Elizabeth Gilbert: A different way to think about creative genius

This is an instant goosebump-maker. I think this can be appreciated by anyone not in a creative field. The TED Conference usually has good talks, but this one was great. Trust me, it won't be a waste of time.

Paul Sahre

As I was doing my daily checkup of new postings on my favorite blogs, I found a posting of my former teacher, Paul Sahre. Paul was definitely responsible for my sensibilities and eye as a designer; I was formally introduced to design by him freshman year, with a class called Principles of Visual Language. We didn't do anything in color until the second semester. Black and white was our palette, and for the longest we only designed with various sizes of black squares. So it was pretty much the most basic you can get. Very good class. 2 years later, Junior year, I took his Typography class, and I learned a hell of a lot in there as well.

The presentation that was posted on swissmiss.com (which i won't post on here, because it was way too long), was entitled A Designer and His Problems. I think most designers face the same problem of working hard on a project, and then a client hating it. Paul described this by saying, "It's not like digging a hole." Digging a hole is pretty basic: you dig a certain amount, and you're done. Design is the complete opposite; It takes rounds and rounds of major and minor tweaks to make things damn near perfect. The funny thing is that no matter how many revisions you do, it could probably still be better.

In the presentation, he goes through some work that he has done, and tells brief stories about each piece. Below are some screen shots of the presentation, and if you're up to the challenge of baring this extremely long video, check it out here.

To Twitter or to not to Twitter

I've been thinking about starting a twitter page, or creating a twitter account (I'm not sure what the correct lingo is yet). I've seen that a lot of celebrities are doing it now, and a lot of people are promoting themselves with it as well. Like Jadakiss. His new album "The Last Kiss" just came out last week, and he's been pushing it hard. He was being interviewed in a youtube video that I just saw, and he was asked what's the difference between this album, and the album he had 5 years ago. He's reply was, "Nothing. The biggest difference is that the internet is more prominent now, than it was 5 years ago." And as we know, that's because of twitter, facebook, myspace, blogs, etc. I haven't checked out his album yet, but I know that all the videos and promotional things I've seen for it, at least make me somewhat interested in seeing how it is.

I don't really have much to promote, but I'll let you know if I start a twitter thingamagig or not.

Gatorade: John Wooden Commercial

This another instant goosebump-maker. If you don't know who this man is below, it is John Wooden one of the most winningest coaches in college basketball; let's just say this, he coached Kareem at UCLA (which really shows his age). Anyhow, enjoy this commercial done by our sibling-company out west, Chiat, LA.

Little Red Riding Hood Reinterpreted

Viral Marketing...cool as hell

Anomaly, which doesn't refer to themselves as an ad agency, created this "viral marketing" campaign for converse that features some guy named Charles Charles MaGalls of MaGalls Industries who is challenging Dwyane Wade to a 1 on 1 basketball game to 10, gotta win by 2. Check out this youtube video below, and become Charles' fan on facebook.

Questions and Answers

This past weekend, my brothers and one of my boys were in town, and with me living here, they of course had questions on where this and that is, or how to get to such and such. I know the subway pretty well, so giving directions for that was easy, but when it came to other stuff, I didn't do as well.

As small or as simple as this situation is, it reminds me of something discussed in church a while ago. The pastor spoke about how if you're a Christian and people know that you are, you will always be faced with questions: either about Christianity in general, the bible, church, etc. And because of this reason, it is very important to already know some of the questions that are going to be asked, so that you have a ready answer. And what's true for Christians, the same is true for New Yorkers (this is the first and last time I'll actually call myself a New Yorker).

Next time I hope to be able to have the answer to, "Where can we go to get something cheap to eat?"....even though this question is almost unanswerable.