is bigger than the everyday.
- Goretsky's Third Symphony is written about concentration camps. How does music convey such emotion?
- Mythological coherence: Do the characters match the universals? Luke and Yoda :: student and master
- Does the root of the logo image match the image of the product?
- Images are expressions of a field. They are not to be mutated. They are meant to be expressive.
- Spirituality is receptivity. It is the ability to care about things that are bigger than ourselves.
I decided to blog my notes from the AIGA GAIN Design Means Business Conference. I hope that they are at least somewhat understandable to the outside world.
Guess what?! The confrence is carbon neutral! Woo Hoo!
Designer 2015 Survey - What are the professional requirements for designers ten years from now?
Tom Kelly (IDEO) - Introduction
- Designers were once considered a cute fashion accessory to business. Now they're front page news.
- Deigners enjoy a new status as trusted advisors.
- There's a lot of money on the table because we haven't fully tapped into the power of design.
- Design is a value generator, a catalyst for love and hate
- Design can add personality to an object. Beauty with a smile.
- From design to design thinking. D(esign) school holds the same respect as B(usiness) school.
- Companies with a steady commitment to design were rewarded with lasting competitiveness.
Moira Cullen - Breaking Down Silos: The Evolution of Brand Collaboration
- Silos, and the turf wars they enable, devastate organizations.
- 1930's: Neil McElroy - Proctor & Gamble, the founder of brand management
- 1950's: Brand image - separating products from brands
- 1970's: Brand positioning - owning a unique position in the consumer's mind
- 1980's: A brand's equity is worth more than the physical assets of the company
- 1770: Design Management - Wedgwood buying the services of local artisans
- 1940: Consumer oriented design - Lucky Strike cigarettes
- 1950: Business oriented design - IBM logo redesigned for business success
- 1980: Corporate oriented design - corporate identity, mostly used for PR
- Old Thinking: Brand = Marketing, Design = Production, Brand = Intangibles, Design = Cost
- The Internet is a space of value
- Progression of economic value: commodities > goods > services > engagement
- Progression of human value: Maslow's hierarchy of needs, physiological >>> self realization
- The balance of power has shifted from businesses to consumers
- 70% of decisions are emotionally based
- We are moving into an emotional economy
- Design is the soul of man-made creation
- Communities of creation - Users are as important as the product (YouTube, Google, Flickr, Etsy)
- Networked communities are acting like businesses and businesses are acting like networked communities (eBay)
- Emotion and Engagement are the new product differentiators
- Transaction Marketing > Relationship Marketing > Engagement Marketing
- Simplicity is the shortest path to a solution
- Design is the best conversation you can have with your organization
- Consumers are co-creating brands, value relationships, design as connection
- Silos are more effective when flat
Bo Barber (Nood) and Michael Hendrix (Tricycle) - All Look, No Feel
- Carpet samples for interior design are a major source of needless environmental waste
- Tricycle developed a way to deliver high resolution, color accurate, virtual or paper samples of carpet to make interior design decisions (via email, iPods)
- Preserve the experience while changing tactics
- It's not about carpet; it's about sustainable design
- Nood is a floor covering fashion brand that completely relies on Tricycles sample delivery tactics
- Nood owner believes that Tricycle designers speak the language of other designers better than suits, "The less I get it, the better."
- Stuff is a commodity. Service is not.
- See journal online
Bobby C. Martin Jr. (Jazz at Lincoln Center) - Creative is Not a Service, It's a Necessity (A Short Story)
- 'Moody doesn't sell.' Ignore them and go with what you think is right. Told client it was going to be magenta, ordered hot pink.
- 'But I thought you promised.' I promised before the 10,000 revisions of the original creative.
- As an in-house designer you have to be an authority on all things.
Scott Williams (Starwood Hotels) - Execute the Obvious to Rise Above the Competition
- We asked customers what they wanted, they told us, and we fixed it
- Keep your eyes open. Observe. Indifference kills. Falling trees are the most common cause of death among beavers.
- When customers adopt products into their daily lives, the company wins (Heavenly Beds at Home). When customers recommend products and change behavior, the company wins.
- Use observational research to fight indifference (surveillance tapes). Customers are not always able to articulate their needs and desires in a focus group, but it is revealed in their behavior.
- First and last impressions of a brand are the most important.
- Read NY Magazine "Group Thinker": Focus groups only confirm what the company already knows. They are comforting and directional.
- Brands that engage emotionally make more money.
- Consumers using brands for self esteem and recognition. ("I'll be a Platinum member in two days.")
- Why are people using your products and services? Watch and learn.
Shane Brentham (AutoDesk) and Kevin Farnham (Method) - Brand and Interface Innovation: Method and Autodesk Build Profitability Through Design
- Look at the experience people have with your brand.
- International web sites: consistent look and feel, consistent information architecture
- Customer centric user experience.
- The web site is a reflection of the user community, not the product
- User expectation deep dives
- Learn to ask big questions (change course mid-design process)
- Trust leads to innovation (strong designer/client relationship)
- Customer centric design processes are the foundations of any strategy
Last night I came home at 10pm after chilling out on pizza and red wine at a friend's house to gridlocked traffic on Highland.
"Oh yeah, its Halloween. They shut down Hollywood Blvd on Halloween."
Forty five minuets later I made it back to my place and couldn't find parking anywhere.
"Oh yeah, its Halloween. They shut down Santa Monica Blvd and lighten up on the parking restrictions on Halloween." Crap.
After circling my apartment intermittently for next hour or so, I finally found a spot, parked, walked home, talked to the Zen Master, and went to bed. That sucked. But then this morning I was doing my regularly scheduled internet rounds and I found this picture of "Drag Racing."
Parking be damned, that picture alone made it totally worth it!
Check out the rest of the pictures here.