Ranting
Who died in an oil spill because of BP?
A genius new illustration called ‘SpongeBob: The End’ from illustrator Mike Mitchell who you probably know better as the creator of the recently famous ‘I’m with CoCo‘ poster.
Read more of: Who died in an oil spill because of BP? »
Tell me again how copying is really flattery?!?
Exhibit 1 – The Luxury Collection ‘Explore the Collection
Click here to see The Luxury Collection site
Exhibit 2 – Middlebury College Web site
Click here to see the Middlebury University site
The Luxury Collection web site was launched a little less than two years ago and the redesign, which was done in collaboration with BBDO Atmosphere and their phenomenally talented creative director Arturo Aranda, was the first step in their re-branding and the creation of the brand’s new global visual language. The strategy and inspiration for the site came from the world of art museums and galleries where you can see unique and varied works of art from across history that are bound by the curation of the museum that brought them together and made them into a collection. Explore the Collection brings this strategy to life with the properties displayed as slivered works of art against a large white background like the works lining the walls of a museum. You can either explore the slivers by rolling over them or search interactively by Destination or Pursuit which will narrow down the numbers of slivers displayed.
This morning a link to the Middlebury College web site lands in my inbox. I clicked the link and could just feel my blood pressure go shooting up and face getting hot as I stared at my screen.
Before I say anything else I want you to click the links for both sites and decide for yourself. I can wait…
I my humble opinion I think it’s pretty easy to see more than a passing resemblance between the two sites seeing as how the layout and user experience are exactly the same.
Maybe I’m making this into something more profound than it needs to be but if an agency (in this case White Whale Web Services) is going to get paid by a client they have to have the talent and ethics to give the client what they paid for – an original idea. Doing this is an abuse of their trust because they are looking to you to be the expert. They are looking to you to be the professional. They are looking to you to be anything but the group who is going to exploit the fact that they don’t know they are just getting a re-skinned version of something someone else already did. If they wanted a site like someone else they could have gone to TemplateMonster.com and saved a hell of a lot of money.
Maybe my bigger issue is that I want to know when we all got so lazy? Why can’t we can’t come up with our own ideas? Why can’t agencies write their own blogs so I don’t have to send out cease and desist letters every month? It’s becoming an epidemic that I see time after time when I speak at conferences and people come up to me and ask what the ‘secret’ is for success. I tell them all the same thing – a lot of hard work. It means that on every single project, every single day you have to put in the time and work your ass off to come up with an original idea and not taking the easy way out and copying someone else. Such a simple concept but seemingly harder and harder to find.
Read more of: Tell me again how copying is really flattery?!? »
The Ego Is Still Blogging Nine Years Later
I recently got nostalgic did some research through my archives and realized that I have had my dates wrong for a long time and I been writing and sending my rants, opinions and advice out into cyber space in one form or another for nine years today. All of this started before I even knew what a blog was and I create the ‘Rants’ section of my old portfolio site that was named as an homage to Dennis Milller’s HBO TV show. That section of my site made a five year run before it became this blog which has been published for four years today. After nine years I look back at the first post and I still love it for it’s introspective tone and that right from the start I questioned what it takes to embark on something so completely self serving. The title of the piece is still as true as ever - The Ego is Blogging.
So as we head into year ten I can only hope some or all of this has made a difference to someone. As with the last few birthdays my only request remains the same – make a damn comment once and a while. Let me know what you think about all of this good or bad because there is nothing worse for a creative than talking to yourself.
Read more of: The Ego Is Still Blogging Nine Years Later »
Adobe hearts Apple
So if you browsed over to Engadget, The New York Times or a number of other sites this morning you probably noticed that Adobe has launched a fairly full-force new ad campaign, microsite, full page in today’s Washington Post and and a letter from Adobe’s founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock to answer Apple’s string of anti-Flash decisions and comments. The heart of the campaign and the line “What we don’t love is anybody taking way your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it and what you experience on the web.”.
Given Apple’s attack dog stance on the issue I think it is smart to play this angle and paint them as the 1984 style big brother who is suppressing creative freedom while Adobe just wants everyone to have creative freedom. But that being said I think they could have done so much more to really make their case and exposing all of this rhetoric from Apple for what it really is.. Of the two brands Adobe is the only one who can really change the conversation at this point by showing Flash running on the iPhone and iPad but it seems that will never happen and they are going to concentrate on the other mobile platforms instead. Who knows where this drama will go next…
Read more of: Adobe hearts Apple »
Why good ideas will turn your clients into tiny drug addicts
I get the same question emailed to me over and over again – Do you have any advice for dealing with clients who constantly have problems and changes? It a complicated solution but part of the answer to the problem is, like the headline says, because you are making your clients into little drug addicts and you don’t even know it. Before you think that I’ve finally gone over the edge – let me explain.
Let’s start by looking at the typical life cycle of any creative project. You get the project from the client, you come up with some concepts to solve the problem, you present those solutions back to the client and then you go build the solution. We can narrow down from there to say that problems with our clients start after the presentation and go until the project is finished. What happens after the presentation that makes this happen?
When you present a good idea to a client they get excited. They get happy. They tell other people about the idea. They put the comps up on the wall of their office. But most importantly they get an endorphin hit from all that excitement and they like the way it feels. It’s different than what they feel in all of their other mundane and repetitive meetings during the day. They like the way it feels so much that they are going to go looking for that feeling (another hit) again as the process goes along. The problem is that after the creative presentations are done they aren’t going to find that feeling again because you go from the creation phase into the production phase. So how do they get another hit? How do they feel that way again? They make changes to the work, no matter how good the idea is, in an attempt to get that rush and feeling of creating something new again. The problem is that making changes during the production phase is that it is the worst possible time to do it because it creates a lot of re-work and added expense.
So how do you give them that hit they are looking for and keep control of your idea and project?
Give them a road map
The best thing is to let your client know what the road ahead is going to look like and walk them through your process so they know aren’t going to get that feeling again until the end of process when they see the finished product. You should also explain what their involvement will be along the way with timing and milestones. It gives you something to manage to and something you can refer back to if the client starts getting restless and wants to make changes looking for that hit.
Mock-ups, prototypes and ripomatics
If you have a client who really needs that hit of new creative to get them through, then you need to build a bridge between the hit they get from the energy and optimism of the creative presentation and the next hit they will get from seeing the final finished version of the concept. It’s a balancing act that means you need to show them more work or include them in some part of the process so they feel like they are contributing and creating the end result with you. Each medium presents its own challenges for how to get this done and how to strike that balance between control and inclusion. For print work I create mock-ups so they can see the ad in a a real newspaper, magazine or mock-up of the final produced version. For digital work I will ether create prototypes so they can see the comps come to life or try to include them in the process for things like user testing so they get a hit from seeing the work in a new form and have a check-in point that they are good with the executional direction before we get too far down the road. For broadcast work I use a similar approach to what I do for digital by either creating animatics or ripomatics of the storyboards or including them in the process for things like VO session. I think all of these work because it gives your client a new thing they can show around the office and makes them feel like an insider who is getting to see the final work before the rest of the world.
Obviously this isn’t true for everyone and there are client who just want to make changes to flex their power and make themselves feel like their are control but take a new look at your problem clients and maybe you will see them in a new light. Maybe their constant changes are a twisted compliment to the quality of your ideas and the fact that they want more of them.
Read more of: Why good ideas will turn your clients into tiny drug addicts »
Steve Job’s thoughts in his glass house
Clearly Apple and Steve Jobs is feeling some pressure from the uproar from people like myself, other designers and consumers who are tired of his bullshit over Flash on the iPad and iPhones. For only the second time in as long as I can remember, the first was when they screwed us on the iPhone price and had to give people a rebate, Steve Jobs just posted an article on Apple’s website to address this sore issue and this time it is titled “Thoughts On Flash”.
I encourage you to first read what it is he has to say. Then here are some of my quick thoughts and reactions on what he had to say today:
It’s not open.
“While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.”
Sorry Mr. Jobs but I couldn’t hear you over my $100 iPhone development kit I have to own to be then be able to submit an iPhone app for the fourth time with the iPhone police for their approval before it be released in your closed marketplace. Seriously – A closed system argument? I can publish whatever the hell I want to in Flash and Adobe isn’t making me submit it for their testing and approval before I can put it live. This is spin and bullshit that is so hyped on on their own Kool Aid that I can’t believe they would even make this argument.
The “full web.”
“Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash… Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games.”
When the hell did the “full web” become only video and games? But let’s humor that position and start with that argument that you don’t miss anything without Flash video. I will only say that I have had three friends who all bitch about their iPads because they like to watch videos on NFL and MLB. Both sites use Flash so let’s not run around saying how you’re not missing anything so quickly.
I have said this before and I will say it again. Apple is taking part of a larger discussion about being able to get the same web surfing experience on your iPad that you have on your laptop and focusing in on the two things you have numbers to try and spin to your side. This isn’t a real discussion about what people are really saying. This is Apple picking these two small things out of a crowd. I personally could give a shit about video and games. I care that I would use the device to do research for this blog and – oh ya – the sites I would be be surfing most of the time USE FLASH!
Reliability, security and performance.
“We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?”
This is one point that I can’t argue with. I said it myself in “Dear Adobe, want Flash on the iPhone & iPad? Here’s the plan…” that if Adobe can answer the bell on these problems, show that it works then they will but the ball back in Apple’s court. Their continued silence only allows this bashing to continue.
Battery life.
“The video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software.”
If you have ever run the Maps application, Email or anything that take a 3G connection on your iPhone for any length of time you know that any rich interaction isn’t going to make your iPhone into a Prius any time soon. But since we have never seen Flash running on an iPhone how can we keep judging it to be such a battery monster? In the point right before this one Steve said he has never seen Flash running on a mobile phone and “who knows how it will perform” but then in the next point he is going to judge how it will perform? Lets pick a side and stick to it - I’m getting dizzy.
Also, I know this is wondering off the subject but I also can’t help but point out that if battery life is such a precious thing to Apple then why do they not make a single mobile device, phone or laptop, that will let me actually change the battery without buying a new phone or paying so much to have it done I might as well have bought a new one? I’m just saying…
Touch.
“If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?”
This was another one of those points where I just scratched my head because with this logic every time I want to update some part of my site to an improved design or play with an emerging technology I need to completely re-code my entire site because there is a newer technology out there? Maybe as the CEO he has that kind of time and money but in my world – I don’t have clients with those budgets or time lines. Also following that logic Mr. Jobs would be perfectly happy if Blackberry comes out with a better operating system than his that we all abandon our iPhone apps and re-write them for that platform – right?
On some level I also take this as a slap in the face that he feels that we are all so devoid of creativity that we can’t adapt our existing designs to take into account for a new try of interaction. We seemed to do it just fine when he introduced the iPhone and asked us to create interactive apps that are currently making him rich.
The most important reason.
“If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features.”
At least he ended where he began with going back to the glass house. Following this logic then we all shouldn’t become dependent on his development tools, his iPhone OS 4 updates and platform enhancements you choose to roll out in your own time – cough – copy and paste – cough – multitasking – cough.
So after all of this I only want to say what I have said before – THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING BUT MONEY! The fact that Apple is spending so much time, effort and money trying to hide and bullshit around that fact is what is making really start to hate this brand and where it’s going. Instead of writing these letters and acting like a spoiled 12 year old making snide cracks under your breath at your press conferences – do us all a favor and just confess you want to keep your precious revenue from your apps and development fees. At least then I could respect you on some level for being honest with me and treating me like someone who has a brain. The road they are headed down is just pissing me off more and more because they think I am too stupid to see the truth and have become so mindless I will follow them anywhere. Once again – I am not one of those sheep.
Read more of: Steve Job’s thoughts in his glass house »
Presenting Creative 101 – Part 3: The Presentation
THE PRESENTATION
12 FEET VS. 4 FEET
As I have studied more and more about what goes into being a good presenter I have found that it happens on conscious and unconscious levels. There are a lot of things that you are naturally aware of on a subconscious level that you can use to your advantage. The first of those things is having an understanding of how you can use your proximity to your clients to your advantage.
Whenever you look at the physical spacial relationship between two people any time you move inside of a four foot radius from someone you are inside their persons space and that will create a strong positive and comforting connection or negative uncomfortable reaction. The inverse of that personal space bubble is if someone is more than 12 feet away from you they are in disconnected space. This means that there is so much space between you and your audience that they feel that they can disengage from you and what you are presenting. We have all seen this in action in school because it’s why all the slackers would always sit in the back of the classroom.
Use these spacial relationships to your advantage and make sure that whenever you have to give a presentation you’re in the sweet spot between 4 and 12 feet away from your audience. This means that if you are presenting in a large boardroom table position yourself in the middle of the table so you are in the sweet spot instead of standing at the end where you will lose people at the other end.
DEATH TO THE SEE AND SAY
If I wanted everything read to me I would have bought the audio book
One of my biggest pet peeves is going to a meeting or conference and having to sit through slide after slide as the presenter does nothing but read the content on each slide. A lot of people do this as a crutch when they are really nervous or think they aren’t a good presenter. The problem is that no matter what that presenter is really saying your subconscious is hearing what I have written on the slide above. That happens for two reasons. First, your audience can read the content on each slide faster than you can say it so they know where you are going and tune out after you have talked about 1/3rd of the slide. Second, and more importantly, is that when you stand there doing nothing but reading your slides you are subconsciously telling your audience you don’t know what you’re talking about.You aren’t providing them with even the most narrative beyond what is written on the slide and it creates a subconscious perception that you lack authority. Having a client or an audience come to that conclusion about you is catastrophic because they will never have any trust or confidence in you.
ALL EYES ON ME
Killing the skip aheads
Whenever you do a presentation it’s an exercise in keeping the focus and attention of your audience on you. I have found that understanding basic psychology helps that happen and some things you can do that will help are:
PROJECT OR USE ONE DECK
You want every client looking at the same thing, at the same time, so you keep them from skipping ahead, forming opinions about work without the benefit of an explanation and then disengaging from what you are saying. When you present either project your presentation or use one printed deck so all eyes are on one thing, This keeps everyone engaged, look at the same thing, focused on you and most importantly lets you control the pace of the meeting. If you give everyone their own copy of the presentation you lose that control and that focus which is so critic to being an effective presenter.
NO HAND OUTS TILL THE END
Keeping any hand out till the end supports the use one deck concept I explained above but it recognizes that clients will want to be able to look at the work after the meeting. If you do it sooner then you will have 50% of the group on the same page, 25% not paying attention at all and 25% flying through it ignoring what you have to say. Keep their focus on you during the meeting and then they can have their own copy to review at the end.
BUILDS. BUILDS. BUILDS.
I am a firm believer that the words ‘Powerpoint’ and ‘design’ should never exist in the same sentence but I think it is critical to use slide builds in any presentation. If you look at the slide above you see a a basic slide with a title and 5 bullet points. If you show this slide with all the content already revealed then your clients human nature is going to be to read the content you put up on the screen. They can read faster than you can talk and they aren’t listening to what you have to say. They know where you are going to go with that piece of your presentation so you will start to lose a high percentage of the room who will drift off until you go to the next slide. You have lost their focus simply by not having each of the bullet points build in when you want them to. So while it may seem like a small thing, using builds for each line of the slide will keep the room focused on you and keep them listening to what it is you have to say.
PASSWORD PROTECTED PDF’S
There are a lot of occasions when you aren’t going to have the luxury of presenting to clients face or face or even over a web cast. In those instances you still need to try to control the focus of the presentation as much as you can so I will send out the presentation as a PDF but make them password protected. This way I know I can at least control when everyone sees the work and I can try to minimize the people who skip ahead as much as possible.
It can be a controversial technique and I’ve had some clients get really at mad me for doing it. My explanation is always that my team and I have put a lot of work into the project and I want to the chance to be able to present the work and the thinking . I don’t want assumptions to be made ahead of time which are going to mitigate what I have to say because they have already made up their minds.
I also do this because on an unspoken level I have to maintain my position as a leader and have my client give me the basic respect of listening to what I have to say. If I send that presentation ahead of time, let them go through it without me and form their own assumptions then I am giving up that leadership and respect by subconsciously admitting I have nothing to add.
USE STRUCTURE TO OVER COMES YOUR NERVES
Think of it like presentation training wheels
If you are nervous about presenting them here are two different techniques I have used that may help you get over that fear and help to start to build your confidence.
CHASE THE RABBIT
The hardest part of a presentation is the beginning because you have to be the first to stand up in front of everyone, get all the conversations to stop, set the tone and get a rhythm going. It can intimidating and scary so when you are just starting to do presentation think about having a more senior member of the team start the meeting. It gives you time to get into the flow of the meeting, get rid of some of the butterflies and you can follow (chase) that more senior member of the team. It is a simple but effect way to get your confidence up.
HAND OFFS
Similar to chasing the rabbit, doing a presentation with another person so you can hand off from one section to another helps break the presentation down into smaller parts and lets you study and evolve your technique in the meeting.
BENEFITS
Talk about your work in terms of business benefits
This is associated with the concept I discussed in my last post that ‘Not everyone can see it’. In that case I was talking about the fact that everyone can visualize concepts and designs in their head. In this case it is the fact that most clients don’t look at your work in the same design terms that you do. They spend all day talking about business issues so you need to look at your audience and see if you need to do the same. Instead of talking about your choice in fonts, colors, etc. in terms of what it does for the design, talk about in terms of how it solves the business problem and what business benefits it will provide. So when you are presenting the work think in those terms so instead you will say things like “We chose this typeface and color palette because it resonates with our core demographic, that will build the brand recognition and that recognition will help increase sales”. I have also found that when you are able to do that then your client will see the thinking in a way they understand and will not try to find it themselves in the designs. If you have clients that rip apart your designs and nip pick everything little thing it is probably because they are trying to find that logic and those benefits so the designs make sense to them in a way they understand.
TAKE THEIR TEMPERATURE
Check in early and often
Checking in with your client through the course of your presentation is important for two reasons. First is that it makes your audience switch from a passive listening mode to an active thinking mode to answer your question. That simple switch in thinking modes helps wake them up, focus them and make sure they are keeping their attention on you. It is also a really good trick if you are presenting blind over a conference call because asking questions and checking in will keep your clients from skipping too far ahead. The questions will create a sense of risk and they may not be able to answer a question if they are too far ahead or not listening.
From here we will be moving on to how to handle problem clients and dealing the aftermath of the presentation. If you have comments, thoughts or additions feel free to put them in the comments because this is by no means a complete or definitive document and I always love to hear other opinions.
Read more of: Presenting Creative 101 – Part 3: The Presentation »
The Inverse Facebook Experiment
About three and a half months ago I very quietly began my own social media experiment to see if Facebook, which was supposed to bring people together, was actually keeping some of my friends away from me. All of this came about because one of my really close friends (Friend A) ran into one of my other friends who I don’t see that often (Friend B). Somehow I came up in the course of the conversation and Friend A realized that Friend B talked about me like we hung out all the time but all he was really doing was repeating things he had read in my Facebook status updates. It got me thinking – how many other friends were doing the same things? Was staying friends with them on Facebook just enabling this behavior so we never saw each other face to face? Was my friendship just being collected like a trading card so people could have a higher friend number and feel better about themselves? And had Facebook become such an engrained part of society that if I de-friending them in the virtual world would it have an actual effect on our friendship in the real world?
I really debated those questions for about a week and decided that I needed to know the answers. I wasn’t doing this to be mean spirited but I wanted to try to have more meaningful friendships in my life and fewer purely virtual ones. I knew it was going to be a hard process and I might have to explain my actions to some of these people so I needed to have a consistent set of rules that would help me make my decisions. As I was working out the rules I decided the best thing would to keep it simple. So the two rules I used were:
1 – I had to have been friends with you on Facebook for more than a year.
2 – I had to have had some kind of meaningful exchange with you in the past year and I broke that down to subgroups. If you live near me then we had to have gone out to at least one lunch, dinner or talked something meaningful for more than 15 minutes in the past year. If you live far away then we had to have had at least 2 meaningful email exchanges in the past year. If you work with me than we had to have done something outside of work like lunch, dinner or drinks at least once in the past year.
I thought it was a fair way to make the decisions and honestly kept the bar pretty low to stay on my friends list. When I applied those rules to my nearly 225 Facebook friends it meant I was going to de-friend just under 100 of them. I was shocked by the fact that so many of my friends couldn’t meet those basic criteria and it only strengthened my resolve that this needed to happen. I bit the bullet, gave the axe to everyone on the list and waited for the reaction.
In the three and a half months since I started this experiment I have honestly been shocked at the response – or actually the lack there of.
95% of the people on that list had no response at all. They never noticed, emailed, IM’d or called to ask me why we weren’t friends anymore. I can only conclude that for that group we had become acquaintances who had a connection at some point in our lives but Facebook had created a false sense of meaningful connection and friendship.
3% caught on to me pretty much immediately and got in touch to ask what had happened. I was honest with them for why I did it and I didn’t take the ‘I don’t know why we aren’t friends anymore. It must have been a Facebook error” road. I am very happy to say that for that group we have been seeing a lot more of each other and it was a wake up call that really brought us back together.
2% caught on at some point later in that 3 1/2 month period and asked me what happened. Again I was honest with them but they mainly just wanted to be friends again on Facebook and not really make any real change.
I am curious to see if those numbers will stay the same now that I have made this experiment public. A large percentage of that group who got the axe read my blog on a regular basis and are probably racing to Facebook to see if they were on the list.
I have put a lot of thought into what I learned from all of this and what insights we can take from it. I started with once again embracing the fact that my creative process uses personal experiences to create professional insights and work. This was an experiment that clearly took place in my personal life but the insight I walked away with reinforces something I already knew from my professional like. Any digital community only has real value if the connections created to that community are real and have real value to the people participating in it. If those connections are so thin that they are at best passive participation that go unnoticed when they are broken then no matter how many people are part of that community it is meaningless. It will never have an effect, it will never communicate anything and it will only exist to serve the community creator and not the community itself.
If you are feeling brave try this experiment for yourself to see what results you get and if the same conclusion holds true. No matter what the outcome hopefully it will help you reconnect with old friends in the real world and have a conversation that does start with a form field that reads “What’s on your mind?”.
Read more of: The Inverse Facebook Experiment »
Hello Moto
If you have seen me speak at a conference or have read this blog for any length of time you know that I am motivated by my fellow designers but I am truly inspired by chefs and avant garde cuisine. I have sought out conversations with modern day culinary visionaries like Ferran Adria and Heston Blumenthal to discuss their food but mostly find out about their creative process. So this year when I had the chance to speak at FUSE I was excited for the opportunity to talk to an audience of that caliber but also because I would finally have me the time to fulfill a dream and visit two of the counties most progressive restaurants on two consecutive nights – Alinea and Moto. Of the two restaurants I had a lot more knowledge of Alinea after having a conversation with the chef Grant Achatz at an AdAge event last year and I have cooked a number of recipes from his cookbook. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Moto because I had only seen one episode of their new show Future Food and had read a few articles about chefs Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche. All of that aside I went into it knowing no matter what happened it was going to be a lot of fun and a great experience.
So last Friday after I was done speaking at FUSE we ran back to the hotel to change and then headed over to Moto. The restaurant is located in a slightly industrial area north west of downtown with an unassuming facade and simple sign. We had originally planned on getting their smaller 10 course tasting menu but once the waiter presented us with the menu that was served with artichokes and s sauce because it is actually edible, my wife and I looked at each other and then simultaneously informed the waiter we had changed our minds and would be having the full tasting menu. We started with a candle bring brought to the table to help with the dim lighting and we were off and running. A few courses in a bowl of re-imagined loaded french fries was brought to the table and the waiter extinguished the aforementioned candle and poured over the potatoes. Like an great and memorable experience it is about surprise and delight. In this case I was surprised that they poured the candle on our food and delighted that it was actually a beef fat candle. From there the meal went on to dishes like a cuban cigar served in a real ash tray that was actually pulled pork wrapped in collard greens with an edible cigar band and powered sesame seeds for the ash. A cherry bomb dessert that is brought to the table and lit on fire only to find out that it was a chocolate shell filled a graham cracker liquid and a marshmallow fuse to make a re-imagined smore. And the 20+ courses just kept coming finally ending after around 3 1/2 hours. At the end of the meal I could only think of one meal I had in my life that tasted better and I couldn’t remember any meal where the creativity and fun made smile and laugh more than this one.
After any great dinner I always ask the waiter if it would be possible to get a tour of the kitchen because my creative and curious nature kicks back in and I want to see how it is set up and how the team works. In this case they were happy to oblige me and we were taken down a stairway at the front of the restaurant to the small private dining room and lab where the team concepts their amazing dishes. We then went through two sets of doors and into the kitchen. Executive Sous Chef Darrell Nemeth immediately jumped out from behind the line to high-fived both of us with a huge smile on his face. It was by far the most unique and exuberant reception I have ever had in any kitchen . Then sous chef Richard Farina introduced us to the whole team, talked about how the kitchen is run and after mentioning how much I loved their version of a Funion from their french onion soup course I found myself with a of them to take home. Then it was up the stairs for a demonstration of their liquid Nitrogen tank and a speech from my wife about how I don’t need one for my kitchen at home.
The reason why this meal was so transcendent for me wasn’t simply because of the food. It was because after having that meal and seeing that kitchen in action I could clearly see that when it comes to creativity and creating a culture where original ideas can flourish these guys have it down cold. I could see that because I watched a kitchen that brought to life every one of the concepts I had talked about earlier that same day for running a world class design studio. They have hired incredibly passionate artists and had the confidence and culture that gave them all, from the chef who and been there 2 days to one of the founders, an equal say in the creative process. That trust inspires confidence and has created created that critical culture of failure where everyone knows it’s a safe environment where taking risks, questioning conventions and having ideas completely fail is a critical part of the creative process you have to go through to create big new ideas. If you pay attention you can see that culture and those concepts expressed through something as simple as the celebratory exuberance of the high five from Darrell Nemeth who knew we loved the food to the conversations we had with the other chefs who wanted to know what we loved and what we hated. They have embraced the fact that some ideas are home runs, some are on the road to greatness and some need to be completely re-worked and they are fine with all of it. So if you are challenged with running any type of creative and/or idea driven group get to Moto as fast as you can to have this experience, to talk to this these chefs and see how a team with that type of focus should be run. I am already booked to speak at another conference in Chicago in the end of September and I’ll give you two guesses where I will be that night with a big smile on my face.
Read more of: Hello Moto »
Welcome to 1984 (How Apple has become the new IBM)
26 years ago Apple burst on to our collective consciousness with their famous Ridley Scott directed commercial ’1984′. It an upstate rebel smashing big brother (IBM) who was the big, overbearing, clone sheep creating company who used their dominant market share to limit consumers to only their approved choices and bully smaller companies around. My how times have changed…
The launch of the iPad launched this great Apple and Adobe war of words and I have tried to walk the line to see both sides of the argument. With Apple’s actions last week to limit iPhone development to only their development environment they have clearly and finally shown they have completely forgotten their origins and their long time grass roots customers in favor of one thing. That thing is not technology. It is not about HTML5 versus Flash. It is not about who has the video player for the iPad’s battery life. And I am here to tell you that anyone who thinks that’s what this is about has NO IDEA what the hell they are talking about. This is about Steve Jobs, the board of directors and senior management at Apple wanting to do nothing more than protect every penny they can of the revenue generated by the sale of iPhone and iPad applications and the $100 fee you have to pay to be part of the development community.
I have been a life long Apple user and I don’t say that with “life long” in quotes. I started my design career on the postage stamp sized, black and white screen of an original 40lb unibody Mac Classic running Pagemaker and Photoshop 1.0. With that length of history I can see that Apple has forgotten their roots. Just look at the slow homogenization of their product line as they fold more and more of their previously creative professional target line of products into the mass market consumer line-up. Gone are the 30″ Cinema displays for a one size fits all model. Gone are any substantial difference in the pro and regular MacBook line-up. Face it folks, they could give a shit about the creative class now that they have what they have always wanted – money and power. Nothing says that more clearly to me, a creative professional, than this war with Adobe because being able to create apps in Flash would have made my life a hell of a lot easier.
This is not the brand I grew up up supporting and loving with cult like fervor. This is not the brand I have so strongly identified with so much of my life. This is a brand behaving like a spoiled, over privileged child with all the good toys and not willing to share them with anyone else. This is brand amnesia that is making a mockery of the Think Different campaign and the visionaries and cultural icons it featured like Jim Henson, Gandhi and Rosa Parks. It is Apple becoming the IBM of old and creating 1984 in reverse.
More than that, I don’t think they see the slippery slope they are headed down by putting the all mighty dollar first. They have so thoroughly pissed off their life long supporters that you saw designers and developers selling their computers, their developers licenses and in some cases stopping their business all together so not to support this behavior any more. With the iPad you see for the first time in a long time with one of their major new launches Apple putting price ahead of any real innovation. Wake up, the iPad is the spork of the computers. Anyone who wants to argue how alienating your life long core customers in favor of hype induced newcomers and putting price over innovation is going to keep them in a leadership position please bring it on because I want to hear it.
A lot of my friends have made fun of me for making it very clear that I am not buying an iPad as a moral vote against the way Apple is behaving. I’m doing it because I have been in this business long enough to know that the only way to get the attention of a company behaving like that is to vote with your wallet. If you buy a new iPhone or new iPad you are voting yes for the new IBM. You are voting that you want them to continue to limit our choices as creative professionals for how we can create our work, how that work is distributed and who can see it inside of their closed system. I am not willing to be that sheep who blindly votes yes for something like that. My sincere hope is that if you have read this blog for any length of time then you have the intelligence to see what this means and do the same.
Read more of: Welcome to 1984 (How Apple has become the new IBM) »
