Rohdesign Weblog: Creativity

Here you'll find all posts file under the Creativity category.

May 2, 2008

Clay Shirky & the Power of Disposable Attention

Thanks to Derek Dysart, I was able to hear Clay Shirky's "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus" talk from the Web 2.0 Expo, embedded for your viewing pleasure:

Clay's assertion is that like gin sold from pushcarts helping Londoners cope with the sudden shift from rural farming to urban industrialization, the TV sitcom helped post-WWII society cope with a new surplus of leisure and free time:

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before — free time.

He argues that society is awakening from a focus on TV sitcoms, and is realizing that they are in a position to create the content they want. They are able to contribute to the discussion, in ways not possible before:

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

What Shirky calls a cognitive surplus, I like to call disposable attention. Some may choose to spend attention on one-way activities like TV, but this is changing with the new generation. Shirky shares this story about one young girl's reaction to TV:

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."

I'm fascinated at how deeply this 4 year old has been impacted by interactivity in her life. She so wanted to have an impact on the TV show she was experiencing that she had to "find the mouse" in an effort to make an impact. Consuming was not enough for her — she wanted to interact.

There are many new opportunities available to us that were not available 10 years ago. We have the power to create. We have the power to write our own stories on blogs, tell them in podcasts and show them in videos. We can contribute to larger projects like Wikipedia or attend BarCamps.

The encouragement to me in all this is we're moving beyond the stage of simply sitting on a couch, accepting what's being presented. We're given the opportunity to create and share our own stories, finding there are others like us out there, interested in our stories and willing to share theirs with us.

Here are a few great parting quotes from Shirky's talk:

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

We're looking for the mouse. We're going to look at every place that a reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves, "If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?" And I'm betting the answer is yes.

Permalink | Comments (3) | Observations | add to del.icio.us

April 8, 2008

Sketchnotes at Photoshop World

I love it when my sketches inspire others to draw.

I intentionally choose to share my drawings, sketches and sketchnotes on the web as a way of encouraging others in their own drawings, sketches and sketchnotes.

Photoshop World Sketchnotes!
On Monday, I learned that Amanda Kern, professor at Valencia Community College in Orlando Florida was inspired by my SXSW Sketchnotes. But she went a step further and encouraged her students capture sketchnotes while attending Photoshop World last week. Wow, that is so cool!

From Amanda's post on her Photoshop World experience:

If you happened to be at the conference you may have noticed many of us sketching away in our sketchbooks during classes. Several of us had attendees and speakers comment on how we took such great notes during the conference.
With inspiration from Mike Rohde’s awesome sketchnotes, I proposed the idea of creating sketchnotes to students who were awarded Photoshop World Scholarships. They’re a great reflection of just how many great things were thrown our way during the conference. I’m quite impressed with how they turned out. Sketchnotes provided a creative way for us to document the experience.

I love this! It's wonderful to see students exploring the idea of sketchnotes, finding out how to make something unique and interesting for others to see, but also rich and detailed for their own memories of the event.

Amanda, thanks for trying sketchnotes, I'm honored to have inspired you guys!

Permalink | Comments (9) | Sketchnotes | add to del.icio.us

April 4, 2008

Attending VizThink Workshop Chicago: May 7, 2008

The decision to attend key events related to my career and design practice has really been paying off. Coming off of SXSW Interactive 2008, I'm seeing the events of the past few years have provided great opportunities to learn, get to know others, develop my Sketchnote practice and to share my notes with so many people.

I've signed up to attend the VizThink Workshop, on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 in downtown Chicago. With a minimum of 15 and maximum 50 attendees, this event led by Dave Gray and Karl Gude will teach attendees how to exercise their visual thinking skills, and learn new techniques and approaches to visual thinking.

Topics covered include:

Introduction to visual language and visual literacy
Strategies of information design
Primary methods for organizing both qualitative and quantitative information
Professional tips and tricks

From the description of the VizThink Workshop:

Your presentations don't have to be dull and ridden with bullet points. After this workshop you will understand how to explore, organize and visually display information of all kinds, from complex data sets to visual instruction manuals.
Participants will learn how visual thinking can be used to explore complex information and present it more effectively. This workshop combines high-level design principles with practical applications — rules of thumb and "tricks of the trade" — that professional information designers use to quickly create clear representations from complex or potentially confusing information.

I'm very excited about meeting Dave Gray of XPLANE, who I've bumped into on the net for years, and his co-leader Karl Gude, a professor at Michigan State University's Journalism School and former Graphics Director at Newsweek magazine.

The opportunity to see both of these guys together was too cool and Chicago is too close, so I've decided to jump at the chance to attend this workshop and expand my knowledge of visual thinking.

The cost for the workshop? $400 and worth every cent. You can be sure I'll have a full report after attending and probably a truckload of sketchnotes to share. :-)

Sign Up Now
If you're interested in expanding your own visual thinking skills and being taught by the Jedi Masters of visual thinking, this is your chance: VizThink Chicago Workshop.

Permalink | Comments (4) | Creativity | add to del.icio.us

April 3, 2008

Lola & Foxy Pet Tag Design

Yesterday I received four very cool sample pet tags from MakaluMedia client Pam Trainer at Lola & Foxy. I was so impressed with how these tags turned out, I had to write a little something here to tell the story of their creation.

Back in early 2007, Pam Trainer, the sister of Jon Trainer at Outer Level (another client) came to me to help her tune up, simplify and redraw the logo for Lola & Foxy, her startup business offering pet collars, leads and tags online.

The logo refresh project went very well, so when Pam needed several pet tags designed in a pinch for a trade show late in the year, she called me again for help.

I happened to be booked when she contacted me, but I'd been working in an art direction role with Milwaukee designer Jason Behlke on some other production and design projects, and thought this would be a perfect job to collaborate on with him.

Research & Analyis
I talked with Pam about technical specs, wording, look and feel ideas and overall goals of the project. Then I took all of the raw information and analyzed it, producing a design brief with Pam's specs and my own thoughts on style, fonts, colors and other directions so that Jason could start working on the design.

Jason produced black & white concepts in Illustrator, which I reviewed and presented to Pam with detailed thoughts, gathered her feedback and we continued until we had final 4 winning designs that were properly prepped for the tag production house.

Pam was able to get samples in time for her trade show, and the designs went over quite well. She's now selling all four of the tag designs on the Lola & Foxy site and reports they're very popular.

Project Observations
While this was a small, quick project, I think it provides valuable insight on how the process works, and how everyone benefits. Pam had a great experience and now has a popular set of tags to sell. Jason had a chance to do some very cool design work on something he'd never done before. I had the pleasure of helping Pam make an idea reality, while acting as a guide and mentor to Jason through the process.

I smile, knowing we've all benefited working on this fun project. Even better, these pet tags are benefitting pet owners who can enjoy the fruits of our collaboration.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Design | add to del.icio.us

March 15, 2008

The MilwaukeeDevHouse Experience

Last night, Nathan and I packed up the MacBook, Canon scanner, 27 of his "transportation" themed drawings and headed downtown.

We were off to take part in the first ever MilwaukeeDevHouse at Bucketworks — an opportunity to hang out with a bunch of local Milwaukee tech geeks, doing stuff together.

When we arrived, Bucketworks was already hopping! I counted 30 people, and I may have missed some attendees wandering around Bucketworks (not to mention those who came after we left at 9pm).

We found a spot at one of the tables and setup the MacBook and scanner, then Nathan and I worked together as a team to scan, tune and upload his drawings on Transportation to Flickr.

Today I asked Nathan his thoughts on the event, and he said:

"I liked the people and the noise and the food. I liked pushing the buttons to scan my drawings. I liked everything there!"

This was an excellent experience for us both on many levels:

We shared quality father and son time in a fun, shared environment
I was able to encourage Nathan in his creative work by scanning his art
Nathan met a variety of Web414 pals and learned how to interact with others
We were able to build a memorable experience with tangible results

What's MilwaukeeDevHouse?
In a nutshell, a DevHouse is a space where people can work on serious or fun projects, either by themselves or in a team. Here's the official description:

MilwaukeeDevHouse aims to be the premier regularly scheduled hackathon event that combines serious and not-so-serious productivity with a fun and exciting party atmosphere.
If you’re a coder, designer, or just someone who enjoys software and technology development, MilwaukeeDevHouse was made for you...

MilwaukeeDevHouse is intended for passionate and creative technical people that want to have some fun, learn new things, and meet new people.

If you have the chance to check out a DevHouse locally, do it! Our experience was wonderful. Even better, start a local DevHouse in your area.

Special thanks to Pete Prodoehl, one of the leaders of MilwaukeeDevHouse.

We're already looking forward to MilwaukeeDevHouse2! :-)

Related Links
MilwaukeeDevHouse1 Photos on Flickr
Nathan's Transportation Drawings:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Permalink | Comments (6) | Milwaukee | add to del.icio.us

February 7, 2008

Attending SXSW Interactive 2008!

For the past few years, I've been very intentional about attending thought-provoking conferences and events, to learn, grow and meet new people.

In 2007, I attended BarCampMadison, UX Intensive, SOBCon07, BarCampMilwaukee2 the SEED Conference and excellent monthly Web414 meetings through the year.

For several years I've heard great things about SXSW (South by Southwest) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Many of the people I admire attend yearly, I've enjoyed podcasts from the event, but it's never worked out for me to attend.

That will change in 2008. On March 7th, I'll be heading down to Austin, with fellow Web414 members Ashe Dryden and David Overbeck. We're all excited to see first-hand, just what all the SXSW buzz is about.

Thanks MakaluMedia!
I've been given the opportunity to attend SXSW as art director and designer from MakaluMedia. I'm very thankful for this opportunity, and I plan to make the most of my time in Austin. I'll attend multiple sessions, take notes and capture sketchnotes similar to the ones I did at the SEED Conference and UX Intensive.

Advise the Newbie
Since this is my first time to SXSW Interactive, I welcome tips and ideas from seasoned veterans. I'm also open to Austin tips and suggestions from any Austin dwellers out there who would like to share. Just leave a comment below. :-)

Contact Me SXSW-Goers
I also want to meet old friends and new people while I'm at at SXSW. If you're attending SXSW Interactive 2008 and would like to meet for a coffee in Austin, drop me a line with the subject SXSW. I'd love to connect before I head down to Austin.

Resources
As I prepare for SXSW Interactive, I've compiled a selection of resources to share with other SXSW attendees, and those interested in the event:

SXSW Interactive 2008 — The official site.
SXSW Interactive 2008: Panels (Time) — SXSW Panels, time schedule.
SXSW Interactive 2008: Panels (Day) — SXSW Panels, by day.
SXSW Interactive 2008: Panels (Category) — SXSW Panels, by category.
SXSW Registrant's Guide — Registrant's guide.
SXSW Registrant's Mobile Guide — Mobile registrant's guide.
SXSW '08 Insider's Guide — Information and forums on Ning.com.
SXSW Baby — Un-official Weblog and forums for SXSW.
Ze Frank Explains SXSW Interactive In Under a Minute — Classic Ze Frank humor!
SXSW Core Conversations — Directory for informal conversations.
SXSW Past, Present, and Future — Great podcast interview with Hugh Forrest, Director of Events for SXSW Interactive on the history, culture and future of the event.
SXSW Geeks Love Bowling — Bowling with SXSWers, Sunday, March 9th.
Airbag: Hampton — Greg Storey's Guide to SXSW Newbies.
John Phillips — Beginner's Guide to SXSW.

Have a resource to share? Email me and let me know!

Permalink | Comments (8) | Creativity | add to del.icio.us

January 31, 2008

INeedCoffee: Creating the 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar

Michael Allen Smith, the publisher of INeedCoffee.com provided a great opportunity to share how I created my 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar, in the February 2008 issue of INeedCoffee.

In the article, I share details of my inspiration, how I researched coffee drinks and the process of sketching, scanning and production to create the 2008 Sketchoon Coffee Calendar.

Here's a teaser:

A few years ago, my wife and I went looking for coffee-themed calendars to be used as gifts for coffee-loving friends. We were very surprised to find none in the calendar kiosks at the local malls or at coffee shops and very few to choose from online.
Being creative people, we decided to create our own calendar, using Cafe Press to print them. Our first calendar used black and white photos and was received very well by our 2 friends.

About the same time, I'd been working on a drawing style I had created called Sketchtoons where I mixed loose sketches with hand-written notes in my Moleskine sketchbook. I decided to do a new calendar, creating sketchtoons for 12 coffee drinks.

In this article, I'll document how I came up with the ideas, drew, scanned and colorized them for use in calendars and other items, and then marketed and sold the calendar with no budget.

I invite you to read the entire article: Creating the 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar and check out the excellent coffee resources on INeedCoffee.com.

Even better: get in touch with Michael and submit your articles, reviews, and artwork for potential publication in a future monthly issue of the INeedCoffee Newsletter.

Permalink | Comments (3) | Sketchtoons | add to del.icio.us

October 30, 2007

SEED Conference Thoughts & Sketchnotes

Whew! I'm back from Monday's excellent SEED Conference in Chicago.

What a great event! The Illinois Institute of Technology and Rem Koolhaas' Tribune Student Center building, was an incredibly cool venue. Funky lines and the architectural space provided a unique backdrop for the sessions of the day.

Carlos Segura
All of the sessions were very good, though the most interesting for me as a designer was hearing Carlos Segura speak. He talked about taking risks and thinking deeper for clients and going beyond only what they ask to figuring out what they really need.

I was especially inspired by the Corbis Stock Photo case study, where Carlos' team changed the stock agency's overall approach to consider their clients (designers) and in doing so, changed an entire industry.

Segura also stressed keeping small, working on projects and with clients you really want to work with. Good work comes from these situations, and by staying small you aren't constantly taking jobs you dislike just to keep everyone busy. In fact, this turned into a thread that connected all of the talks of the day.

Jason Fried
Jason spoke very briefly, so he could open the floor for lots of Q&A time. He recommended these 5 items:

Watch out for red flags
Keep your team small
Make sure your staff has alone time
Keep meetings short and focused
Make tiny decisions instead of massive ones

Jason also recommended a small team size, though his perspective focused a little more on communication issues with small vs. large teams and scaling projects to fit your team size rather than scaling your team to fit scope.

I resonated most with Jason's call for alone time. I work remotely, but even though I work alone, there is always a temptation towards IM, email or phone calls, and I find that blocking out chunks of alone time makes a difference. I know this may be a tough one for the multi-tasking generation, but I think it really can help your focus.

Jim Coudal
I loved Jim Coudal's candor and relaxed approach, and especially his openness in sharing his firm's successes and failures. He shared several stories and films, and drew ideas from them. My take away:

Be curious
Choose people on their taste
Don't be afraid to fail

Jim talked about his curiosity and how many of the things he's been curious about have turned into business ideas. Curiosity helps with client work, since you can get to speed quickly and often see a problem from a different perspective than the client.

He also talked about identifying people and hiring them on taste over technical talent. Not untalented people with taste, but rather if you had to choose between two people and one had good taste, go with taste over talent.

Coudal suggested that failures are OK. They're learning experiences which often create opportunities that might never have happened otherwise. You have to learn to identify and capitalize on unexpected opportunities that often grow out of failures.

Discussion Session: Segura, Fried & Coudal
The most interesting of the sessions was the final hour or so of open discussion time with Carlos, Jason and Jim at the front of the room. They fielded all sorts of questions from attendees about their ideas. Questions about small teams, marketing, simplicity, community, building products while still managing client work, questions about creating apps that rely solely on other platorms (Facebook), and more.

Of all the sessions, this was the one I and the 4 other guys I met, thought was the best of all. Why? Because they had a chance to respond immediately and candidly to random questions. I also enjoyed hearing them discuss and explore ideas in depth that hadn't come out in their talks. Finally, it was interesting to hear their similarity of thought and subtle differences of approach and opinion on the same questions.

Sketchnotes
As mentioned last week, I took my pocket Moleskine sketchbook along and captured 17 pages of sketchnotes, from the entire day's talks and discussions, including Carlos Segura, Jason Fried, Edward Lifson and Jim Coudal.

I didn't try to capture everything said during yeterday's event, since others were probably doing that.

Instead, I took time to listen and analyze the talks, distilling and capturing the main ideas I was hearing. By doing a bit of on-the-fly processing, it forced me to boil down what was being said, then express it in ink on the page in a way that would be meaningful to me and to others who might read my sketchnotes later.

To make the notes interesting, I played with typography and images with the sketchnotes, to provide a little texture and depth beyond pages of gray text.

SEED Sketchnotes on Coudal Partners
Seems my notes have struck a chord. Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners emailed about my sketchnotes on Flickr and made mention in their Fresh Signals feed. Thanks Jim!

SEED Sketchnotes on Signal vs. Noise
Awesome! 37signals noticed them too: Mike Rohde's SEED Conference 2007 sketchbook notes. Thanks Matt!

Pretty cool to have speakers and sponsors mention notes taken during the event. :-)

Overall, SEED Conference was well worth the time and price to attend.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Permalink | Comments (5) | Design | add to del.icio.us

July 26, 2007

Give a Kid a Camera...

This is what happens when a 4 year old boy gets hold of your camera.

My wife and I were cracking up as we imported some of the images he made of himself and surrounding objects while we attended a Milwaukee Brewer's baseball game last Friday night.

I've been impressed with Nathan's eye with a camera. He's very serious when shooting, and often seems to deliberately frame shots, though many times his shows seem less than intentional.

I quite liked his set of blurred and gradated background images, which I might come in handy for future design projects. I especially like the blue gradation background shown on the left. Those make me want to set him loose with a digital camera and a 2GB card just to see what he comes up with! :-)

I'm planning to work with Nathan on his camera skills, so he can better understand what he's doing. Whatever the case, I find a deep, unexplainable enjoyment as I watch him explore his world and express himself through a camera lens.

Permalink | Comments (7) | Kids | add to del.icio.us

June 22, 2007

My Podcast Interview on The Micro ISV Show

A few weeks ago, I was invited by author, micro-business owner and new MakaluMedia logo design client Bob Walsh, to be interviewed on Microsoft's The MicroISV Show (a podcast for software developers) with co-host Michael Lehman:

It's a brave new world for MicroISVs in which it's no longer enough to drag some controls onto a form and simply make sure they're lined up and the tab order is right. The mantra "form follows function" is becoming more and more important for developers as advent of Windows Vista, WPF and Silverlight once again change the expectations of how customers perceive software. You've got to "put your best face forward" and think about design of the user experience right from the beginning.
In this episode, Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh talk to Mike Rohde, designer and art director for MakaluMedia, about the changing role of design in software development and how and why MicroISVs must incorporate design thinking into their development process.

Listen to The Micro ISV Show #22 podcast:

• Putting your best face forward - The growing importance of design for MicroISVs
• Direct Podcast MP3 Link (Size: 36MB, Runtime: 40:13)

We had a great time! I had an opportunity to talk a bit about my views on design being more than window-dressing on applications, the importance of starting early with a designer, how to choose a designer, vector-based development tools and how they may effect developers and designers, and more.

Bob worked in questions about my creative process, asked how I generate so many sketch ideas, and even slipped in a mention of my Moleskine Planner Hack project.

Have a listen and let me know what you think.

Permalink | Comments (2) | Design | add to del.icio.us

April 2, 2007

Weekend Sketches

This weekend I made a conscious effort to bring my Moleskine sketchbook with me everywhere, having been challenged by Tommy Kane's Push Yourself post last week.

Below are two pieces I sketched this weekend:

Sketch 1: My son Nathan and I went to his preschool on Saturday for an Easter egg hunt. Part of the afternoon included giving the kids helium-filled balloons to bounce and chase around the church fellowship hall. The kids had such a blast — I had to try and capture Nathan's joy at play. This one was pretty quick and loose, with my focus on capturing the feeling I had, rather than being perfectly proportional.

Sketch 2: The right page was done Saturday night, after seeing the the film Peaceful Warrior. The film was a little cheesy and full of platitudes for dialogue. Still, the phrase "There are no ordinary moments" seemed to bubble up in my mind just before bed. I grabbed my sketchbook and let the idea direct my sketch, trying not to think too much about the technical details. My approach was to look at this phrase as a challenge to sketch those "un-ordinary moments" rather than lose them.

As I prepared the scan today, I realized Nathan's balloon-jumping sketch was one of those "un-ordinary moments" I'd captured Saturday morning, before the words themselves were spoken in the film, later the same evening.

Thanks Tommy for the challenge to sketch, especially when it's hard. If you're reading this post and are thinking about sketching again, or for the first time — do it! :-)

Permalink | Comments (8) | Sketches | add to del.icio.us

January 20, 2005

Journalisimo

Yesterday my good friend Armand from Moleskinerie and I launched a new weblog for lovers of analog pens, fine papers, journals and sketchbooks. It's called Journalisimo.

Our manifesto is short and sweet:

This weblog is an attempt to invite a return to analog. Many of us live very digital lives. We push pixels around screens. Our lives are stored as bits on shiny hard drives. Our words and images can be published online, available moments later, all around the world. But this digital life can often seem very shallow.
While we recognize the power of our digital existence, we long for the tactile feel of ink on paper. We celebrate the freedom from power supplies, batteries, wireless networks and fragile electronics. We seek to elevate the written word and the freehand sketch on fine paper. We celebrate the journal as the optimal analog device for expression and enjoyment.

Journalisimo.

The Journalisimo blog idea has brewing for many months, prior to our launch this week. It was the combination of my WSJ appearance, along with Marc Orchant and Merlin Mann, which set us both off, though we could both sense a trend toward Moleskines and other paper journals being adopted by bloggers and the digerati. It made sense to provide a resource for those people and focus it on journals generically, rather than one specific brand.

We've been in on the analog journaling and sketching trend in the tech/blog community for a bit over a year now and we only see it increasing. We both see digitally oriented folks getting frustrated with their computer tools, or just seeking a respite from their immersive digital lives. Analog journals and pens seem to fit the bill.

So, it only made sense to begin Journalisimo as our way to connect people searching for analog solutions to people generating analog solutions. Armand and I like to think of Journalisimo as the analog doppelganger to Engadget. :-)

I'm the design and creative director for the new blog, while Armand is the one posting the bulk of the daily posts. I intend to write up longer articles and reviews to post from time to time, while Armand hunts down daily doses of unique, unusual and interesting tidbits on the analog lifestyle.

We welcome your suggestions and notifications on analog blog posts and articles. if you have suggestions or links to share, please visit our little Blog, drop a line or leave a comment. :-)

Permalink | Comments (4) | Creativity | add to del.icio.us

January 10, 2005

Design Stagnation and Renaissance

Tonight's posting has been brewing for several days, but wasn't fully steeped until I came across Design In-Flight Magazine earlier today. Jason Santa Maria's excellent cover story, Fighting off design stagnation was the key to releasing these thoughts.

I found Design In-Flight magazine via Andy Clarke's excellent And All That Malarkey weblog. It was today's post, Fighting off design Stalinism which caught my eye, along with Andy's hearty recommendation of DIF magazine. I decided to buy the yearly subscription for $10 and boy what a great deal! DIF is an excellent magazine.

Jason's article is superb, both for its timing and ideas. Having been in the Shadow of the Valley of Creativity last May, I could immediately relate to Jason's thinking. Here's an excerpt from the opening paragraph:

I’ve only been out of school and working in the industry for a few years now, but I can already feel it. The feeling like my hands are getting tied. Like I am coming up with the same old ideas or dipping into my overused bag of tricks too often. I am left racking my brain for new directions and feeling like the design world will surely leave me behind to make way for today’s new design youth. You might laugh because it’s only been a few years, but this is where it begins.

That was pretty much how I felt in early 2004, feeling in need of a boost of creativity. I didn't doubt my skills as much as I knew I needed to kick-start my creative juices again — often easier said than done.

Lately I've been experiencing a serious creative renaissance, which I can now actually trace back to that very post on May 27th. It was the admission, not only to myself and my wife or friends, but to my weblog and its readers, which set me on this forward path.

I now see clearly that the very first step toward my coming to grips with this situation was admitting where I was. Once the cat was "out of the bag", so to speak, real changes could take place — like the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings I've seen portrayed on TV.

"Hi my name is Mike, and I'm a designer."

Since that May, I've taken several steps toward change. I've intentionally taken the time to sketch regularly, both for work projects and just for fun. I've furiously pursued XHTML & CSS design, becoming more fluent in those two languages in the process.

I've also found myself contemplating design much more often, seeking out good design like well-brewed espresso. Reviewing logos on trucks, in magazines and on websites. I even find myself trying to decipher why designs do or don't work. Design really has become a passion again, and I'm loving it.

There's been another change in these past months, my weight loss of 30 pounds on the South Beach diet. While not directly design related, this physical change has generated much more energy for pursuit of work and play. Feeling good has provided a positive burst, impacting all other parts of my life. Even more though, losing weight has provided proof to myself that I really could change, if I admitted where I was, believed it and did something about it. It was difficult at first, but wow, is it worth it now!

So, if you're finding yourself in a funk at the start of this new year, maybe the first step is to admit to yourself and maybe your family and friends, where you're at. Once you can realistically point out your position on the map, it's much easier to find the way home.

Permalink | Comments (4) | Creativity | add to del.icio.us

December 22, 2004

Business Diary Concept: 4 Month Update

Back in late August, I made a decision to keep a business diary for myself. Today, Evelyn Mitchell from tummy.com left a comment here, asking how things have been going with it. The timing was perfect, because that topic was actually on my mind! :-)

I love my business diary. I used it daily (well, most days) and find it indispensable for capturing tidbits, thoughts, URLs and so forth. Since the original article was posted, I've moved to a plain text document which lives in BBEdit rather than RTF. I found rich-texty goodness not compelling enough after using the diary for a month. It seemed formatting diary entries was more fiddle than feature, so I moved to plain text.

Another reason for the plain-text-via-BBEdit direction, was to eliminate another running app. I use BBEdit for website development all day long, so it seemed crazy to run TexEdit just to keep a diary. BBEdit 8 happened to add a multi-document window option around this same time, which allows me to leave the diary running without having additional doc windows open, cluttering the screen.

Related to the plain text move, I now sync that document over to the Palm Tungsten E via Documents To Go. Wordsmith for the Mac can't handle anything but RTF, so the switch was required. But what I'm finding is, I never really look at the diary on my Palm. I mean, it's very nice to have it there as a backup, or if I'm visiting a client — its just that so far I've not used the diary on the TE in that way.

As for regularity, I don't post notes in the document every day, though I try to. Sometimes my workday is very busy, so I might add comments from a prior day I'd missed, while entering tidbits about the current day. I don't want to feel compelled to add something each day, useful or not. I'd prefer that my work diary serve me, rather than the other way around.

Client specific notes do go in the diary, and then are transferred over to DayLite, a great new OS X app we're using at MakaluMedia. I've also found that comments in the diary are regularly re-used as emails to colleagues or clients. So, the diary acts as a scratch pad area in some sense.

URLs continue to be recorded in the diary, though lately I've been really diggin' storing links at the free online social bookmarking service called del.icio.us. This service lets you capture web page links in your own database, add descriptions and category tags. The service includes bookmarks for your browser which let you post to del.icio.us in a pop-up window or the same browser window — these really are a key to making del.icio.us useful and fast.

Even cooler, links are shared with others via web, RSS or within the del.icio.us system. I suggest you check it out yourself to see how it might work for you. My only beef with del.icio.us — my bookmarks are on someone else's server. If they close up or the server poops out, I'm stuck. So, I still copy key URLs in my work diary and keep them in Safari.

If you're considering a new year's resolution to keep your thoughts, ideas, URLs and other text tidbits, i suggest you consider a work diary. The key is finding an approach that works for your needs, whether a paper planner, Moleskine notebook, plain text, or DayNotez on a Palm device. Remember: a work diary is there for you and not you for it.

Go forth, and journal! :-)

Permalink | Comments (6) | Creativity | add to del.icio.us

November 18, 2004

Good Reads: The Hughtrain & How To Be Creative

Last weekend, quite by accident, I came across gapingvoid.com, the weblog of Hugh MacLeod. While browsing there, I stumbled on one of his posts entitled The Hughtrain, Hugh's own variation on the Cluetrain Manifesto (another incredible document well worth reading, if you haven't yet).

Next thing I know, an hour has passed while I read The Hughtrain, complete with laughing at his prose and cartoons, drawn on the backs of business cards. Hughtrain is fresh, unpretentious and challenging, particularly to the brain of this graphic and web designer. (Note for the younguns: Hughtrain contains some pretty strong language at times)

This evening, I stumbled across yet another thought provoking piece by Hugh at Change This, a website filled with manifestos from all sorts of leading edge people. I'd been to Change This a few months ago, but never noticed Hugh's How to Be Creative manifesto.

Once again, many minutes later, I found myself laughing at and appreciating Hugh's thoughts and proverbs. The guy really has a way with words and images. The How to Be Creative piece is an amalgam of 26 secrets Hugh has discovered in his years working as a creative guy, such as:

"I draw on the back of wee biz cards. Whatever.
Thereʼs no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.

Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more successful, his number of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expending mental energy on stuﬀ wastes time. Heʼs a man on a mission. Heʼs got a deadline. Heʼs got some rich client breathing down his neck. The last thing he wants is to spend 3 weeks learning how to use a router drill if he doesnʼt need to.

A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind. Which is why there are so many hack writers with state-of-the-art laptops."

I love this approach, because it puts the focus on the person — the artist and not the tools. The right tool is of course part of the deal, but secondary to the artist. My father once put it this way:

"Mike, it's the photographer and not the camera which makes great images. If you give a great photographer a box camera and a bad photographer top of the line gear, the great photographer will still create the better and more artistic photo every single time."

I'll leave you with another insightful tidbit from How To Be Creative:

"The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.
How your own sovereignty inspires other people to ﬁnd their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibility, will change the world far more than the the workʼs objective merits ever will.

Your idea doesnʼt have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.

The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more it will change the world.

Thatʼs what doodling on business cards taught me."

So, what are you waiting for? Go read The Hughtrain and How To Be Creative! :-)

Permalink | Comments (2) | Creativity | add to del.icio.us