1eighty

John Maeda’s Principles For Creative Leaders - A Series of Explorations

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:39:00 -0700

Having known of CreativeMornings for quite some time, I finally made the decision to attend one of their talks and managed to snag a ticket to July’s lecture with John Maeda (assisted by Becky Bermont). If you’re not familiar with CreativeMornings, they’re an organization that hosts free breakfast lectures on a range of creative topics in four different locations around the world. Really good stuff.

John Maeda is the president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), as well as an artist, designer, computer scientist and author. He gave a short talk on creative leadership, inspired by the work that he did with Bermont in preparation for their book on leadership; together they printed and analyzed Maeda’s tweets to see what insights these digital short-form messages held about him as a leader. Maeda and Bermont distilled their findings into six principles for creative leaders. By coining these principles, they hope to raise awareness of the value of artistic thinking in a leadership context.

Without further ado, I give you John Maeda’s principles for creative leadership:

1. Build From Foundations
Sketching, drawing and the study of raw data are excellent starting point to any creative process. “Artists have to get their hands dirty, starting with core foundations and basic principles.”

2. Craft The Team
Don’t be a lone wolf creative person. Work with your team. Make sure to craft your team wisely; to do great work, you need great material.

3. Sense Actively
Our world is changing rapidly. The structures of our organizations have grown more complex as we’ve gone from organizational trees with clear hierarchies and communication paths to complex and intertwined organizational networks. These organizational changes are felt everywhere and as a leader, it’s in your interest to quickly sense them and try to understand them.

Artists sense their surroundings and communicate their impressions through their art. Maeda likens them to kitemakers who sense the wind and with their kites help others to see it. Leaders should take inspiration from this and try to reflect the winds that they are sensing in their work.

4. Take Leaps
Artists are risk takers. They ask questions (“Why is it this way? Why is it not?”) and take leaps based on the answers they find. Leaders are understandably not as eager to do this but in an increasingly complex world, leaders benefit from looking to how artists approach the process of finding good ideas.

Maeda describes a pyramid of skills that facilitate idea generation (Brennan’s Hierarchy of Imagination). Click for full version.

The top half is the most strategic span for leaders today. People generally get stuck in the bottom half because they’re afraid of taking risks (Becky chimed in to say that this is especially true for women who often set out to find the right solution in projects). Leaders should welcome more freedom in their process and not strive to be perfect; just jump in, get your hands dirty and try out different things.

5. Fail Productively
Artists fail often, but they recover quickly; they fail productively. They connect and reuse old failures and in doing so they create new things. A CEO can facilitate productive failure by connecting people and ideas. As a leader, which two people can you connect to spark a new idea or to provide a solution to someone’s problem?

6. Grow From Critique
Artists are hungry for critique because they are eager to change and grow into their fullest potential. Anyone in a leadership position is going to be exposed to critique. So how does one grow from this critique without losing oneself? The answer, according to Maeda, is to have confidence and to use the 6 principles.

If you’d like to read more:
John Maeda’s Creative Leadership blog http://creativeleadership.com/
Patti Brennan’s Hierarchy of Imagination: http://creativeleadership.com/brennans-hierarchy-of-imagination

via jbeltowska.com

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Creative juices pressed with passion. Order yours now...

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 01:47:23 -0800

Creative juices now available direct from the South West Creative Growers Association.

Watch the video or find out more on the SWCGA website.

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Genius new digital campaign for Tipp-Ex

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:33:31 -0700

This campaign - which takes it's inspiration from Subservient Chicken and Old Spice - allows the user to rewrite the story of a hunter who doesn't want to shoot a bear. Fantastic!

There are apparently over 50 different outcomes - more info on that here.

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Ok Go does it again... and again... and again.

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 08:18:00 -0700

How to get famous… create a video, post it on YouTube and pray that it goes viral.

Ok Go is a band that did just that. Not once, not twice, but THREE times. Their music videos are legendary.

On July 31, 2006, the band released a video for "Here It Goes Again" featuring an elaborately choreographed dance on treadmills. This video was viewed by over one million people on YouTube in the first six days. As of June 2010, the original video upload for "Here It Goes Again" has been viewed over 51 million times, putting it in 42nd place for the most views of any video and 29th place for most viewed music video as well as the 7th most favorited video and the top favorited music video of all time on YouTube.

Check it out here.

They did it again in March 2010 with "This Too Shall Pass", featuring one single take of a enormous Rube Goldberg machine. 14,3 million views in three months.

Their latest music video "End Love" popped up six days ago and it's up to 900,000 views so far. This one features some pretty insane stop motion photography. Incredible stuff.

The creativity that these guys inject into their work is truly inspiring.

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Companhia Athletica Campaign: Change your routine

Tue, 11 May 2010 22:19:00 -0700

DDB Brasil and Companhia Athletica are encouraging sedentary desk jockeys to change their lifestyle with this handcrafted print effort that transforms computer components into athletic movers and shakers. Silhouettes of gym-goers were created with electronics parts over the course of four months. The production process is documented on a website, where the posters are also available for download.

via Creativity Online

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Coke Quest

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:47:00 -0700

via vimeo.com

The third in a series of ads for Coke in honor of the upcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup. This is a seriously amazing piece of storytelling.

Initially set on a field of dust in Africa, far from the shiny professional stadiums, “Quest” follows a young football enthusiast looking for celebration. He sets off on a magical journey, in search of the sport’s most festive experiences. Along the way, he encounters various football teams, each with their own personal style of merriment. He then realizes the celebration is within himself and he can bring it to any environment.

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Amazing time-lapse piece by Stefan Werc: Get up and go

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:00:24 -0700

via vimeo.com

Absolutely beautiful short film featuring time-lapsed stills taken with a Canon 7D. Inspiring, emotive, breathtaking... all the good stuff rolled into a big ball of awesomeness. Nice one Stefan Werc!

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Coke: The next generation?

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 03:30:36 -0700

I just stumbled across an amazing piece of work by Industrial Design student Andrew Kim. He's designed an amazing new packaging for Coke - doing away with the traditional iconic curvaceous bottle in favor of an exceptionally eco-friendly design.

I'm not completely sold on the branding of the bottle - there's still a huge opportunity there - but the bottle design itself is revolutionary. I wonder if Coke would even consider this evolution? Let's hope they do.

Etienne de Crecy live at matter London

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:44:32 -0700

via youtube.com

This is seriously awesome.

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Can you relate?

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:19:57 -0700

via frufru.tumblr.com

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Jason Fried: Why You Can’t Work at Work

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:52:02 -0700

via clusterflock.org

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Dream Client: Lego

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:38:00 -0800

Lego has to be right up there on the "Most exciting brands to work ok" list. Following the award winning "Go Miniman Go!" campaign, Pereira O'Dell just launched their latest batch of work - a short film entitled CL!CK (shown below) that leads users on to the LEGO CL!CK website which promises to provide tips, istories and inspiration to the Lego community.

Pereira O'Dell brings the community of Lego inventors, artists and fans together at Lego Click, an online destination that celebrates and fosters great ideas and problem-solving--or what the brand calls "Click" moments. The company's first iPhone app, Lego Photo— which filters users' photos into Lego-like pixels, jumpstarted the push.

Source: Creativity-Online.

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Star Wars Weekend Ad Campaign

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:22:20 -0700

Came across this brilliant print campaign for Star Wars Weekends. Awesome!

More images can be found over at Fubiz.

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Google does it again (and again)

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 07:04:30 -0700

Came across two really cool things from Google. The first is a presentation called "87 cool things, even a few from us". It's a presentation featuring some awesome new innovations, trends, technologies and just generally cool bits and pieces. Check it out.

From that I discovered Google's new open source project called Google Wave. It's simply described as "a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web", but it's soooo much more than that. Really worth checking out. Watch the hour-long presentation below, or click here for the easier and shorter about blurb.

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Brock Davis: Make something cool every day

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:07:30 -0700

Stumbled across the portfolio of Brock Davis - more specifically his "Make something cool every day" exhibition.

Brock Davis is an artist and musician who works on primarily self-initiated projects in a variety of mediums. He currently serves as creative director at Carmichael Lynch where his work has won such accolades as the prestigious Cannes Lion award for creative excellence. Not limiting himself to advertising, Brock's talents span music, drawing, graphic design, writing, works of art both serious and absurd, and a killer instinct for video games. The one constant is an exceptional track record for transforming humor and insights into work that gets a reaction.

I absolutely love his work. As I was browsing through the portfolio, I found myself constantly saying to myself "Why didn't I think of that?!?!?!". Really dig the wit and sense of humour he brings through his work, and love the simplicity of the ideas. His work really proves that the best ideas don't need to be over-complicated and elaborate, and simplicity reigns supreme.

Links:

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Great post: Seth Godin - Things to ask before you redo your website

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:05:35 -0700

Just read a great short post from Seth Godin's blog called "Things to ask before you redo your website". Very basic but often overlooked questions that should always be asked before kicking off a redesign.

Check it out.

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The Bare Project, by am i collective

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:15:49 -0700

Check out am i collective's latest work(s) of art - the Bare Project. See excerpt:

BARE! The am i collective’s latest project marries our motley in-house talents with a handpicked crop of outside artists to share in our vision – provoking boundary pushing art while helping others. We’ve prettied up the soon-to-be-famous, limited edition, 40cm-tall BAREs. Next we want to send these beasties to galleries in all corners of the world. Then we’ll auction them off, on line. Before finally donating all the proceeds to child welfare. Because BARE really cares about you. And the children.

Stonewall's own Nicolas Rix took part and was also featured - see below.

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Mind-blowing photographic retouching by Erik Johansson

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:14:00 -0700

I always get a big kick out of seeing retouched photos. Not the cheesy 'stick a head on someone else's body', Chuck Norris-type retouching, but shots that trick you and make you think 'is that real, or is that Photoshopped?' Just stumbled across the amazing work of photographer and digital artist Erik Johansson. His work is simply out of this world. Check it out.

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The power of a good story: Johnnie Walker

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:54:00 -0700

An absolute must-see is the new Johnnie Walker spot - if you can call it that. It's called “The Man Who Walked Around the World” and it's a six-minute piece of storytelling that features Robert Carlyle walking through the Scottish Highlands. The ad was produced by BBH London and was directed by HLA director Jamie Rafn. Check it out below.

Absolutely flawless, and yes, it's a single take. Well, it took 40 tries to get it right, but the end result is phenomenal.

You can read more about it on the BBH Labs website, or check out the interview with Jamie Rafn here.

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Pixel crazy

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:18:41 -0700

I've been doing some research into pixel art for an upcoming project and came across a fantastic blog post by Simon Page. He's compiled a great list of examples and reference sites, in case you ever need to get up close and personal with pixels once again. Check it out here.

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