Creativity - Servant of Chaos

Advice from Fathers to Daughters

I often find great websites and content by clicking on a random link on Twitter. I then tend to leave the tab open, letting what I read soak into my mind while pursuing other work.

Some could call this multi-tasking – but it’s much less conscious, much less directed. Perhaps it could be considered “creative”.

The other day as I scanned TweetDeck, the tool that I use to manage the vast chattering hoard that is Twitter, I noticed a link to a letter from F Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter. The eleven year old was away at camp, and her eloquent father had written to her to help her navigate where best she placed her energies. This list of things to worry about, things to not worry about, and things to think about I plan to share with my own girls.

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship…

Things not to worry about:
Don't worry about popular opinion
Don't worry about dolls
Don't worry about the past
Don't worry about the future
Don't worry about growing up
Don't worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don't worry about triumph
Don't worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don't worry about mosquitoes
Don't worry about flies
Don't worry about insects in general
Don't worry about parents
Don't worry about boys
Don't worry about disappointments
Don't worry about pleasures
Don't worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:
What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

I really love the last bit. It’s about purpose. It’s about our place in the world. And that’s something to seriously think about.

Global Media Ideas – XMediaLab in Sydney

Conferences, Creativity, Innovation

For the last two hundred years, Sydney has been at the forefront of global trade. During the 1800s trade in wool transformed Sydney from a prison settlement into a thriving trade hub – which accelerated with the discovery of gold. The prolonged mining and resources boom of the Twentieth Century was supplemented with the in- and out-flow of global capital, but the first decade of the Twenty First Century has seen ever greater focus on the exchange of value, of ideas and innovation.

Later this week, XMediaLab: Global Media Ideas to be held at the Sydney Opera House is the first in what is planned to be an annual summit. Part of Vivid Sydney, it promises to be a chance for sharing and collaboration, combining creative ideas with technology, and business with culture. It’s a day of keynotes and presentation, followed up with a weekend full of mentoring and workshops. It’s idea exchange, mentoring, culture swapping and networking all rolled into one.

There are speakers such as Amin Zoufonoun from Google, Robert Tercek from the Oprah Winfrey Network and Steve Jang who has been an advisor to some of my favourite Web 2.0 groups (like Animoto and StumbleUpon). It promises to be a fascinating conference/workshop weekend. I’m looking forward to the #xmedialab tweetstream coverage!

Five Things You Need to Know About Design

Creativity, Innovation

Years ago, while working in publishing, I had the opportunity to design my first book. I remember devouring various books ABOUT design, flicking through books that I thought WERE well designed, and reading magazines that would point me in the right direction. I even spoke with experienced designers and asked their advice. Those were the days when we needed a business case to get a PC on our desks, so access to the fledgling internet was beyond question. And even if there WAS internet access, we certainly didn’t have the volume and quality of content that is available now.

In the following years I designed a dozen or so books, edited them and sometimes even laid them out. Most of the time they were legal tomes, but from time to time there’d be something more interesting. Something that required a little more creativity to get the point across.

What I learned by designing books has been used in every job that I have had since my early 20s. No matter whether I was driving business innovation in large businesses, marketing services and solutions or running global web teams for FMCG clients, these design skills came in handy. So I thought maybe I’d share my five things with you:

Pretty with punch: I’m all for pretty pictures (remember also that sex sells) – but you need more than that. Make sure that your pretty pictures pack a punch, that they have not just an emotional core but also a solid connection to your objectives. If you are designing a book, make sure you are creating context for comprehension within the overall flow of the content. Same with websites. Same with marketing. Your job is to bring it all together.
Let it breath: Don’t overcrowd your pages with too much “stuff”. Give your headings, your keywords, your callouts and your images enough space to breath.
Orchestrate your story across space: Sure you might have only a few moments to capture the attention of your readers, but also play to their intelligence. Tell your story across space – share the visual cues generously and intelligently in a way that flows.
Ease of use drives consumption: This applies to anything and everything that you do. Make it easy to consume (ie read) some email marketing and click through for more information and people will do it. Design a website that is easy to use and people will use it. Create a book with tabs, visual cues, callouts and so on and readers will love it. Design with a focus on BEHAVIOUR and you’ll be amazed at the results.
Feed your imagination: It is too easy to forget how important it is to get out from behind your screen. When I ran an interactive team, I took the entire studio on a ferry ride across the harbour to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art (I think they liked the ferry more than the art). But they came back to work inspired. But if you can’t do that, go for a walk. Go ride a bike. Take a moment out of the day to feed your imagination.

Of course, if you need to get support for good design – say from your CEO, drop this presentation by Jason Putorti on your boss’ desk (thanks for the link to the presentation go to Mark Pollard). Good design, after all, is about SOLVING a BUSINESS problem. And that’s the secret number six of my list of five. Maybe, just maybe, the thing you really need to know is that you need to deliver results back to the business. Hope this helps!

10 Things CEOs Need to Know About Design

View more presentations from Jason Putorti.

Being Playful – From Poseur to Flaneur

Branding, Creativity, Flaneurs, Pop Culture, Social Media, Storytelling

Regular readers will know that I love the idea of play. In fact, I love it so much I built a mnemonic around it – the P-L-A-Y framework for storytelling. But “play” goes so much further for me – it goes to the very heart of our existence. It manifests as what theorists would call a “libidinal drive” – something that compels us to do something – an action that creates an exchange.

But to “be” playful means inhabiting “playfulness”. It also means letting playfulness inhabit you. In many ways, this is what we call “personality” – those traits that show through while you are being yourself – being playful. Being serious.

Russell Davies has a great post on being playful – which actually leads in a different direction from what I was expecting (surprise #1). Rather than investigating playfulness, he looks, instead at “pretending” – and how our various consumer purchases open the door to our imaginary life.

Think, for example, of the link between an iPhone and a Star Trek communicator (so thoughtfully captured in this image!). You can’t tell me that iPhone and other gadget users don’t get a secret buzz out of living out their childhood fantasies. Brands that win are able to facilitate a sense of transference – allowing us to put ourselves into an imaginary space and project an alternative vision of ourselves. After all, I may ride a Ducati (or used to), but I’m never going to be a MotoGP world champion. As Russell points out:

But it's not just a matter of dressing up. A successful pretending object has to delicately balance pretending affordance with not making you look like an idiot. That's why so many successful pretending objects are also highly functional.

If the “pretending object” goes too far – it does indeed make us look idiotic. We become poseurs – mere representations of something more serious. But of the pretending object doesn’t go far enough – then it is trashed, considered lame, and discarded or ignored by its intended audience.

And this is the art in design and the fine line in communications. How do we allow people into the process of creating meaning without restricting their creativity unduly? I think the approach is to turn our “consumers” into Flaneurs. It’s about the experience – but on another person’s terms – not ours. It’s the placing of a product/service/offering in the service of another’s contextual experience. It means that the Flaneur’s experience is paramount – and the “thing-that-is-your-brand” will be recombined, re-absorbed and recontextualised according to its use-life.

Now, that’s what I call a “value exchange”.

Rethinking Branding through Radical Innovation

Creativity, Innovation, Strategy

You know what it’s like – the brief hits your desk and you know it’s going to hurt you. The client wants impact. Results. Creativity to burn. It needs to be original, classy and out of left field – but you also need to bring this baby in on budget. And quickly. This is a competitive pitch and there are three other agencies lining up against you.

If I was you, I’d read the brief and jot down my first ideas on a post-it note, then file it away in my notepad. Then I’d talk to the team.

Rethinking innovation

But Umair Haque, economist and Director of the Havas Media Labs, suggests that we need to rethink everything we do. A proponent of “radical innovation”, Haque’s approach is to question the foundations of our actions – in short – to question how we innovate (and therefore what it means for us, our clients and our businesses).

Take for example, Haque’s well-known Smart Growth Manifesto where he turns notions of innovation on their heads:

Outcomes, not income
Connections, not transactions
People, not product
Creativity, not productivity

In some ways this seems obvious, but operationalising such innovation requires broader and deeper business thinking. If you focus not on income but on other measurements (such as outcomes) – then this means inventing new metrics as part of the process. How do we measure sustainability for example? What about happiness or wellbeing? The same with focusing on creativity over productivity – or the other two pillars.

This is not to say that such efforts should not be taken. Quite the opposite. You see, embracing such approaches will FORCE you to think and work through the consequences. In the short term, this will lead you to find equivalences – you will create and manage outcomes but find linkages to income. You will focus on people and their ideas, inspiration and energies, yet match it to their productivity and so on. But this journey will not be undertaken UNLESS you take the first step.

Rethinking branding

But how do we apply this thinking to the problems and challenges of branding? This recent post from Umair Haque on Twitter’s Ten Rules for Radical Innovation provides some pointers.

Ideals beat strategies: What is the core problem that your brand is trying address. How is it making the world better in its small niche? Concentrate on the idea and let the strategy come.
Open beats closed: Find the points of interdependence – between brands and their consumers, employees and their customers, executives and their teams. Share and tell the stories that emerge.
Connection beats transaction: The underlying currency of this new way of thinking is TRUST. Build transactions into your branding by facilitating a sense of trust. Do this as a precursor to transactions. Do it without expectation.
Simplicity beats complexity: Your customers want to do business with you. Don’t make it difficult for them. Design your offerings around the experience that your customers can share with others. Make sure that your communications are clear.
Neighbourhoods beat networks: Most brands haven’t figured out that there are real people behind the avatars that flash across a Twitterstream. The network is nice but remembering that we are tribal – and above all – local – means that you have to think, act and behave as if everyone knows where you live. Really. Think of the consequences and revisit your brief.

There are another five rules that Haque shares in his article – but I will leave these to your imagination.

Returning to the brief

In many ways we operate in an echo chamber. We all read the same blogs, websites, forums and magazines. We watch the same TEDtalks and download the same iPhone apps. How do we then, out-innovate when it comes to our clients?

Chances are that your three competitors will be entering their own creative brainstorming space in the same mindset as your own team. Your best chance at out-thinking your competition is to question the foundations of your own work. Rethink thinking. Rethink creativity. Rethink strategy.

Oh, and just as you go to start work on your response to the brief, take out that original post-it note and read what you wrote. That’s your gut instinct. Sometimes you’ve got to just go with that too.

Holiday Card – From Idea to Finished Product

Branding, Creativity, Videos

When I worked in an agency I was always amazed at how much time it would take to put together the year end holiday greeting card. We would have illustrators, designers and programmers poring over the details in the last minute rush before holidays. Hundreds of hours would be racked up. But the end result was, perhaps, the best advertisement for our work – internally and externally. Internally it would remind the Board of what we were capable of and externally it would show what COULD be possible if creativity could be unleashed.

Unfortunately, most corporate holiday cards don’t take this approach. Too many appear like a tick in the box – something to be done and sent. It’s a shame, because they really do provide a great vehicle for your own branded story.

Here’s a nice video showing how the folks from MindCastle Studios turned some sketches into a holiday gift card. It steps you through the various key points of creative production – and shows just how good photography can transform your branding. And the video builds a fantastic story that highlights not just capabilities, but personality and approach. We could all learn a little something on that front!

our creative process/. 01 from Casey Warren | MIND CASTLE on Vimeo.

Creativity, Education and Revolution

Activism, Creativity, FutureVisions

Years ago I taught Postmodern Studies at the University of Western Sydney. It covered a whole lot of basic theory – but also focused on creativity as a discipline. We got a great deal of push-back from the students who felt that the course was not practical enough and not focused on helping them get a job. Yet despite these protestations, many found the course difficult, challenging – and a lot of work. It was. It was meant to be. It wasn’t about training – it was about education. It was designed to enable students to LEARN.

A couple of years later I was working at IBM and hiring a large number of new graduates into my team. I was looking for spark, creativity, imagination and problem solving. I had plenty of jobs open and a willingness to train an eager employee. But I found it hard. Hard to find people who didn’t need to be spoon fed. Hard to find people willing to work hard and learn fast. Hard to find people who could step beyond TALKING and get to the hard task of DOING.

You see, the systems of education were not conducive to the type of employee that I needed. And the user pays system seemed to have bred a sense of entitlement rather than a curiosity for learning. Many graduates find the transition from study to work very confronting – there are professional responsibilities, rock-hard deadlines and a raft of rules, restrictions and expectations that are sometimes unspoken. What we need is to look again at our education systems and think about the type of citizenry we want and NEED into 2050. We need to prepare AND challenge our students, teachers and the systems within which they operate. And we need to do it now. We need what Denise Caron calls an Education Revolution.

Education Revolution

View more documents from Denise Caron.

What Motivates You?

Creativity, Innovation, Life, Rant

Earlier this week I spent some time talking to a recruitment agent. It wasn’t for a new job – I was providing a reference for a friend who used to work for me. It was an interesting conversation – not the run of the mill kind of discussion, but one which delved deeper … into motivation, needs and how they manifest for us in the workplace. It made me think about success – about why some people achieve things that others don’t or can’t.

Whenever I have been in charge of teams, I instinctively seek out those who have the type of energy that I can work with. I am attracted to those who have intrinsic motivation – a sense of drive – and tend to make a hiring decision based on the way that people walk into a room.

In this video, Dan Pink, talks about autonomy, mastery and purpose – and how they combine in an individual – and what this means for those of us who manage, direct or energise teams as part of our daily work. Sure there are times where we can take the standard managerial approach – offering rewards for good performance and disincentives for poor performance, but Dan Pink suggests a need to adjust our management styles according to the type of work being performed.

Mark McGuiness also points out, that while the carrot and stick approach works for simple working arrangements, when it comes to complex problem solving and challenging or creative industries, we need to think outside the box:

… the rules are mystifying, the solution, if it exists, is surprising and not obvious – [for this kind of problem] those ‘If… then’ rewards, the things around which we have build so many of our businesses, DON’T WORK!

This is not a feeling… this is not a philosophy… this is a FACT!

There is a double edged sword here, of course. We all like to be paid handsomely for the work that we do – but few of us are willing to prioritise our desire for autonomy, our mastery and skill and our sense of purpose above income. Or am I wrong?

What’s your motivation for doing what you do? And what would you change if you could?