Idea Paint

Genius. Introducing Idea Paint, a paint that turns any paintable surface into a dry-erase board.


Half the cost of whiteboard and better-performing + you can leave marks up indefinitely, and they won't stain the wall.

I can't wait to try this!

That's Right,

HMK

The Price of Entry

This is an excerpt from an awesome interview/discussion between smashLAB's Eric Karjaluoto and Blair Enns, founder of Win Without Pitching.

Eric: Every industry has its clichés. Tell me about the blunders that most creative companies unwittingly make that limit them.

Blair: Thinking that they can fake deep expertise across an impractically wide area. Thinking that they are in the service business. Thinking that they cannot let an opportunity pass them by. Thinking that they can win business by compromising their principles then somehow fixing it later. Thinking that their firm is somehow exempt from the laws of supply and demand economics. Thinking that they’re not really in it for the money.

Eric: Are there any marketing catch-phrases and terms used by designers that you’d like to see bombed to Oblivion?

Blair: I hate the word ‘branding’ as a claim of expertise. An expert is someone who has a deeper knowledge of the subject than others trading in the area. I wonder if there’s even such thing as a branding expert. There are just too many people in it and very, very few that have meaningful knowledge that others do not. A designer claiming expertise in branding is like a fish claiming expertise in swimming. It’s not expertise; it’s the price of entry.

Exactly. Some really nice insight and wisdom in this piece - continue reading here if you agree and want to learn more or here if you already know it all...

That's Right,

HMK

Thanks to Blair Enns, founder of the Win Without Pitching movement and a business development adviser to marketing communication agencies and Eric Karjaluoto from smashLab.

Graphkin

Genius.

Graphkin: 2ply recycled graph paper napkins.

Some of the world's greatest designs, famous buildings and innovative ideas have all started out as sketches on paper napkins. Now with Graphkin you can skribble with precision accuracy!

From the mind of Colin O'Dowd.

That's Right,

HMK

Think It. Ink It.

Creative thinkers such as Stefan Sagmeister, Paula Scher and Milton Glaser teach classes at the School of Visual Arts.

This campaign from KNARF NY reflects that tradition by encouraging people everywhere to “Think” while also giving them a place to write down their thoughts.

That's Write!

HMK

Thanks again Freddie.

Different By Design

A new breed of consultant is using the tools of design to solve business problems creatively.

Surgeon Daniel Palestrant was laid up for several months with a back injury when he realized that it often took years before new techniques developed by pioneering doctors filtered out to the rest of the medical world. Why not bring physicians together online and, even better, charge businesses for access to content from their conversations? But the idea alone wasn't enough to get his social network off the ground. He needed to package that idea in such a way that investors would buy it.

Instead of bringing in a conventional consultant to help him, Palestrant visited a loft in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. In a series of meetings there, Palestrant rattled off his ideas--an outpouring he likened to "intellectual bulimia"--while Elizabeth Pastor and Garry VanPatter, the team behind the firm Humantific, furiously drew and took notes. "He was really deep in the trees," Pastor says. The pair made sense of Palestrant's fuzzy ideas and turned them into huge, glossy posters with icons representing how the parts of his business fit together. Diagrams in hand, Palestrant went to venture-capital funds and returned with $40 million in start-up money.

That kind of response is generating more and more heat in the emerging field of transformation design--a hybrid of business consulting and industrial design. Firms like Humantific, whose founders are designers, apply the same process used in designing sleek MP3 players and ergonomic teakettles to unwieldy intangibles like cell-phone promotions and hospital organization, transforming their effectiveness. Along the way, the field is creating some unusual teamwork between designers and business people.

Continue reading Chad Robert Springer's piece fore Time: Different By Design.

In short, the smart folks at Humantific are using design problem solving techniques to make complicated business ideas understandable to everyone.

Bravo!

The sooner the business community recognize and embrace the fact that impassioned, educated and professional communication designers are capable of bringing a lot more to the table (and the bottomline!) than just fluff, wrapping paper or "making it look cool", the better off we'll all be.

Right On Humantific!

That's Right

HMK

Formulating Ideas

There are a countless benefits to investing time formulating ideas before rushing ahead with any project, in this instance, a website. Because after all:

It is more important to know where you are going than to get there fast.

Any time you spend actually thinking about the nature of your business and ways to improve it can only be a good thing. You may find that the processes put in motion by considering how best to present your content on the web have beneficial flow-on effects in other areas of the business which means you end up with a win-win situation: a website that achieves its goals and a business that is healthier overall because of new ideas generated during the development process.

If you can possibly manage the time, read the rest from the smart folks over at: Tyssen Design.

All we can do is hope to find the clients that get it, respect what we can bring to the table and keep the dialogue open. Bottom line, the idea and end result for the client has to remain your singular focus.

That's Right!

HMK

The bigger we get…the smaller we have to think. Customers still walk in one at a time.

No Posers Part 2

Looking for a relitively quick (49 pages) but super cool and uplifting inspirational read?

Well then, meet Hugh MacLeod, an advertising executive and popular blogger with a flair for the creative, as he gives his 26 tried-and-true tips for being truly creative. Each point illustrated by a cartoon drawn by the author himself.

If you've ever felt the draw to do something creative but just haven't been able to pull it together, you'll love this manifesto.

Here's a little sample of Hugh's How to Be Creative which can be found in the handy PDF format from the smart folks over at one of my favorite blogs, Change This.


Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that's why good ideas are always initially resisted.

With business colleagues, it’s even worse. They’re used to dealing with you in a certain way. They’re used to having a certain level of control over the relationship. And they want whatever makes them more prosperous. Sure, they might prefer it if you prosper as well, but that’s not their top priority.

If your idea is so good that it changes your dynamic enough to where you need them less or, God forbid, THE MARKET needs them less, then they’re going to resist your idea every chance they can.

Again, that’s human nature. Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that is why good ideas are always initially resisted.

Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it.

Nice.

That's Right,

HMK

Hugh MacLeod is a brand consultant, copywriter and cartoonist. Born in America but educated in the UK, he has spent most of his life shuttling between the two countries. He started out in straight TV advertising writing in the early 90s but with the advent of new media it evolved into new brand thinking and cultural transformation. Check out his website, Gaping Void.