DesignThinkers 2011 recap

For the last 2 days, I had the privilege of attending my first DesignThinkers conference in Toronto. I have never been surrounded by so much talent and creative energy, and the timing couldn't have been better as I embrace a full-time design career in 2012.

In the interest of the conference's theme - "Let's Connect" - I thought it important to try and share all of the information and inspiration I absorbed in the last 48 hours. Here's a brief summary of my favourite presenters:

DAY 1

George Lois, the "original Mad Man", whose work includes MTV, JiffyLube and multiple Esquire covers, et al.

• "creativity can solve almost any problem"
• "if you don't burn out at the end of the day, you're a bum"
• "design is playing with yourself"
• "intuition is more important than intellect"
• it is our job as graphic communicators to "capture the zeitgeist of the times"
• George's three commandments: 

1. Reject group grope.
2. Reject analysis paralysis.
3. Reject con, create icon.

Robert Wong, Executive Creative Director at Google Labs, previously with Starbucks, Apple, et al.

• happy wife = happy life
• 5 positive interactions cancels every negative interaction - be positive!
• surprise = (empathy + creativity) / expectations
• "designers will rule the world"
• "comp the future"
• "obsess the why"
• "whoever has the strongest WHY wins"
• your goal should always be to: 1) help someone, 2) delight someone, 3) or both
• Google is 90% science, 10% babytalk (literally)
• on success: "show up and be useful…make a dent…add heart…walk the walk…don't take yourself too f*ing seriously"
• "technology can empower people…the web is what you make of it"
• "give awesome powers to others…make others heroes"
• "mandate recess"
• "exceed your own expectations"

Allan Haley, Director of Words & Letters at Monotype Imaging

• "if you're not failing often, you're not trying hard enough"

Rei Inamoto, Creative Director at AKQA, clients include Nike (Write the Future)

• "it's not the man that makes the medium, it's the medium that makes the man"
• "advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product" -Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO
• transform storytelling into storydoing
• 5 tips for designing a culture of innovation:

1. Do what wasn't possible 5 years ago.
2. Solve the obvious in an unconventional way, or solve the unconventional in an obvious way.
3. Specialization is the enemy of innovation.
4. If you can't find a way, make one.
5. Innovation needs a Hacker, a Hustler and a Hipster.

• "the future belongs to those who create it"

Chip Kidd, Associate Art Director at Knopf/Random House

• mantras are important; his current one: "B*tch, I don't know your life."
• "…so I put some sh*tty typography on it (c'mon, it was the 90s)"
• "figure out how to enjoy your process"
• "try harder, try harder, try harder"
• be careful what you wish for

DAY 2

Leland Maschmeyer, Creative Director and partner at Collins

• "we have a culture obsessed with our own demise"
• "when there is no vision, people perish"
• "how can design unite people in devise times around a shared future?"
• more technology is not necessarily better: the brightest light casts the darkest shadow, there are billions of big brothers surveilling each other
• in the commons age,"access trumps ownership"
• fill the world with fascination, with visions that compel us out of our limits
• "fear doesn't tolerate indifference"
• "although the world doesn't know what the world will look like - with [designers], they will"

Eric Ryan, founder of Method natural cleaning products

• "progress is more important the perfection" (best is the enemy of good)
• "if you can't be the biggest, be the fastest"
• "the entire day should be a brainstorm"

Jessica Hische, letterer, illustrator, robot?

• "don't think and execute on the same day"
• "advocate for the specializers"
• side projects ("passion projects") can be game changers
• "make things you like and wish existed"
• "technology can't (and shouldn't) replace everything"

Steve Edge, "madman, prophet, wanderer"

• "passion looks after you"
• "don't wait for that special day to put on your golden shoes"
• "dress for a party everyday, and the party will come to you"

I hope these ideas inspire you as much as they inspired me. Have a great weekend!

CR

Heart-wrenching theatre

Toronto friends: please do not miss Buddies in Bad Times / Studio 180 production of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, playing until November 6. It's likely to be the most powerful production you will see all year.

Applied Art, 1929

I found this delightful antique applied arts coursebook for $6, filled with beautiful diagrams, illustrations, and these superb lettering specimens.

Tweet tweet

Want to be friends? Find me on Twitter here!

Happy Halloween!

7 billion

The United Nations has forecasted that the world's population will surpass 7 billion tomorrow. Only 12 years ago (in October 1999), the world passed the 6 billion mark. So, just how much is 7 billion? Here's a little visualization:

See that tiny dot? (No, that's not a speck of dust on your screen.) That's one pixel.
Let's say one pixel = one person.

Each one of these black blocks have 333,000 pixels (576 pixels X 578 pixels).
So, when you look at these three blocks together, you are looking at about 1 million pixels.

Now imagine looking at 7,000 sets of these blocks (21,000 blocks in total).
Or, imagine looking at an image on a monitor that was 83,666 pixels X 83,666 pixels.
The monitor would need to be about 64 feet X 64 feet.

That's 7 billion.
Yikes!

I love Saturdays

Yesterday at the St. Lawrence Market (probably my favourite place in Toronto)

Weekend words

Have a great weekend everyone!

Laundry day

As seen on Queen St. West.

The trouble with doppelgängers

...is they mess up your Google Alerts. Pictured above is Chris Rouleau, also known as Blaze Ya Dead Homie, part of the American gangsta rap / horrorcore group, Insane Clown Posse. Him and his (*cough cough*) posse were arrested on Saturday, and needless to say, my Google Alerts have been haywire all week. Such is life, I guess. :P

Rocket by time

Loving this infographic by James Rosselet, which shows times between TTC stops. Neat-o!
(via BlogTO)

Türkiye için (For Turkey)

I recently found these delightful Turkish children's books. My thoughts go out to all of the Turkish citizens in Turkey and abroad who have been affected by the disastrous earthquake this weekend.

Words for the weekend

A sudden change of direction

Apologies for my absence the last few days. One week ago, I found out my colleagues and I will be laid off as of December 31, 2011. The last week has been a whirlwind of soul-searching and life-planning.

As you may or may not know, I have been pursuing freelance graphic design part-time for the last year. I have been so fortunate to work some amazing clients - both old and new. With this new development, I am happy to report that I will be available to take on design and type projects full-time starting on January 1, 2012!

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has supported me up to this point. I am so grateful to be surrounded by such amazingly supportive and talented friends and family across the continent. It overwhelms me. I want you all to know that it was your words of encouragement that helped solidify my decision to pursue design. A giant group hug is in order!

Change, especially sudden change, is never easy. But I also believe that all things (good, and not-so-good) happen for a reason. I am so excited to see what the future has in store.

Please stay tuned… big, amazing things to come!

xo,
CR

Day on the farm

  
I had a wonderful day yesterday surrounded by animals, food and new friends. Thanks Beth and Alex, Anne and Mike, and everyone else on the farm!

Morning coffee memo

Weekend pie

Weekend painting

This weekend was spent enjoying the beautiful weather, eating pie, and finishing this oil painting for Hugh and Tracey's cottage. Life is good!

Thankful

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend everyone.

Connecting the dots (Repost)

I first posted this on 6/3/2011:

"... And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting ... And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: 

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. 

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. 

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.   

... Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. 

... Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

- Excerpt from commencement address by Steve Jobs at Stanford University, delivered on June 12, 2005. Rest in peace, Mr. Jobs. 