Tiny Gigantic

Fantastic article by Steve Blank on what makes an entrepreneur. Since I am one, and much of my friends are as well, I spend a bunch of time wondering if I actually have what it takes to be one, despite the fact that I’ve been one for almost 10 years.

Which makes me think that maybe there are degrees of the entrepreneurs personality that this article glosses over. Like, I’m good at deceiving myself (an essential quality in entrepreneurs) to a point, but once the self-deception gets laid bare, I get briefly discouraged. My sense is–and all the rockstar founder stories in the media support this–that this is a quality not suitable in a founder. Still, here I am.

Here’s a choice excerpt:

Founders fit the definition of a creator: they see something no one else does. And to help them create it from nothing, they surround themselves with world-class performers. This concept of creating something that few others see — and the reality distortion field necessary to recruit the team to build it — is at the heart of what startup founders do. It is a very different skill than science, engineering, or management…

…Founders then put in play every skill which makes them unique — tenacity, passion, agility, rapid pivots, curiosity, learning and discovery, improvisation, ability to bring order out of chaos, resilience, leadership, a reality distortion field, and a relentless focus on execution — to lead the relentless process of refining their vision and making it a reality.

So here’s the not-very-new question: What’s the minimum balance (or range thereof) of traits required to be an entrepreneur?

Nice article in GQ about the utter lack of originality in Hollywood right now. And nice analogy to brand making too: Here’s a taste.

Marketers revere the idea of brands, because a brand means that somebody, somewhere, once bought the thing they’re now trying to sell. The Magic 8 Ball (tragically, yes, there is going to be a Magic 8 Ball movie) is a brand because it was a toy. Pirates of the Caribbean is a brand because it was a ride. Harry Potter is a brand because it was a series of books. Jonah Hex is a brand because it was a comic book. (Here lies one fallacy of putting marketers in charge of everything: Sometimes they forget to ask if it’s a good brand.) Sequels are brands. Remakes are brands. For a good long stretch, movie stars were considered brands; this was the era in which magazines like Premiere attempted to quantify the waxing or waning clout of actors and actresses from year to year because, to the industry, having the right star seemed to be the ultimate hedge against failure.

But after three or four hundred cases in which that didn’t prove out, Hollywood’s obsession with star power has started to erode. In the last several years, a new rule of operation has taken over: The movie itself has to be the brand. And because a brand is, by definition, familiar, a brand is also, by definition, not original.

The whole thing is here.

This might sound hypocritical since I began my career as a branding guy, mostly love everything Umair Haque has to say, and actually do believe in the power of well designed brand.

But I think the “meaningful brand” as articulated here is kinda bullshit.

Why? Haque makes the distinction between functional brands, aspirational brands, and meaningful brands. But all brands mean something (i.e., all brands are meaningful.) The difference being that some meanings are more overt than others.

Because what else is branding if it isn’t actually the creation of meaning in the world?

Here’s what I mean: Say you’re branding your company, product, or service. First, you’ll come up with a list of values. You’ll articulate a mission. You’ll define your positioning and articulate a strategy. In short, you are creating meaning. Your brand can stand for performance (see Nike) or design innovation (see Apple.) It can create a perception of stability, sincerity, friendliness, and (gag) trust. And the whole point of branding is push these perceptions out into the world in a way your audience can understand, embrace, and share.

But this isn’t even where I really take issue. What bothers me most is the idea that a brand must help consumers feel good about themselves and their participation with said brand. I agree that a brand should somehow fit or help to perpetuate peoples’ personal narratives. But the truth is, a meaningful brand is tablestakes. It has to have meaning simply to be a brand.

So it isn’t the brand that must be meaningful. It’s the product. If the product is useless or evil or broken it won’t matter how strong the brand is. And vice versa: if your product or service is good, your branding matters, but it doesn’t make or break your business. See Go Daddy: Terrible name, jenky clip-art logo. Killer business.

So there’s been a bunch of moments over the years when we at Language in Common begin (again) thinking about diversifying our revenue streams. Because, as lots of you know, the problem with running a services business is that you have no visibility into how much money you’re going to have in the future. Sure, you can make guesses based on what’s happened in the past, but you can’t really know. And so if and when you’re lucky enough to have a surplus of capital, you can’t actually re-invest it in the business because you may actually need it as a cushion if–I don’t know–say, the global economy comes to a screeching halt.

So what we did to mitigate this risk was basically ignore it, and spend the money anyway. Because sometimes you have to just close your eyes and jump.

Which we’ve done a bunch.

And mostly, we’ve failed with super fun and conceptually awesome but financially viable not-so-much mobile apps, games, web apps, and short-lived partnerships. The temporary transformation of this here blog into another services business (under the same LiC roof) was another one of those attempts.

So: why another services business instead of a product business that would include better visibility and the potential for passive income? Mostly because we’re too busy to run two different companies full time, products require some start-up cash (more than we had), and because we already knew how to run a services business. We figured it’d be easy and that we would share resources across the two businesses. So we created a smaller, more agile, strictly digital, creative services shop with a lower price point.

And it actually worked! Well, kind of. Decent work showed up for Tiny Gigantic (the web design shop), while at the same time, the same kind of work started showing up for Language in Common (the digital design agency) with larger budgets. You see where I’m going here: the plan worked in that we wound up getting more work, but failed in that we found ourselves barely making money on Tiny G jobs because we were doing them with the more costly LiC resources. And then there was the whole mind-fuck of having to remember to answer the right telephone with the right company name and send emails and invoices from the right domain.

So: lesson learned. Tiny Gigantic, the inspiration feed has returned.

Henceforth until the next urge to jump, Tiny Gigantic will be a place for exploration, inspiration, conversation, and awesomeness.

We’ll leave the kick-ass branding, development, and design work to Language in Common.

Seems like someone, somewhere, is always having that old (and super annoying) conversation about the meaning of design. I had it again a few nights ago. In this particular conversation, I was arguing that design is simply the process of creating stuff that works. The other person in the conversation was bugged by my insistence on using an industry word—my industry word—to describe the making of the first formalized occurrence of public education system. It ignored other frames of reference, she said. It came from only one point of view, she said. She was right. I kept trying to bring the definition of design out of my industry and into the bigger world. I even offered up other words: creation! making! building! Yay and sound the trumpets!

Problem is, that’s not what design is to most people. To people outside our industry design is not the solution to just about every problem. It’s media specific. It’s web content, strategy, and design. It’s communication strategy and brand design. It’s print and motion pieces.

Now, we’d argue that design is a way of using creativity to achieve a certain kind of meaning. We’d shout that it’s a way of making things that work or a way of making things work better. And I’d argue that we’d be right. But it’s also a way for us creative types to make ourselves and each other feel like we’re doing something big and important in the world. It’s a way for us to scream and whine and scratch our way into the global dialogue. It’s a circle jerk of enormous proportions.

We want so bad to be released from the groups we’ve put ourselves in that we’ve become determined to change the definition of the thing that has defined us for so long. I mean really: if someone’s going to change the definition of design, shouldn’t it be us?

But do you really want to change the definition of what you do? Aren’t you proud of the things you’ve made? The web pieces and the print pieces and the brand strategies and the motion pieces and other stuff? Aren’t you tired of shouting to the world how important your creativity is to it? How about we just continue to make cool stuff that works, or that makes people happy, or that changes someone’s mind? And how about we stop shouting, and let the world describe to itself what it is we do? Sure seems like more fun.

So last week one of the design students from Project M (where I’d served as an advisor over the summer) asked me how to become a better writer. That was super encouraging to hear because I think writing is an essential part of the design process. And it’s something I’ve felt missing in design education for a long-ass time.

Here’s why: when someone asks you why you used green, or why you included that crumpled-paper background, or why there’s a bird in the logo, you’re gonna need to know. What’s more, you’re going to need to be able to articulate it in a way that makes them care. I’ve been in graphic design classes in which I’ve asked students presenting their work why they did what they did. And 90% of them have said something like: “because it’s like, I don’t know. It’s like I thought that color looked super good right there. And I like birds.”

Now, I don’t care how gorgeous the thing you made was, if that’s your answer, I’m not gonna hire you. It’s not enough to make pretty things. You’ve got to be able to talk about them, to present them, to parse their meaning. And the truth of it is that if you can’t articulate what the thing you’re making means, you’re gonna have a helluva time making it mean something to someone else. Which is a problem, because that’s the job.

Writing will make you a better designer. I know: it sucks and it’s super hard. But it will make you a better designer. Hell, it’ll make you a better thinker. Here’s an example: when we’re working on a design project at Language in Common we don’t make a bunch of different sketches before we come to the right one. We don’t sit down at the sketch pad or the computer and try to draw in the dark. That’s a waste of time. Instead, we talk it out. We discuss what kind of vibe we’re trying to create. We use different words to describe the same concept and then more different words to describe to each other what the piece might look like and why. And what happens is that in articulating and re-articulating what a particular concept looks like it’s execution becomes more and more clear in everybody’s heads. So that by the time we actually get to drawing or building the thing it’s already pretty much done. All we have to do is put it into illustrator or photoshop or indesign or whatever tools it requires to make. Because we don’t go through a ton of iterations, we’ve become super fast when it comes to visual design. And we can talk about it with ease.

Try it. See what happens. Lemme know if it works for you.

We’re the first to admit that our company Language in Common is unusual. Strange even. Sometimes we wonder if we’re crazy.

And it’s super hard to tell people what we do because we don’t quite fit into existing categories. And that’s ok with us. We’re into doing something new–merging lotsa creative practices into one studio. But today I’m really psyched because it’s becoming clear that a new category is emerging. It’s becoming clear that we’re definitely not crazy, and that a movement is being born.

I won’t try to define this category here. Instead, I invite you to check out this list of links. Different as these studios are, they share a lot in common with each other and with us.

Fake ID
Coudal Partners
Rebar
Local Projects
Troika
Stamen Design
Anomaly
FutureFarmers
Proboscis
Free Range Studios
Trizle
The Movement
Sid Lee
Cunning
Curiosity Group

What do you think? Do you see the common threads? Do you know of other like-minded creative shops? What do you think this kind of practice should be called?

So a few weeks ago, Axel and I were debating whether or not brands could have real conversations with consumers. We both agreed that no one likes being messaged at, and that billboards, tv commercials, even “viral videos”, are more monologue than dialogue. And while Axel believed that a true conversation between brands and consumers could be had, I wasn’t convinced that there was any real, back-and-forth, call-and-response, in the “conversation” happening between brands and consumers.

Then I saw this video by EA. Here’s what happened: some kid, calling himself Levinator25 found a glitch in the Tiger Woods golf game and uploaded a video of it to youtube because he thought it was funny. And EA, in one of the smarter moves I’ve seen, uploaded a video, in direct response to Levinator25. Now, that video promoting EA and Tiger Woods Golf has been watched more than 2 million times. I stand corrected.

11/22/08 by josh kamler | 1 comment