The site is a must complementary experience to the podcast.
http://99percentinvisible.org/
I share it ’cause I do care 4. Federico
Incomplete Manifesto for Growth
- Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.- Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.- Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.- Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.- Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.- Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.- Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.- Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.- Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.- Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.- Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.- Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.- Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.- Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.- Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.- Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.- ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.- Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.- Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.- Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.- Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.- Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.- Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.- Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.- Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.- Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.- Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”- Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.- Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.- Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’- Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.- Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.- Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.- Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.- Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.- Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.- Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
- Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.- Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.- Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.- Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.- Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.- Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.
I share it, because I do care 4.
Federico
This TED Talk has been recommended to you by Fedehndz@gmail.com from TED.com.
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The Main Failing Of Design School: Kids Can’t Think For Themselves
As Pentagram’s Michael Bierut argues, designers are too often trained to think simply about the design itself, and not what it means or what it’s hoping to accomplish.
The following was Michael Bierut’s first published essay, from 1988, and appears in Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design.
Graphic designers are lucky. As the people who structure much of the world’s communications, we get to vicariously partake of as many fields of interest as we have clients. In a single day, a designer can talk about real estate with one client, cancer cures with another, and forklift trucks with a third. Imagine how tedious it must be for a dentist who has nothing to do all day but worry about teeth.
The men and women who invented graphic design in America were largely self-taught; they didn’t have the opportunity to go to fully developed specialized design schools, because none existed. Yet somehow these people managed to prosper without four years of Typography, Visual Problem Solving, and Advanced Aesthetics. What they lacked in formal training they made up for with insatiable curiosity not only about art and design, but culture, science, politics, and history.
How can a designer plan an annual report without some knowledge of economics?
Today, most professionals will admit to alarm about the huge and ever-growing number of programs in graphic design. Each year, more and more high school seniors decide that they have a bright future in “graphics,” often without much of an idea of what graphics is. This swelling tide of 18-year-old, would-be designers is swallowed up thirstily by more and more programs in graphic design at art schools, community colleges, and universities. A few years later, out they come, ready to take their places as professional designers, working for what everybody cheerfully hopes will be an infinitely expanding pool of clients.
There are many ways to teach graphic design, and almost any curriculum will defy neat cubbyholing. Nevertheless, American programs seem to fall into two broad categories: process schools and portfolio schools. Or, if you prefer, “Swiss” schools and “slick” schools.
Some of Bierut’s work for Saks Fifth AvenueProcess schools favor a form-driven problem-solving approach. The first assignments are simple exercises: drawing letterforms, “translating” three-dimensional objects into idealized high-contrast images, and basic still-life photography. In the intermediate stages, the formal exercises are combined in different ways: Relate the drawing of a flute to the hand-drawn letter N; combine the letter N with a photograph of a ballet slipper. In the final stage, these combinations are turned into “real” graphic design: Letter N plus flute drawing plus ballet slipper photo plus 42-point Univers equals, voilà, a poster for Rudolf Nureyev. Of course, if the advanced student gets an assignment to design a poster for, say, an exhibition on Thomas Edison, he or she is tempted to (literally) revert to form: Combine the letter E, drawing of a movie camera, photo of a light bulb, etc. One way or another, the process schools trace their lineage back to the advanced program of the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland. Sometimes the instructors experienced the program only second or third hand, having themselves studied with someone who studied with someone in Basel.
The Swiss-style process schools seem to have thrived largely as a reaction against the perceived “slickness” of the portfolio schools. While the former have been around in force for only the past 15 years or so, the latter are homegrown institutions with roots in the 1950s.
While the unspoken goal of the process school is to duplicate the idealized black-and-white boot camp regimen of far-off Switzerland, the portfolio school has a completely different, admittedly more mercenary, aim: to provide students with polished “books” that will get them good jobs upon graduation. The problem-solving mode is conceptual, with a bias for appealing, memorable, populist imagery. The product, not process, is king. Now, portfolio schools will rebut this by pointing to the copious tissue layouts that often supplement the awesomely slick work in their graduates’ portfolios. Nonetheless, at the end of the line of tissues is always a beautifully propped photograph of an immaculate mock-up of a perfume bottle. Seldom will portfolio schools encourage students to spend six months on a 20-part structural analysis of, say, the semiotics of a Campbell’s soup label as an end in itself. Unlike the full-time teachers of process schools, the portfolio schools are staffed largely by working professionals who teach part time, who are impatient with idle exercises that don’t relate to the “real world.”
However politely the two camps behave in discussions on design education, the fact is, they hate each other. To the portfolio schools, the “Swiss” method is hermetic, arcane, and meaningless to the general public. To the process schools, the “slick” method is distastefully commercial, shallow, and derivative.
A masterpiece of analytic thinking, Massimo Vignelli’s Subway Map from 1972Oddly, though, the best-trained graduates of either camp are equally sought after by employers. East Coast corporate identity firms love the process school graduates; anyone who’s spent six months combining a letterform and a ballet shoe won’t mind being mired in a fat standards manual for three years. On the other hand, package design firms are happy to get the portfolio school graduates; not only do they have a real passion for tighter-than-tight comps, but they can generate hundreds of stylistically diverse alternatives to show indecisive clients.
What, then, is wrong with graphic design education? If there’s a smorgasbord of pedagogical approaches, and employers who can find use for different kinds of training, who suffers? The answer is not in how schools are different, but how they’re the same.
Both process schools and portfolio schools have something in common: Whether the project is the esoteric Nureyev poster or the Bloomingdale’s-ready perfume bottle comp, what’s valued is the way graphic design looks, not what it means. Programs will pay lip service to meaning in design with references to “semiotics” (Swiss) or “conceptual problem solving” (slick), but these nuances are applied in a cultural vacuum. In many programs, if not most, it’s possible to study graphic design for four years without any meaningful exposure to the fine arts, literature, science, history, politics, or any of the other disciplines that unite us in a common culture.
Well, so what? What does a graphic designer need with this other stuff? Employers want trained designers, not writers and economists.
Perhaps the deficiencies in the typical design education aren’t handicaps at first. The new graduate doesn’t need to know economics any more than a plumber does; like a tradesman, he or she needs skills that are, for the most part, technical.
But five or 10 years down the road, how can a designer plan an annual report without some knowledge of economics? Layout a book without an interest in, if not a passion for, literature? Design a logo for a high-tech company without some familiarity with science?
Obviously, they can and do. Some designers fill in their educational gaps as they go along; some just fake it. But most of the mediocre design today comes from designers who are faithfully doing as they were taught in school: they worship at the altar of the visual.
The pioneering design work of the 1940s and 1950s continues to interest and excite us while work from the intervening years looks more and more dated and irrelevant. Without the benefit of intensive specialized programs, the pioneers of our profession, by necessity, became well-rounded intellectually. Their work draws its power from deep in the culture of their times.
Bruce Mau Design’s logo for Canada’s leading design school, OCAD, required serious thought about the school’s role in students’ lives.Modern design education, on the other hand, is essentially value-free: every problem has a purely visual solution that exists outside any cultural context. Some of the most tragic victims of this attitude hail not from the world of high culture, but from the low. Witness the case of a soft-drink manufacturer that pays a respected design firm a lot of money to “update” a classic logo. The product of American design education responds: “Clean up an old logo? You bet,” and goes right to it. In a vacuum that excludes popular as well as high culture, the meaning of the mark in its culture is disregarded. Why not just say no? The option isn’t considered.
Our clients usually are not other designers; they sell real estate, cure cancer, make forklift trucks. Nor are there many designers in the audiences our work eventually finds. They must be touched with communication that is genuinely resonant, not self-referential. To find the language for that, one must look beyond Manfred Maier’s Principles of Design or the last Communication Arts Design Annual.
Nowadays, the passion of design educators seems to be technology; they fear that computer illiteracy will handicap their graduates. But it’s the broader kind of illiteracy that’s more profoundly troubling. Until educators find a way to expose their students to a meaningful range of culture, graduates will continue to speak in languages that only their classmates understand. And designers, more and more, will end up talking to themselves.
This essay was excerpted from Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design (Princeton Architectural Press) now out in paperback. Buy a copy for $16 on Amazon.
[Top image: Christopher Meder/Shutterstock]
Michael Bierut
Michael Bierut is a partner in the New York office of the design consultancy Pentagram and is president emeritus of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. … Continued
Leadership
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4/02/2012 @ 10:58AM |1,297 views
Earn the Trust of Hispanic Consumers and Your Brand Will Dominate
As organizations seek to find new ways to capture sustainable business growth, the estimated $1.2 trillion dollars of Hispanic consumer purchasing power in 2012 represents a time-sensitive opportunity for America’s corporations to earn this powerful relationship. Creating and sustaining momentum with this rapidly growing consumer segment is key, yet risky if not executed properly. In fact, many brands have tried to market to Hispanics, yet have failed miserably losing millions of dollars along the way. These unsuccessful attempts have proven that Hispanic consumers are looking for brands to create greater cultural affinity and to listen to their needs more carefully. As a group of participants shared with me at a Hispanic Consumer Roundtable event my company recently hosted, “If you take the time to know me you will not need to sell me.”
The Lack of Cultural Intelligence is Damaging Our Enterprises and Our Economy
Glenn Llopis Contributor
Hispanics in the United States are growing frustrated with how brands represent their voice and identity in their marketing, public relations, social media campaigns and grassroots efforts. The success of any campaign effort to Latino consumers will be measured by how well brands authentically embrace and become an integral part of what matters most to the Latino community at-large. Simply put, Hispanics don’t want to be sold – they want brand owners to help advance their voice, respectability and opportunities for their families in America. Savvy Latino consumers are making one thing clear: “Respect our voice and help create opportunities for advancement to earn our trust and vote of confidence.” Brands must focus on ways to enable Hispanics in America, helping them discover their full potential – as leaders and small business owners, as parents and students, as anything they want to be – by leveraging their Hispanic heritage.
Here are a couple of ways brands can earn the respect, trust and loyalty of Hispanic consumers.
1. Become an Integral part of the Hispanic voice – Communicate with Hispanics, Not at Them
Don’t force Hispanics to speak like your brand. Get to know Hispanics and their cultural nuances so you can begin to position your brand as an advocate of their community. By ignoring the Hispanic voice, you minimize the value of the Hispanic consumer mind share. Believing that your brand will overpower the Hispanic voice because of how it has been accepted in the mainstream market weakens the credibility of your efforts.
The key is to communicate with Hispanic consumers, not alienate them. Help Hispanics find their path toward advancement by helping them overcome the hurdles they face. For example, the Center for Hispanic Leadership has partnered with organizations to provide Hispanic consumers the culturally tailored professional/personal development and career tools to help them succeed at work or advance in their personal lives. Hispanics are confused about whom to trust, what to invest in and how best to commit their time. Therefore they are more inclined to start trusting a brand that genuinely cares and invests in their advancement. Unfortunately, most brands that have attempted this only do it with words (selling hope), but not with actions and real tools that can measurably advance the Hispanic individual or community along with the brand owners.
Hispanics want brands to embrace their cultural identity and lifestyle needs in ways that naturally connect to their cultural values. Hispanic consumers want to be an authentic part of your brand promise, rather than be forced to believe a promise that doesn’t resonate culturally. This fact alone makes it a business and societal imperative for brands to invest in earning a trustworthy relationship with Hispanic consumers. Until you embrace this approach for your brand’s success and begin to show genuine intention in the Hispanic market will you be headed in the right direction. Intention is more powerful than you think as long as you act on it. It gets you closer to earning the trust your brand desperately needs to dominate your industry. Doing it the old way hurts your brand and is a waste of time and money.
2. Don’t Marginalize Hispanic Consumers – Empower Their Identity
Don’t allow your brand to define Hispanics, let Hispanic consumers help define your brand for themselves and their community. For example, on the political front, politicians have destroyed their credibility with Hispanics by solely associating their identity with Immigration Reform and the fate of the Dream Act. Hispanics interpret this behavior as a sign of disrespect and thus are growing uncertain about voting in the 2012 Presidential election.
Hispanics want to align themselves with brands that strengthen their identity. Stop believing that your Hispanic focus groups are necessarily revealing the truth or properly guiding your brand initiatives. Perhaps you are not asking them the right questions? This is the case most of the time because the brand owners don’t really know what they are looking for other than market share. Hispanic consumers are most transparent and become incredibly valuable for your brand when they believe your brand can be trusted. However, this trust must be earned not by your efforts to “pay for their voice” but rather showing them that you genuinely care about empowering their voice.
This is why Latino consumers have not yet forged strong alliances and loyalty with most brands and they have every reason to feel this way. Remember, Hispanics in America are fighting to hold onto their cultural identity and this gets lost when their voice is marginalized.
Hispanics believe they have heard it all before from brands that don’t understand them. This requires brands to change the conversation; change their approach and build a more meaningful and purposeful relationship with Hispanics whose community desires leadership.
Here are a couple of self crafted fonts, indeed a good way to share 🙂 Fontanera http://2ttf.com/QxAwt575 #iFontMaker and Fonta http://2ttf.com/Sb2zkM7a #iFontMaker
Paul Jankowski 
Federico Hernández Ruiz 