Connecting The Dots

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

Steve Jobs

The above brilliance is from Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing from the smart folks at Wired Magazine.

Dots Right,

HMK

Marco Brambilla: Civilization

The Standard Hotel in New York, recently declared to be the Municipal Art Society's Best New Building of 2009, has an incredibly stunning HD video installation located in, of all places, their elevators!

Civilization, a chronological video sequence using over 500 looping clips to simulate the “journey” from hell to heaven plays on high-definition monitors which are seen through a viewing port in each of the elevators at the hotel and move according to the direction of the elevator.

It's awesome and I can't wait to check it out in person later on this year!

Do yourself a favor and check out Civilization by Marco Brambilla and Crush, Toronto.

That's Right,

HMK

Are You Experienced?

Experience is everywhere from cave paintings to broadband websites but what exactly is it?

Read psychologist Tom Guarriello’s primer on defining and designing experience. I know it might sound sort of boring and it's a 3 page article but it really gets great by the end of page one.

If you have anything to do with advertising, design or the web, you'll dig it, I swear.

And as Tom Guarriello put it (as a comment to the original article) "I like the way you describe the designer’s challenge: mix, shake, color, pre-vision, re-vision, en-vision, and let it go. The new emerging from the re-conceptualization of the existing."

Go read: Are You Experienced?

Thanks to: UX Magazine and Jeff Simpson for the inspirational Hendrix photo.

That's Right,

HMK