Tiny Gigantic

We’ve put together a new pdf for your reading pleasure. It’s called Dirty words & dick jokes, and it’s all about the seemingly innocuous words and phrases that consistently make the job of creativity harder. You can download it over there in the middle column. Enjoy.

So you can imagine my surprise when I found this article about how women can use their cleavage at work. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love cleavage. But I’m sorta disappointed that we’re still having a national discourse about what sized breasts create a more professional perception.

There’s been a shitload of talk about authenticity lately: brands need to be authentic to live, consumers crave authenticity, authenticity is marketing’s great white hope. Well, I’ve got a response to all this hype:

Duh.

Seems to me that this type of thinking is a little bit like when financial services firms use words like trust and integrity as their differentiators. Which is ridiculous, because really, is anyone gonna sign up to put their cash with people they can’t trust? Fucking duh.

Same goes for authenticity: we’d all rather engage with the truth than a lie. In fact, we expect to. Authenticity is a basic requirement for any healthy relationship, but it’s nothing more than that.

That’s why it rubs me so wrong to see decks and brand guidelines that trumpet authenticity as a value: We are authentic, they say. But here’s the thing: authentically what? That’s the real question. That’s what people really need to know. It’s what will make them care.

And once you’ve got that figured out, you won’t have to shout about it. You can just be yourself.

I just bought an item (an apparatus, actually, and also probably a tool) designed for cutting bottles. I’ve only used it a couple of times, but so far I like it a lot. It’s easy to use, and there’s something very satisfying about watching glass split. Right now I’m making a set of glasses from those curvy Kombucha Wonder Drink bottles. You can buy your own bottle cutter here.

This weekend I traipsed around the old Sutro Baths ruins down on Ocean Beach. Talk about greatness of vision: Adolph Sutro had it in spades.

You might have noticed that things have been quiet on tiny gigantic for the past coupla weeks. That’s because Josh and I have been working hard on a food activism project that’s gonna launch any day now. Actually, it was supposed to launch a whole fucking month ago, and it almost did. Thank jeebus it didn’t.

We’d been working on this project for about 3 months and it felt like the project took longer than it should have. We really wanted to get it out the door, but when it was a day away from launching, Josh pushed to kill it and start over. I had a whole bunch of reasons why the project was fine as it was, and that was how I knew Josh’s instinct was right. If you have to tell yourself it’s fine, it’s not.

Now, one month later, the project is reborn and SO MUCH BETTER. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve done.

Yet another lesson we learned the hard way:
There is gold to be found in forcing yourself to start over when you’ve settled for something that’s good enough. And once you’ve started over and made something new and seemingly perfect, force yourself to polish it a little more.

The SF Chronicle reports that GM will kill off the H2.

I’ve got a friend who, when I ask him how he’s doing, invariably answers this way: Dude. Soooo busyyyy. And he says it sort of breathlessly, drawing the last word out into a kind of falsetto. But when I ask him what’s got him so busy, the answer doesn’t vary much either: Oh man. All kinds of crazy shit.

Thing is, that doesn’t mean anything. If I press, it’s mostly work, family, and personal obligations—the usual stuff that fills up most everyone’s day.

This weekend I did nothing. No hanging out with friends, no work, no personal creative projects. Really, nothing. I sat on the couch. I walked from one room to the other. I looked in the fridge. I checked my email. I smoked a joint and spaced out. I did all the non-things a person does when idling at home. And until today, it kinda sucked because I generally subscribe to the commonly held idea that busy-ness means progress. Since I was doing nothing, it felt like none of the things I want to do were getting done.

But today I no longer feel like it sucked, nor do I feel like I made no progress. I say this because there is a blindness that comes with busy-ness, because focusing on one thing shuts out everything else. This weekend, in doing nothing, I found all kinds of inspiration for new cool stuff to do. I found it because I wasn’t looking for it. In fact, I wasn’t looking for anything, which is why I was able to see so much more. Turns out, doing nothing is a kick-ass way to grow creativity.

Yes, the video’s sped up, but this lady can rock. The Daft Punk soundtrack doesn’t hurt either.

Found at Plastique Monkey.

In a Thai restaurant this weekend I found a postcard that had the domain name, dumpcupid.com printed on it. I’m not a big believer in postcard advertising, and nor am I the audience for what the website turned out to be, but I do think this is a kick-ass example of communications that reward people’s attention in the moment they’re giving it. I’m not talking about design here, though it’s nice, and suitably “edgy.” I’m talking about content that people want to engage with. There’s not much selling going on—there’s no voice shouting, “Hey, target demographic! Buy our stuff!” And that’s the key: be nice, give good stuff away for free, and please, no shouting.

Yuka Yamaguchi is a genius. A super creepy, climb-out-of-your-skin, freaky-deaky genius. But a genius no less.

Thanks to the brilliant and charming Audrey Kallander, who has clearly one-upped whatever hack shop did the ad in the post below. Check out her site to see why we collaborate with her every chance we get. We love you Audrey!

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. Like anyone in the world anywhere actually intends to settle for a network that sucks. How exactly does this help me choose Boost?

And in case you hadn’t noticed, every single wireless provider is talking about their network right now. Way to differentiate, Boosters. It’s a sure sign that your industry is becoming a commodity when you’re all competing on table stakes.

How about telling me how good your customer service is? Or hell, tell me having your phone will get me laid. Or for fuck’s sake, at least try to entertain me. Jeez.

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine brought up the distinction between a human being and a human doing. I’ve been fascinated with it since.

For my part, I can say that I mostly live my life as a human doing: I’ve structured my life around my efforts, which I’ve structured around goals. I feel that what I do with my moments, minutes, and months are decisions that need to be made actively. This means that I’m in my head a lot of the time, planning errands, projects, lifetime accomplishments and managing my energy so I can get the most done. My point is this: even when I’m my head, I am never not doing anything.

But I also know that sometimes (always?) the best way to make good things happen isn’t a matter of doing so much as being. An obvious example: If you want to be liked, it’s better not to try too hard, and instead just be comfortable in your skin. Another way to say this is that outlook shapes outcome. Being happy is the most effective thing you can DO to be happy.

Obviously, if you’ve got vision and goals, shaping outcome is very important, and thus outlook is too. Now here’s my question for you: Is it possible to take a goal-oriented approach to one’s outlook and way of being? What would a to-be list look like?

This post by Grant McCracken is right on.

…how important it is to have noise in the signal, noise in the brand, noise in the corporation.

If once the meaning managers of the corporation hoped for perfect clarity, now they know that clarity is a problem, a barrier, and a failure.

Hells yes. We’ve talked before about this with the problem of the elevator pitch: how it’s very clarity kills conversation, and limits your own growth and the potential of your relationships.

But today we don’t want to talk about elevator pitches. We want to talk about conversation, what motivates it, and what you can do to keep it going. Here’s a few more lessons from our month-long moratorium on small talk.

Be vulnerable
If you want conversation to happen, you’ve got to open yourself up to it. You’ve got to be willing to be changed by the person you’re talking to. But most of us aren’t—instead we’re trying to change them.

Don’t panic
In any conversation, there’s gonna be scary moments of misunderstanding (hmm…can you explain what you do again? I don’t really get it) and you’ll be tempted to fall back on easy answers (Oh, well. I’m in marketing) that take you back into safe territory. But safe territory isn’t where good conversation happens. It’s okay not to know where the conversation is leading. You’ll find out together.

Be cool with quiet
Some people see the lulls in conversation as problems, or moments of failure. But they’re not. Your silence among friends and loved ones signals comfort and trust. And you can send that same signal to someone you’ve just met simply by being okay with the silent parts of the conversation. This may be the fastest way to build intimacy and rapport. Which is what good conversation is all about.

Apparently, Sam Flores has a super unsavory studio. Is that why his trademark figures always look a little melancholy?

Christopher Simmons‘ CCA design students fucking rocked the house with their final interpretations of our manifesto series. If you’ve seen ‘em—and you can download them there on the right if you haven’t—you know that their design is quite understated. So it was a pleasure to see such graphic treatment of the work. And it was clear that the students worked their asses off between our first critique of their concepts and the presentation of their final pieces. For lack of space we’re not able to show all the fantastic work these students did, but let’s just say that if you’re looking to hire a designer in a couple years, remember these names:

Igor Zhoglo
Oona Lyons
Clara Daguin
Kim Ciabattari
Emily Craig
Kelly Mclachlan
Brian Nguyen
Fumi Nakamura
Harrison Pollock
Ethan Davis

And we’d like to give special thanks to Emily and Clara, who gave us some gorgeous comps to take home.

If Jill Greenberg’s photos of unhappy children don’t make you go all oogy and icky and skin-crawly, you’re probably a serial killer.

This, in case it isn’t mind-barfingly obvious, is a mess. I saw it while standing in line at the post office, and I was immediately transported to the meeting in which this guacamole was presented:

“We call this concept Jedi, and it offers your audiences a chance to fulfill their dreams of being a Jedi Master of shipping-slash-mailing. Now, you’ll notice the that whole wordmark is framed in the signature Star Wars enclosing shape—this is so that people will immediately know it’s a Star Wars thing. But we want to make sure that all the valuable brand equity of the USPS gets a strong first read too, so we put that in the upper left, which is where the eye moves after first reading the centerpiece. It’s also important that the main Star Wars master brand support this identity, so we’ve built that in to the enclosing shape in the bottom right, which is the traditional place for signatures and endorsements, and we think this balances wonderfully with the USPS brand in the upper right. The result is a strongly aspirational promise of Jedi mastery of shipping-slash-mailing, clearly tied to the sponsoring brands, which support the promise by lending their brand equities to the whole composition.”

Kill me.

Pure awesomeness.

Via neatorama.