Tag Archives: article
A little love from HOW.
HOW, a venerable must-read publication for designers, got wind of our business paper redesign. They liked our work and decided to write about it. Pretty neat-o. This makes Red Square moms everywhere proud.
To Steal is Genius*.
Consider, for just a minute, the prolific creative output of Conor Oberst. The guy is 30 years old, has produced an incredibly diverse catalog of music and is widely considered the finest songwriter of his generation. So how does he do it? According to Oberst, he’s learned to become “a good thief.”
He doesn’t rip off other artists per se. Rather, he steals inspiration from just about anywhere he can get it. He is on high receive at all times, and I think this is a great lesson for anyone in our business.
Here’s an article from this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal describing Oberst’s creative process. Worth the read.
*I stole that headline. It was on the cover of the latest One Show Annual.
OK Go: Poster children for a new paradigm.
Recently Damian Kulash, lead singer of OK Go, wrote a piece in the WSJ entitled The New Rock-Star Paradigm. The article is an astute summation of the present state of the music business, specifically how the business has changed in the face of maturing digital communications. The guy isn’t your typical rock group frontman. (more…)
Times like these.
I’ve been reading Behance’s site The 99 Percent recently, and I really like it. Some smart thinking going on over there. Anyway, I flagged one article in particular from my weekend studying and have read it over a few times. It’s called “Avoid the Trap of Business Narcissism.”
It’s about human nature and our reaction to challenges, specifically thinking “there’s never been anything like this before” or “these are extraordinary times.”
Scott Belsky writes:
From all the times I have heard, “This is the most unusual X, the greatest period of Y, the new era of Z,” I was starting to think that, had I not been born in the last thirty years, I would have missed the most interesting years of business since the Big Bang.
He continues:
“Business Narcissism” is rampant. It is the leader’s default thinking that they are the exception to the rule. “Business Narcissism” is the tendency of all leaders and teams, across industries, to think that they are always encountering a special case.
The real unique opportunity is for leaders to internalize a grounding realization: not much is new and yes, you can adequately learn from the past. Saying “this is the time of opportunity” is narcissistic. Instead, take some perspective. Today never feels like it will be history, but it will. And more likely than not, we will look back and realize that we should have known.
Very interesting. I agree that we have a tendency to think like this. Everyone does. But I don’t necessarily find it narcissistic to view now as time of opportunity. I truly believe now is a great opportunity. We’ve got a chance to do really amazing things, to bring a little unconventional wisdom to the table, to rewrite some of the rules and to pull the country out of this mess.
True, it’s foolish to think there have never been times like these. But every challenge is an opportunity to do something awesome.
Twitter: the good news and the bad news.
After bookmarking the Time Magazine article “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live” a week ago, I finally got around to reading it. A week on the web is eons. Many of you have already read the article, or maybe you haven’t, given the world’s attention span has been relegated to information delivered in 140 character bits.
In the piece, @StevenBJohnson delivers an interesting read on end-user innovation and an optimistic take on American ingenuity.
I whole-heartedly agree that Twitter is delivering positive innovation: “ambient awareness,” a truly open social web and an incredible way to search what people are saying now. (The implications for search alone are enormous.) However, as a agency responsible for delivering branded content to our clients’ fans, I worry that Twitter may be birthing an entirely new kind of hyper-distracted society. (What was I saying?)
Now excuse me while I post this blog link on our Twitter page.
