My visit elBulli Taller – Ferran Adria’s private workshop
If you have followed my blog for any period of time you know that I get a lot of my creative inspiration from avante guard chefs and probably none more than Ferran Adria and his restaurant elBulli in Spain. The world at large probably first heard the name Ferran Adria in 2003 because of Anthony Bourdain’s TV show No Reservation on an episode called “Decoding Ferran Adria” which was the first primetime look into Ferran restaurant and workshop. I have been such a huge fan of chef Adria and the food because it is wildly creative and challenges the very conventions around what makes a meal.
I personally find a strong link between the creativity in cooking and creativity in design and advertising. I get a tremendous amount of creative inspiration from the the work of chef’s like Ferran Adria, Jose Andreas, Grant Achatz and Wylie Dufresne. I even use their work to teach how to have to break through creative ideas in my studio. I tell my designers here in New York to go to Wylie Dufresne’s restaurant WD50 and have the eggs benedict to see what I mean. It is a dish we have all had before but to completely re-imagined it into some you have never seen before in a form you have never eaten before the tastes bring back strong memories. It is that play between wild creativity that is contained in something familiar that I love. I think it is what all break through interactive work does. It gives you something completely new but there is something familiar in the usability and the experience when though it is all new.
I don’t know of many people who have been able to cross the #1 item off their bucket list but n the middle of December of last year I did just that. I was given the astounding opportunity to travel to Barcelona to meet Chef Adria, get a private tour of elBulli Taller which is his private workshop and have dinner at his new Tapas restaurant Tickets.
It is not an overstatement when I say that for me being able to spend time which one of the world’s greatest living creative minds and the man who forever changed the face of modern gastronomy in the workshop where he created the world’s greatest restaurant was an experience that had a profound effect on me. This was only the third time Ferran had ever allowed the public into his workshop and hearing about his process and seeing the level of detail he put into every single aspect of the dining experience at elBulli was astounding. The video above shows some of the highlights from that tour as well as showing you Ferran’s philosophy and just what he did to create such temple of creativity. I will more posts in the near future about some of the insights I got from my conversation with Ferran, how to selected his team at elBulli and the techniques he used to lead his team.
Read more of: My visit elBulli Taller – Ferran Adria’s private workshop »
Happy Holidays
This year I thought I would wish everyone a Happy Holidays with the best agency holiday card I received which was created by Chandelier Creative. My work schedule has kept me from posting as often as I would like the past few months but I have a lot of pieces in the works which I will post soon. Happy Holidays.
Read more of: Happy Holidays »
Upcoming speeches at NYCUPA, Mobile Marketing Summit and Marketing World 2012
A quick update on my speaking schedule with three upcoming sessions already booked for 2012. I will be starting off the year by returning to speak at the New York City Usability Professionals Association on the evening of Tuesday, January 24, 2012 and I will have more details about the topic and venue soon. After that I will be doing a three hour workshop on Best Practices in Creating Mobile Websites at the The Mobile Marketing Conference on Monday, March 19, 2012 at The Gansevoort Hotel in Miami Florida. Finally on July 16-18 I will be giving a session on digital branding at Marketing World 2012 at the Hyatt Regency in Boston Massachusetts. I hope to see some of you there.
Read more of: Upcoming speeches at NYCUPA, Mobile Marketing Summit and Marketing World 2012 »
Getting stuck on Pinterest
An invite to the beta of a new site called Pinterest.com landed in my email box about a week ago. I get a lot of these so I generally tend to ignore them but I remembered hearing a few different people recently talk about the site so I thought I would check it out. Like the name implies the site is a virtual bulletin board where you can virtually “pin” images of the things you like as you cruise around the Internet. Those collections of images are put on “boards” that can then be named so the content is made into collections of themed content. Pinterest then add in a Twitter like element to the site where you are then able to follow other people to see all of the content they pin or just follow one of their boards to only get updates on a specific subject matter. The best place to start finding content is by linking to Facebook or Twitter to see how may of your friends are on the site and beyond that I would recommend just searching for specific terms because some of the collection are massive with people who have over 100 different boards and over 10,000 pins.
At first I really didn’t think this was going to be a site that would have much of a lasting appeal and I think a lot of that opinion was based on my friends who were already on the site as their content wasn’t that compelling. I pushed on to explore some more and I started to find things that really did interest me and I’d never seen before. That is a pretty rare occurrence for me and before I knew it I had 13 boards and over 100 pins – I was hooked. So those of you who are already on the site feel free to follow me and my wide but generally design focused collections and if not shoot me an email and I’ll send you an invite to the site so you can check it out for yourself.
Read more of: Getting stuck on Pinterest »
For creativity, there isn’t any wisdom in crowds
With the economy that has been headed south faster than a Lynard Skynard tour bus, the topic of ‘spec’ or ‘crowdsourced’ design work seems to be coming up more and more from some of my clients as a cheap design option and among my friends as a continuing source of frustration. For anyone who isn’t sure what I am talking about, speculative or crowdsourced design work is done through a web site like Crowdspring.com where a client posts a project asking a designer to do a job under the loose promise that they will be paid a small amount of money if and when the client likes the final product. It can be a sexy proposition for young designer who want to jump into the fray to do some real work and appealing to designers in other parts of the world who see the promise of the digitally enabled flat world full of new clients. I see it as a model that reduces designers to a priceless, faceless, minimal value cattle call commodity and favors companies short-term greed over showing our industry and my profession any respect. I would say that if you just do it to build up your portfolio you will get a lot more experience and value by donating your time to a charity, becoming an intern or a freelancer.
This is a well documented topic that has been written about by designers and bloggers for years. There is now a fledgling organization called AntiSpec that is trying to get designers to understand their role in fighting spec work. It is still in it’s formative stages but I would check it out and keep an eye on how many companies are really using this technique (you will be surprised by some of the names).
Read more of: For creativity, there isn’t any wisdom in crowds »
Develop short term memory loss (How Heston Blumenthal forever changed dining with my wife)
If you have read my blog for any amount of time you know that I get most of my inspiration from creativity the world’s best chefs. On two different occasions I’ve been lucky enough to spend some time talking with Heston Blumenthal who is the chef at two of those world class restaurants - The Fat Duck and Dinner. The conversation that lead to this article came at an event here in New York City where my wife and I arrived to find a few people milling around, seemingly too intimidated to talk to the chef, and thus Heston was sitting by himself by the back of the space. Their loss was my gain and we went over to talk to him. I always find this interaction extremely interesting as some chef’s couldn’t be any more generous with their time while others are every bit the bristling prima donnas you feared they might be. Heston was every bit the former as he happily indulged my version of celebrity worship by signed my beloved first edition of the Fat Duck Cookbook, taking photos and talking with us for a while.
During the conversation I asked a simple question that had an equally simple but unexpected answer we all could learn a lot from. I asked him “When you eat at a restaurant what do you look for to know if it’s going to be a good experience?”. He simply answered “the butter”. I’m sure I looked puzzled by his answer so he went on to explain “When you sit down to eat a meal and they bring bread and butter to table if the butter is too cold and rock hard then you know the chef hasn’t ever eaten in him own restaurant, he isn’t watching the details and whole meal is going to reflect that lack of attention to detail”. He was completely right where this simple observation about a small detail is a much bigger bellwether of the experience to come.
This conversation had an immediate effect on my life as dining with my wife has never been the same. At the start of every single meal, no matter where we are in the world, she takes her knife, poking it into the butter when it arrives at the table to tests the temperature of and uses like a crystal ball to determine the quality of the meal to come. If the butter passes the temperature test she will usually say nothing but I know in her head her hopes for the meal have just gone up but if it fails the test she will push the bread away and announce “Heston wouldn’t be pleased” followed by her watching the rest of the meal with a more critical eye than usual.
This whole experience is something that always makes me smile but it has been fascinating to watch her adopt this ritual with such tenacity. I think her behavior comes out the core truth that anyone designing a consumer experience in any medium needs to understand what the experience you are designing is really like for the end consumer. In this case if you are the chef then you need to eat in your own restaurant to get a customers perspective of the experience. I think the ability to get a fresh perspective from the other side of the experience is absolutely critical to being able to create anything great. You need to have times in a project or even in your career where you are able to step back from you are creating, develop short term memory loss to be able to forget all the details and excuses that have build up over the creation process, and objectively evaluate all parts of that experience. It is something that doesn’t come naturally and you have to work at it but the more you are able to do it the more you will create advertising that connects with people, web sites that people interact with engaging, brands that people bonds with, and on and on. So on your next project be sure to take the time step away from the process, sit down and see if you are watching all the details in your experience. You might just find you are serving your consumers cold, hard butter a lot more than you think.
Read more of: Develop short term memory loss (How Heston Blumenthal forever changed dining with my wife) »
BUCK NAKED at PhotoPlus Expo NYC
If you are headed to the PhotoPlus Expo at the Jacob K. Javitz Center in New York this week be sure to check out BUCK NAKED: The Secrets Behind Master Photographer Chris Buck on Friday from 1:30 – 3:30pm. Chris is a genius portrait photographer (you can check out his portfolio here) who has shot some of my favorite celebrity portraits of all time and someone I am lucky enough to count among my friends. He will be giving an entertaining session talking about those crucial early years where his unorthodox decisions led him to the success and creative freedom he enjoys today. He has promised to keeps no professional secrets as he takes you through his colorful career so do yourself a favor and check it out.
Read more of: BUCK NAKED at PhotoPlus Expo NYC »
Adobe and Big Spaceship create The Expressive Web
It is obvious that Adobe continues to be a part of the HTML5 conversation in a big way from the launch of their preview of Adobe EDGE to their recent launch of a new web site called The Expressive Web. The site is both a resource and showcase that highlights some of the most creative and expressive features being added to the web today focusing on twelve new HTML5 and CSS3 features. The design is based around colored blocks that rearrange and animate for each different section of the site and makes extensive use of new features such as CSS3 transitions, CSS3 transforms, web storage and more.
I found it interesting that the site is labeled as a beta and when I dug a little deeper I found out that they decided to launch it this way because the sites has some bugs on older browsers and some devices. So they decided to launch the site as a beta so they could share the resources and information with the community and then share some of the lessons they learned developing the site. You can see their list of lessons learned here which has some good insights and information.
Read more of: Adobe and Big Spaceship create The Expressive Web »
KERNTYPE: the kerning video game
I am a type nerd and celebrate great typography in all of it’s expressions. I freely admit it. Two years ago this obsession took on a new direction about a year and a half ago with the release of the KERN video game for the iPhone. Now comes another kerning game called KERNTYPE. This is a web based game where you are given a series of ten kerning problems and you have to drag the letters of the word to try get as close to the correct kerning as possible. The closer you are to the perfect kerning the higher your score. It can causes quite a bit of competition around the the design studio for who can get the highest score and as you can see from the screenshot I retain my title of ultimate type nerd with a perfect score of 100.
Read more of: KERNTYPE: the kerning video game »
Speaking at ad:tech New York 2011
Glad to be able to annouce that I will be speaking at ad:tech New York this year on Thursday, November 10 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM for a session called HTML5 Changes Everything: How this New Standard Can Turn the Browser into an Immersive Marketing Environment, Game Console and More.
The official session description is:
All kinds of buzzwords flash across our news feeds on a daily basis but what do these shifts in technology truly mean for customers and for marketers? HTML5 in particular is enabling a vast new array of devices and browsing experiences that can make for better, faster and easier discovery of marketing content, from apps to Web sites to eCommerce stores. But what does a marketer need to know about HTML5 and which aspects of this new standard are best left to the engineers? Join us as we help marketers understand the advantages that HTML5 brings to their work and their interactions with customers across the Web and other online platforms.
Read more of: Speaking at ad:tech New York 2011 »
