Paula Scher: Once you know what you're doing, it's not as good

/
Sometimes you have to ignore the brief, says renowned designer and artist Paula Scher. With a dry wit, Scher takes us behind-the-scenes on four landmark projects -- from revamping MoMA's identity to reinvigorating a Pittsburgh neighborhood through design -- to illustrate how asking questions, pushing into uncharted territory, and doing something you've never done before leads to great work.

​I love the work of Paula Scher. She has created some of my favorite arts marketing identities, including this poster that actually made me stop my hustled walk towards the subway so I could stare at it for a little while:

In this talk, from this year's 99u conference, ​she continues to explore themes she's shared before. In the talk, as in the past, she discusses failure, demonstrates those things that they don't teach you in design school and displays her love for typography. For more check out her TED Talk on serious play and how her career took off because she hated Helvetica. 

/ / /Source
, , , , , ,

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Knowledge + Taste = Meaningful Judgement

/
Like any other kind of writing, criticism is a genre that one has to have a knack for, and the people who have a knack for it are those whose knowledge intersects interestingly and persuasively with their taste. In the end, the critic is someone who, when his knowledge, operated on by his taste in the presence of some new example of the genre he’s interested in—a new TV series, a movie, an opera or ballet or book—hungers to make sense of that new thing, to analyze it, interpret it, make it mean something.
/ / /Source

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Creativity Top 5: September 4, 2012

/

Love the Warhol Campbell's Soup cans. ​

/ / /Source
,

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Building Our New Shrines

/
This is what we’ve always done: we build our shrines. We build our shrines sometimes before we even have content. We build our shrines before we know what that content will look like.
We love our shrines. We love crafting them, sanding them, staining, and lacquering them. We craft and then fill them with our precious stuff—words and images. And then we think, Ah! I need to add those pieces of lint, those little doodads in the corner: the share button and email button, the like and +1 and retweet buttons. We stick them in the corners of our shrines because we built our shrines without them, sometimes before they existed.
...
What is a publisher anymore, anyway? A blog is a magazine. A magazine a blog. A newspaper a WordPress install. A Twitter account a journalist.

Another great essay by Craig Mod exploring the ways and the tools we build to create "our shrines." He has consistently and thoughtfully been looking at the evolution of creating published content. ​

/ / /Source
, , ,

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

The Week's Links: 9/2/12

/

All the items posted to Facebook and Twitter this week:

  • Does exercise really help with depression?owl.li/deWwa
  • From the Smithsonian Collections: Famous Footwear owl.li/deTdR
  • The Once and Future Coffeehouses of Viennaowl.li/deT9s
  • The Architecture of Memory owl.li/deT5W
  • The Story of László Bíró, the Man Who Invented the Ballpoint Pen owl.li/deSXN
  • Why Free Time Frees Creativity: giving employees free time to experiment yields creative insights owl.li/deSWZ
  • Rick Poynor: The Never-ending Struggle against Clutter owl.li/deLPv
  • Drake equation: How many alien civilizations exist? owl.li/deJqC
  • Ha! Famous architects dressed as their buildings,1931 owl.li/deJkp
  • The Neuroscience of Creativity and Insightowl.li/deJ6Z
  • The 15 best tools for data visualisationowl.li/det81
  • The Future Of Storytelling: Immersion, Integration, Interactivity, Impact owl.li/desTG
  • Disney’s Interactive Plants Aren’t Just Magic. They’re Practical Magic. owl.li/desOd
  • Redesigning Highway Signs, To Talk To Your Smartphone owl.li/desEU
  • Chris Chabris: When Intuition Failsowl.li/deOMc
  • Ira Glass: By the Book owl.li/desum
  • NYTimes Thinks Hollywood Films Are Killing Opera owl.li/deshn
  • Rovers Are From Mars: How Curiosity Is Killing It On Twitter owl.li/des8D
  • Choreographers Explore New Brooklyn Academy of Music Stage owl.li/dnjHP
  • The Walt Disney Company [is] building a chain of language schools in China. owl.li/derFZ
  • Anxious? Depressed? Literate? Try Bibliotherapy owl.li/derB1
  • Brian Eno: A Sandbox In Alphaville By Lester Bangs. A previously unpublished, 20,000-word interview. owl.li/derdk /via @longform
  • The Reading Edge Series – A group of fonts for small sizes on screens. Great site.owl.li/deqSq
  • Instagram for Business: Case studies of how brands are using the service. owl.li/deqGx
  • Ha! Water Wigs: high speed pics of balloons exploding on people's heads owl.li/deqje
  • 10 Tips For Success From George Lois, The Original Mad Man owl.li/deq3X
  • What Your App Usage Tells Advertisersowl.li/depCw
  • Want To Make A Great First Impression? Try Giving a Damn owl.li/depur
  • Punchdrunk and how to "Sleep No More"owl.li/deOKT
  • Inside the Science That Plays Your Brain Like a Videotape owl.li/depfL
  • Why Immersion In Storytelling Is Not Wasted Time owl.li/1md4HW
  • Useful Legal Documents For Designers (PDF/DOC) owl.li/deo4c
  • Who inherits your iTunes library? owl.li/denQi
  • Finding Your Tone Of Voice owl.li/denNo
  • Jaron Lanier: What It Means to be Humanowl.li/denCw
  • A Vision for the Future of Newspapers from 20 Years Ago owl.li/denrk /via @Coudal
  • Plot Device - inexpensive short film thats puts mega movies to shame owl.li/deOIf
  • Versions of Stoppard: More Intelligent Life's fantastic profile of Tom Stoppard owl.li/denbE
  • Scott Adams: Creativity and Memoryowl.li/1mbTZ7
  • The Undeniable Allure of Potentialowl.li/den4K
  • Why novelists need scientists, and vice versaowl.li/demVX
  • Gene Kelly: The Marlon Brando Of Screen Dance, 100 Years On owl.li/demEq
  • Tchaikovsky on the Paradox of Patronage and Creative Purpose vs. Commissioned Workowl.li/demyc
  • Behind The Year's Most Talked-About (Gun-Free) Game, "Unfinished Swan" owl.li/demvV
  • White House commits open source code on Github owl.li/demrY
  • You never know. Connecting the dots: How @jasonfried's opinion made it into the New York Times owl.li/delU6
  • Steven Heller on a Paul Rand Significant Collection owl.li/dejmU
  • Original Creators: Performance Art Pioneer Allan Kaprow owl.li/dejdE
  • The 8 Most Incredible Stop-Motion Animation Music Videos From The Past Decadeowl.li/dej7I
  • How Do We Create Cultures of Creativity: Festival of Ideas (Video)‏ owl.li/deOGJ
  • The 10 principles of mobile interface designowl.li/deiXh
  • Under the hood: Rebuilding Facebook for iOSowl.li/dei6j
  • Yes! Cookie Monster's Famous Sugar Cookie Dough Recipe owl.li/dehIf
  • Tim Carmody on the Past, Present and Future of Reading owl.li/1maN7G
  • Video of protein movement within a neuron shows how our brains renew themselvesowl.li/degY9
  • Improvise intelligently: What Film Crews Can Teach You About Running A Businessowl.li/degh6
  • Fascinating: An Oral History of Burning Man, the Biggest, Weirdest, Most Clothing-Optional Desert Carnival on the Planet...
  • Creativity Top 5: August 27, 2012owl.li/1mahHG
  • Art 101: How to Pronounce Artists' Namesowl.li/ded7O
  • How Paperbacks Transformed the Way Americans Read owl.li/ded6m
  • Transmedia Hollywood 2: Visual Culture & Design, Panel Videos owl.li/deOEM
  • So great: Artist Creates Sculptures From Classic Children’s Books, Characters Come Alive owl.li/ded2a
  • The Link Between Quietness And Productivityowl.li/ded0y
  • Three (Incredibly Simple) Questions The Most Successful People Use To Change The Worldowl.li/decV6
  • Questions we ask before we trust your new idea owl.li/decrK
  • Gareth Kay: Brand Building in a Digital Ageowl.li/1m9HBf
  • Punchdrunk's Felix Barrett: On Pushing the Limits of Curiosity and Comfort Zonesowl.li/dbUng
  • CultureLab: What popular science books have changed the world? owl.li/dbU0Q
  • How Steve Jobs' Love of Simplicity Fueled A Design Revolution owl.li/dbTjW
  • Ai Wei Wei on His Favorite Artists, Living in New York and Why the Government is Afraid of Him owl.li/dbTaR
  • Scientists Invent Oxygen Particle That If Injected, Allows You To Live Without Breathingowl.li/deY5c

​

Recommended This Week:

 
/ /

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.