Tiny Gigantic

Most days, I wake up with an deep urge to do the hard work of changing myself and the world around me for the better. But some days, I wake up and all I want to do is ENJOY the world—just to have a day where I live as if everything is just as it should be. Those are the days I dream of train jumping.

via FecalFace

By now, everyone knows about that gorgeous project Found, but we recently discovered DIRTY Found, which is all the weird and pervy stuff. Enjoy.

via Fecal Face

Something happened today as we were experimenting with possible layout directions for the Written on the City book: I stopped looking, I stopped thinking, and I finally felt like progress got made.

Designers are trained to look. Scratch that, they’re paid to look. So I’ll understand if you want to kick me in the crotch when I tell you that when beginning a design project, it’s sometimes a good idea to stop thinking, stop looking and start simply making.

Because here’s the thing: we’ve been so trained to look for a solution at the end of a project, we don’t see all the wonderful, serendipitous possibilities in what happens along the way.

So we floundered around like this for a good week or so. And if it hadn’t been for our good friend, the kick-ass Audrey Kallander we’d be floundering still.

She told us to shut the hell up and then held us at scissor-point until we began making collages of possible spreads. I know, it seems obvious. But no one really seems to take the time (and it does take some time) to use collage as a tool to figure out some smart design directions. Mostly, we go straight to the computer, and start designing from there. But starting with the computer forces you to think immediately about a grid, it forces you to think and re-think your actions, and it makes the design process too precious.

So here’s what you do:
Make a whole bunch of black and white copies (in many different sizes) of all your images. Then do the same thing using lorem ipsum text. Make some bold, some in italics, some giant and some tiny. Get some tape and start cutting and taping.

And don’t worry about what it looks like. Seriously. This means that you shouldn’t have an idea about what it’s gonna look like, before you begin. You just have to start laying your text and your images down next to eachother without thinking about your rule of thirds or your golden ratio or your rags or a grid or anything else for that matter. You can tap those things into place after you’ve found a direction that feels good. So work with your gut. And make as many different spreads as possible.

You’ll find that once you let go of seeing the process as the product, your designs will become a lot freer, they’ll lend themselves more to conversation and narrative. And you’ll have a damn good time, too.

Have you tried this? How did it go?

If you’re in any kind of creative services business, you’re probably used to having potential new clients ask you “How much will it cost for you to [insert creative service here] for us?”

And if you’re like most of the people I’ve worked with, you squirm a little (even if you pretend to be chill), and make some sort of gut calculation based on a few factors:

– How much money you think they’ve got
– How much you need or want money at the moment
– How much you want to have the project in your portfolio
– How well you get along with the people on the client team
– How likely they are to give you more work
– How elite you want to appear
– How tight the deadline is
– How much you care

Then you light some candles, slaughter a goat, commune with the spirit world, and come up with a number.

It’s not a very good system. No matter how confident they may seem, very few creative people I know actually feel confident about the prices they quote. It’s a game full of second guesses and crossed fingers. And it’s often a game full of regret.

And asking for an estimate ain’t so good for the client either, because it forces the creative firm to think adversarially about the client right from the get go. It forces the creatives into games of intrigue, maneuvers, posturing, and bluffs—all to “win” over the client. This is no way to start a relationship, especially one meant to thrive on collaborative creativity.

A good solution is to tell the client how things really work. Maybe say something like this:

“Look, a [insert creative service here] project can get done a lot of different ways. It can be big or small, deep or shallow, quick or slow. There isn’t necessarily one right way to do it. It’s very much a matter of chemistry and excitement and personality types. We’ve found that the best thing for a project is for you to first tell us how much you want to spend. We’ll take that number and think about the project, what it’ll take to get it done, how much we want to do it, and any other obstacles and motivators. Then we’ll tell you how to best use the budget you’ve got, and you can decide if you like what we suggest or not. Then, instead of negotiating abstract dollar counts, we’ll have a conversation about how best to get the work done with your budget. It’s more concrete, more human, more collaborative, and more transparent. For these reasons, it’s a much better approach, given how creative services really work.”

Got any other ways to make it easier for creatives and clients get together?

So ignore the crooked scan for a minute and read the headline for this Safeway Supermarkets ad, which we found in the San Francisco lifestyle magazine 7 x 7. Now, as far as I can tell, Safeway is about 80 years old, but according to this headline, they’re just beginning to offer food.

It’s funny cuz it’s true. The processed shit that comes in boxes and lines their aisles really isn’t food. In some ways I respect that they’re coming clean and trying to tell SF that they understand the city’s desire for healthy, nourishing, natural food. But it’s a goofy headline that’s likely only to affirm the foodies’ and hippies’ dislike for Safeway.

Our suggestion: Introducing O Organics.

So it’s come to our attention that a bunch of you fine people actually read this here inspiration feed. Some of you (and you’re our very favorites—your checks are in the mail) even subscribe to it. You’ve commented on our posts and linked to our site, but we still don’t know who you are or what you do. So before you go back to work, leave us a note in the comments. We’d love to get to know you. And if you’re (ever) in San Francisco, look us up. We’ll have lunch.

Hey folks,

So this blog is about 2 months old now. It’s still in diapers and waking us up at all hours, but it’s been a blast. Totally worth the sore nipples and milkbarf down our backs.

But we’re curious what you think. What’s working for you and what’s sucking? Are there any posts—good or bad—that have stuck in your mind? We’d really love to know.

So yah, leave a comment, please. Or send an email to antenna [ at ] tinygigiantic [ dot ] com.

Thanks dudes.

It goes a little something like this:

“We’ve got [or we want to have] a room where people can get away from their desks and cubicles and really get creative. In this room, the rules are different. Everyone sits on bean bags, and there are no computers allowed. Instead of staplers and keyboards, we’ve got toys and children’s books and magazines. The walls are colorful, and one of the walls is painted with blackboard paint so people can write all over the walls and have a really wild brainstorm. It’s a sanctuary and war room and lounge all at once. We do our best thinking in there.”

I’ve heard this story in one form or another at just about every “creative” organization I’ve worked with. I really respect the spirit of it and the desire to create a space where creativity can thrive. But it’s a stupid-ass story, because a “bean bag lounge” isn’t a very good way to make creativity happen.

There are two things wrong with the bean bag lounge. The first problem is that it’s an isolated room. This sends the message that creativity has to be underground in your organization, that creative people are refugees, constantly fighting against the overwhelming tide of cubicle conformity. This is no good for creativity, no good for keeping your creatives on staff, and no good for your organization.

The second problem is that bean bag lounges are crappy environments. Sure, cubicle farms suck, and a brightly colored room is better, but in my experience, creativity does best when people feel at home. And no one feels at home in a bean bag lounge. Seriously, when was the last time you went over to someone’s house and found it set up like a bean bag lounge? The effect is that bean bag lounges are self-conscious spaces (I’d even go so far as to say that they are caricatures of themselves) and so people feel some sort of expectation that they must “be creative” when they are in the room, and that’s just the kind of thing that kills creativity.

All of this might explain why all the bean bag lounges I’ve ever seen are always deserted, which is sad because they are built with the best intention. But they just plain don’t work. It’s time we killed this false idol.

This post isn’t so much about project managers as it is about the the people paid to liaison between “creatives” and clients. It’s about the divide that project managers put between creatives and clients. Now, just so you project managers out there don’t feel too slighted, I’d like you to know that some of my best friends are project managers. Fine, fine people.

Recently I was in a meeting with two designers and a product manager. The designers were interested in talking out new ideas, and moving existing ones towards new directions. They were interested in more than the visuals—they were actually trying to help the client get their brand straight. No doubt, this is a good thing. But the product manager didn’t listen, didn’t participate. She worried about more about deadlines than about doing the best work. She talked right over the idea generation that was happening, killed it, and put everyone on the defensive. She worried about what the client wanted rather than what they needed. And in that worry, there was an assumption that because the client knew more about—let’s say making widgets—than we did, that they knew more about design and communications too.

But here’s the thing: the client is paying for your expertise. They’ve come to you because they can’t do it themselves. If they could, you’d be out of business. So have confidence in what you do. If you’re client is about to make a huge mistake by choosing a bad idea, it’s your job to tell them. That’s what they’re paying you for.

To my mind, the job of the liaison shouldn’t exist. Sure, it’s nice to have someone to coordinate deadlines, and make sure invoices get sent out and contracts get signed. But that’s a different job than interpreting information for creative work. With the liaison, information gets diluted or confused or compromised. It becomes secondhand information, interpreted by someone who’s an expert in deadlines, not in creative communications. If the flow of info goes from client to project manager to creatives, the people actually doing the work are left to muddle through on their own guesswork. Something similar will happen when information goes in the other direction: the creatives (if they’re any good) will have a good reason for doing what they’ve done, but if the liaison doesn’t believe it or doesn’t understand it or merely wants to meet a deadline or budget or expectation, the client won’t get it. And so they won’t buy it.

There’s at least two ways to fix this problem:

1. Hire creative people who want to and are able to talk about what they do and why. And hire an assistant to coordinate all the practical stuff.

2. Hire a project manager who understands that creativity only succeeds without judgment and fear, one who’s got the courage to tell the client when they’re making a life-threatening mistake. Oh, and you’ll want to include the creative folks in every meeting and every call with the client.

What do you think?

William Hundley likes to play ghost.

Found on Wooster Collective.

Holy shitballs. I’ve never seen stencils this subtle. Made by Logan Hicks.

Via Wooster Collective.

In 1975, two artists—Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt—collaborated to create a deck of cards designed to help break creative deadblocks. Here’s what Brian Eno has to say about them:

“These cards evolved from our separate observations of the principles underlying what we are doing. Sometimes they were recognized in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack (a set of posibilities being continuously reviewed in the mind) or by drawing a single card from a shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if it appropriateness is quite unclear. They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident.”

There are now 5 editions, and they are filled with super interesting, super cryptic advice that feels (to me at least) very powerful for provoking a new way of thinking when you’re stuck.

Want to draw a card from the deck? Do it online here or here or here.

Wikipedia for Brian Eno here, Peter Schmidt here, and Oblique Strategies here.

Image credit Peter Schmidt.

Brian Eno previously in Tiny Gigantic here.

We can’t tell you how many ads and how many messages we see in an average day. We do know it’s a shitload. And we know it sucks. Everywhere you turn, someone’s trying take advantage of your attention. So it restored our faith at least a little bit to see this poster campaign for the Casio G’Zone phone. Instead of asking anything of us, these simple, pretty photographs are just that: simple and pretty. They give more than they take. And it’s super refreshing not be messaged at. So if anyone knows who did these ads, thank them for respecting my attention.

Here’s a problem: Brainstorming ain’t what it used to be. All the recent hype about innovation has got people scrambling into their conference rooms to conduct brainstorms to generate ideas for next big thing. Problem is these brainstorms often aren’t as successful as they could be. When I was still muddling through the agency life, the idea of a brainstorm made me go numb: the conference room, the white board, the facilitator—usually my boss—and a bunch of bored, or scared, “creatives” sitting around doodling on their notepads. Usually all that came out of it was a sugar crash and some mediocre ideas. My boss’s solution: “okay team, let’s have another brainstorm session tomorrow until we get it right.”

So let’s talk about what it takes to have a fun and effective brainstorm.

First of all, you gotta know the rules, and follow them. If you need a refresher, they’re right here. But in my experience we often did a fine job of following the rules, and the brainstorms still sucked.

Why?

First, the sessions were often run by my boss. When you feel like you performance is being evaluated right there in the moment, you tend to get uptight. That makes you question your ideas instead of simply sharing them. Beyond that, your co-workers are all feeling the same thing, and the session becomes a competition for the boss’s approval.

This isn’t to say there shouldn’t be a leader to the session—it can even be your boss—but the leader/boss must make it ridiculously clear that it’s the quantity of ideas that matter, not the quality. That means praising the motormouths, not necessarily their ideas.

Another problem is the setup. When you have a bunch of people facing a whiteboard or a flip chart, you get an audience dynamic. People become spectators when they should be participants. So instead seat people in a circle not a horseshoe. Give everyone a pen and lots of paper. And if you want to get pro about it, think about how you seat them around the table. You want the same kind of dynamic as a lively dinner party. Wired Magazine has a good way to go:

»Eight to 12 people per table works best.

»Never seat friends next to one another.

»Ignore the old etiquette of alternating males and females.

»Sort place cards into four “energy density” piles: H (high), M (medium), L (low), and ? (wild card).

»Assign the H guests first. Seat them diagonally from one another. Never seat H people directly across from each other.

»If you have guests with strong opposing views, seat them diagonally from each other, too.

»Seat the L people next to the H people. When conversation bounces around the table, The Ls will be more inclined to participate because of their proximity to an H.

»Scatter M and ? guests among the remaining open seats.

And if you want to get masterful about it, a little whiskey sometimes helps to get the ideas flowing.

Another thing: group brainstorms allow people to slack. They can hide in the group and let the eager beavers and caffeine-heads do all the work. I know, I’ve done it. So make sure that every brainstorm has a solo component. Usually it’s a good idea to do that before you meet as a group.

This last one is the hardest to overcome: People will naturally want to respond to the most provocative good and bad ideas. They’ll want to raise them up or shoot them down. But both these responses kill the flow of ideas. So here’s what you do:

Celebrate your favorite ideas silently. Write them down along with the all the ways you might build on them. Then set them aside and get back to the task at hand: quantity.

Give the bad ideas time to live. The rules already say not to judge them. But If you can’t contain your criticism, you’d better follow it up with a new idea right away. Otherwise, you’ve just killed the conversation.

Here’s the shortlist:

1. Know the rules

8. Make damn sure that it’s fun.

What brainstorming techniques do you use?

We just came back from an awful meeting with an awful man to find that Troy Worman has posted an orgiastic smorgasbord of links to us. It’s beautiful. Especially when you consider that Troy Worman doesn’t know us, and couldn’t have known of our awful meeting. Troy Worman is truly a mensch. Troy Worman is smart and pretty in all the right ways. If the words Troy Worman aren’t on your lips at least 16 hours a day, they very well should be. Let’s try it together: Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman Troy Worman.

Thanks, Troy. You rock.

So there’s been lots of talk lately about how This American Life is now on TV. Here’s a small animated piece. It’s beautifully done.

One of things we aim to do at Language in Common is bring humanity into places where it’s sorely lacking. Here’s a kick-ass post over at Gaping Void about conversation and participation and humanity and how it all relates to making business work better. Awesome. If you’re interested in creativity, people, business, conversation, collaboration, and communication, read it, and read all the stuff it links to.

The growth will come, I believe, not by yet more increased efficiencies, but by humanification. For example, take two well-known airlines. They both perform a useful service. They both deliver value. They both cost about the same to fly to New York or Hong Kong. Both have nice Boeings and Airbuses. Both serve peanuts and drinks. Both serve “airline food”. Both use the same airports. But one airline has friendly people working for them, the other airline has surly people working for them. One airline has a sense of fun and adventure about it, one has a tired, jaded business-commuter vibe about it. Guess which one takes the human dimension of their business more seriously than the other? Guess which one still will be around in twenty years? Guess which one will lose billions of dollars worth of shareholder value over the next twenty years? What parallels do you see in your own industry? In your own company?

Seriously. Read it. It’s right here.

There’s a smart post over at Creating Passionate Users. It outlines a 15-step process for a “design dinner party,” and it definitely seems like a good process.

But it’s worth noting that the specific process you use isn’t the most important thing. The most important thing is the mindset in which you approach the work. The most important part of the “design dinner party” is the party, not the process. This is something we’ve been harping on for quite a while: the power of fun. The best way to generate a new idea, or begin the design of a new product or process is to stop working and start playing.

The difference between work and play is only in your mind. And the best work gets done when it feels like play. Sounds obvious, right? But the hard part is actually making your work feel like play, and even harder is getting others to play along with you. But if Tom Sawyer could do it, surely you can too.

Tom turned a fence-painting chore into a party for his friends, and the fence got painted while everyone had a good time. It never felt like work.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while – plenty of company – and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it!

In having a party, you bring booze (which helps get people to drop their guard), you remove the icky office environment (which helps people think like people, not robots), and you make fun be the objective of the day (which means the best ideas get room to breathe).

But a party is a special occasion, and if you follow the design dinner party model, you’ll only get to have fun at work once a quarter. And that would suck serious ass.

But take heart. It’s not the booze or the bar that matters. It’s your approach to your work. So:

What if your office environment felt more like the kinds of places you go for fun?

What if your meetings felt more like the gatherings you have with your friends?

What if your relationships with coworkers and clients and customers felt more like those you have with the people you love?

We wanna share some good news about our message graffiti project, Written on the City. Just last week, we finalized a book deal with How Magazine, which means we get to spend the rest of this year putting it together. It’ll hit the shelves mid-2008. FUCK YEAH!

The project is progressing much faster than we ever hoped. We launched it at the beginning of Nov 06, got contacted for a book deal 10 weeks into it (!), and now 16 weeks into it, we’ve got over 600 images from 110 cities and every continent (except Antarctica). And we’ve logged well over ONE MILLION page views.

Thanks to all of you who have engaged with the project. Seriously, we made it for you, and you made it live.

BLDG BLOG promises “Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, Landscape Futures” and it definitely delivers. It’s filled with creative thinking about space and place, and if you’re in the business of creativity, this can be surprisingly relevant.

THIS BLOG SITS AT THE Intersection of Anthropology and Economics — Really smart stuff about “the places that culture and commerce, anthropology and economics meet most often: marketing in general, branding in particular, popular culture, Hollywood, advertising, television, magazines, and, increasingly, blogging.”

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, who is an MIT professor thinking about Comparative Media and Convergence Culture. Every day, humans are able to share ideas more easily than ever before. Read this blog if you wanna know what this means for you.

Girls are Pretty is a site with a new tiny story every day. The first amazing thing is that every single one of them is brilliant and funny and a little twisted. The second amazing thing is that they are all written in the second person, which is fucking IMPOSSIBLE to do well.

Steven Johnson has a knack for talking about culture and technology in a way that doesn’t get bogged down in the little things, which makes it a lot easier to understand and then talk about—over drinks of course.