Tiny Gigantic

So we’ve said before that we think brand stories suck because mostly they’re just another thing that consultants sell to make themselves feel as if their strategy work is worth something. We understand this impulse. We struggle with it ourselves. Problem is, the brand story is really nothing more than a repackaged, slightly longer, elevator pitch that only pretends to be human.

Now, there’s not much question that stories are valuable: they’re how we learn how to be in the world, how we persuade, how we provoke and inspire, how we learn and teach. But your typical story—one with a beginning, middle, and end—doesn’t work very well as an invitation to take part in it. Sure, you can listen and be entertained, but what if you came in late and missed the beginning? What if you want to start at the end and move backwards? What if you want to cut out pieces and make something more uniquely you? You can’t. Sorry, sucka.

Brands are better consumed from multiple points of entry, not as narrative arcs. If there’s only one way for people to access what the brand means, it limits its audience, the very people who will make it live and grow. Sure you can associate a story with some of the worlds best brands, but if you think about it, you can associate many stories to some of those very same brands. For example, the David and Goliath story often maps to Apple. But that’s not the story of the brand, it’s one point of entry to it. There’s also the humble beginnings (started in a garage and all that) story.

The more ways you give people to access the things you stand for, the more likely they are to want to know you, and love you and keep you around. Think of it like your favorite magazine. You can open it anywhere and find something of interest, right there in the moment. You can choose to go deep into a 2000 word article, or you can choose to glance at a 200 word one. Either way, that magazine stays on your coffee table for a while, and then gets moved to the bathroom for even more dedicated use.

Saw this in the paper the other day.

Under the proposal, the district would recruit partners from industries such as the airlines, insurance companies, beverage manufacturers and the media. It would screen its partners on criteria such as community presence, fiscal longevity, and social and environmental record. And it would promote its sponsors on a new Web site devoted to the bridge’s preservation as well as via signs and banners on the district buses and ferries.

Stupid stupid stupid.

People come from all over the world to see this bridge. Changing it’s name, or adding a sponsor’s name to it will damage much of the equity (read: the good will of the people) that the bridge already has. It will damage the very thing that makes people come to see it, makes people tell their friends and relatives to come to see it: this is a glorious work of humankind, made only to help them, not to profit off of them. There’s a good chance that, if this deal goes through, future generations won’t come to San Francisco to see the bridge the way past generations have. Because, really, would you travel all the way from Japan, or Australia to walk across AT&T bridge or Unilever span? Neither would I.

So there’s your basic birthday suit, which I love, but which most certainly doesn’t keep you warm here in San Francisco. And then there’s Matthew Glover’s creations.

Will someone please buy this and wear it to the next shareholders meeting? Oh, and send us some pictures when you do.

Our good friend Christopher Simmons from Mine pointed us to this awesome sticker/pdf. It’s pretty useful to us right now since we’re still sitting on the floor buried in a stupid amount of graffiti pics.

via Design Crack

There’s lots of talk out there about designers using their skills to create real social and cultural good, but there’s very very little action. Our OG homeboy John Bielenberg’s Project M brings design students out to rural Alabama every year to dream up something good to do. Here’s the latest. You can read about it in GOOD magazine here.

This one’s from Kukryniksy, 1941. Here’s what it says:

Courageously and irresistibly we fight and stab,
We are Suvorov’s grandchildren and Chapaev’s sons.

Wow. Stalin sure knew how to get the people freaked out.

There’s a whole study of them here.

We’re buried deep in our graffiti book project these days. So here’s some inspiration for this sunshiny, san francisco, thank-jeebus-it’s, friday. Be sure to check the comments thread on this one. Some strange sentiments for sure. Brought to us by the awesome and ridiculously helpful Jonathan Waldman.

I can’t tell if this is an art project, or very real accounts of victorian-era mechanical men. Either way, I’m in love.

As you all know, we’ve spent some time thinking about how much small talk sucks, how it’s necessary, and how to make it not suck.

This weekend, I had a conversation with a friend whose known as an exceptional host. He’s super skilled at drawing people into conversations, making them feel comfortable, and connecting the people in the room with each other. Now, I figured that some people are simply born with a stronger extrovert gene than others. Some have it in excess, and some don’t have it at all. Turns out I’m wrong.

My buddy told me he plans for his conversations. He said, “when you get up in front of a crowd and speak, you never do it cold, right? You plan what you’re gonna say, before you get up there and say it.” I think this is applicable to networking events, pick-up scenes, and the dinner party at your girlfriend’s parent’s house.

Here’s the upshot:
Have some ideas of things you’d like to talk about before you go into that event, or that party. Take stock of your day or your week (an awesome exercise all by itself) and note the things worthy of conversation. Talk about the things you’ve been thinking about, ask for opinions, and thoughtfully consider those opinions. (An example from my own life: lately I’ve been thinking about the push towards settling space, the race to build the first public space-travel vehicle, and why they don’t root the space station on the moon.) Sure it takes work. You’ll have to take the time to be quiet for a moment and think about it. But I’ll bet the rewards will be well worth it.

Yup. Dear Bosses, one of the favorites from our ongoing manifesto series, is on Change This. And Change This, if you didn’t yet know, is an organization that disseminates smart thinking about stuff that matters. For free. We like that.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, we hate corporate bullshit. We think it’s dehumanizing. It diminishes conversation and weakens communication. Both Axel and I are refugees from the brand/advertising worlds where that language runs rampant, so one of the first things we did when we started Language in Common was to make a bunch of corporate bullshit t-shirts. It was therapy, really—a way of cleansing our souls—but also we thought you might be able to relate. The line is called Corporate Hack Enjoy.

Popularized by Bert and Ernie, and held dear by people over thirty everywhere, the rubber duckie bath toy used to be the must-have bathtub accessory. And also that wind-up scuba diver guy you used to let swim around beneath you. And match box cars. Definitely match box cars.

Artist Florentijn Hofman has brought the duckie back. He’s built a giant one for an outdoor art show in France. Kinda makes you want someone to scrub the places you can’t reach, don’t it?

Via Wooster Collective.

Jonathan Bloom from Wasted Food has come up with an idea to make Replating more feasible: the Replate Top Unit. Awesome!

Hold up a second, and humor me here:

Take a deep, real breath and focus on enjoying it.

Good.

Now do it one more time, only close your eyes and feel where you’re holding tension in your body. When you exhale, let that tension go.

Ok. Nice work. Now we can start:

Lately I’ve been thinking that the power of being relaxed is undervalued and under-emphasized in our culture. My parents certainly focused more on table manners than they did on relaxation, and none of the creative shops I worked with have ever built relaxation into their approach to doing the creative work that they do.

But being relaxed is a great strategy in just about every situation. To relax, to chill the fuck out, means to allow yourself to be the person that you are, without stressing about it. And it’s really fucking hard.

But when interacting with people, it means the difference between a positive interaction and a fight. One night at a bar, I saw a belligerent semi-crazy man get totally pacified when the guy he was itching to fight respond to his aggression with “Hey man, how’s it going? My name’s Jeremy. What’s yours?” And even if you’re not trying to stop an attack and you’re merely going to a party, being relaxed can make all the difference between being yourself, and wishing that you could.

That goes double for your creative practice. Being relaxed sets the stage for the best work to happen, both when you’re working with people or on your own. It creates room for ideas that are actually new and different and come from some place you hadn’t yet thought look. When writing, for example, being relaxed and free from fear is the best way to write like a human instead of like a robot.

So here’s a question for you–and this is the real, selfish reason I’m writing this piece–what do you do to make sure you don’t forget to relax when you’re stressing? And what do you do to convince yourself to actually do it?