The World Of Professional Creativity

The intersection between commerce, technology and culture has long been a place of anxiety and foreboding. Marxist critics in the 1940s denounced the assembly-line approach to filmmaking that Hollywood had pioneered; in the ’60s, we feared the rise of television’s ‘‘vast wasteland’’; the ’80s demonized the record executives who were making money off violent rap lyrics and ‘‘Darling Nikki’’; in the ’90s, critics accused bookstore chains and Walmart of undermining the subtle curations of independent bookshops and record stores.

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Take a look at your own media consumption, and you can most likely see the logic of the argument. Just calculate for a second how many things you used to pay for that now arrive free of charge: all those Spotify playlists that were once $15 CDs; the countless hours of YouTube videos your kids watch each week; online articles that once required a magazine subscription or a few bucks at the newsstand. And even when you do manage to pull out a credit card, the amounts are shrinking: $9 for an e-book that used to be a $20 hardcover. If the prices of traditional media keep falling, then it seems logical to critics that we will end up in a world in which no one has an economic incentive to follow creative passions. The thrust of this argument is simple and bleak: that the digital economy creates a kind of structural impossibility that art will make money in the future. The world of professional creativity, the critics fear, will soon be swallowed by the profusion of amateurs, or the collapse of prices in an age of infinite and instant reproduction will cheapen art so that no one will be able to quit their day jobs to make it — or both.

And yet Steven Johnson, in The New York Times, continues this essay by making the argument for the creative apocalypse that wasn't: "in the digital economy, it was supposed to be impossible to make money by making art. Instead, creative careers are thriving — but in complicated and unexpected ways."

Wil Reynolds: The Hidden Danger of Confusing Outputs for Outcome

Reynolds started Seer Interactive—a leading SEO and online marketing agency—in a small apartment back in 2002. Since then, the company has grown to more than 100 people. But scaling the company was not without its growing pains. In this energetic talk, Reynolds shares how he learned to put a "lid on his hustle" and made sure his values weren't compromised as his company grew. "Getting things done means giving things up," he says. "It can't all fit. You need to have the border."

Chip Kidd: The art of first impressions — in design and life

Book designer Chip Kidd knows all too well how often we judge things by first appearances. In this hilarious, fast-paced talk, he explains the two techniques designers use to communicate instantly — clarity and mystery — and when, why and how they work. He celebrates beautiful, useful pieces of design, skewers less successful work, and shares the thinking behind some of his own iconic book covers.

On digital luxury and digital intimacy, Jony Ive and Marc Newson with Suzy Menkes

The Apple Watch is the first Apple product that has not enticed any kind of curiosity in me. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that I’ve not worn a watch in decades and don’t feel the need for one. Though I suspect at some point the functionality of the watch will lead me to get one, probably two versions down the road, when it is fine-tuned further. 

However, I am very curious about the conversation happening around the watch. A conversation about digital luxury and digital intimacy. Those two subjects now join the conversation around digital privacy and what it means to have technology so closely know what you are doing. 

The above video is Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson discussing those subjects with Suzy Menkes, International Vogue Editor.

Michael Bierut: Finding Your Voice

In an interview at 99u, Michael Beirut discusses his career, advice for students and finding your voice: 

I am not one of those designers who are eager to expand the role of a graphic designer. I’m a graphic designer. I know I’m good at that. I’m not an expert about customer service. I’m not an expert about coming up with the valuation of an IPO. If someone comes to me and has a shitty product, I will say tell them upfront that I don’t know why people would use this and that, to me, it doesn’t make sense, and I’m not sure a logo is what they need right now. But I’m not someone who is dying to have a seat at the table and have input earlier in the process; I’m surrounded by people who have goddamn opinions about things they don’t know anything about, and I don’t want to be one of those people. Sorry if that sounds like bad advice for students who should be expanding their horizons, but I think that everyone should work out what they are good at and do that thing.