the epitome of design thinking

"Aravind started in 1976 as an 11-bed eye clinic in an old temple-city. Today it is the largest and most productive eye care facility in the world. Taking its compassionate services to the doorstep of rural India, Aravind's stunningly effective strategies vaulted barriers of distance, poverty and ignorance to create a self-sustaining system that now treats over 1.7 million patients each year, two-thirds of them, for free."

1981

I was 3 months old, NYC subway trains were still covered in graffiti and she was more beautiful than ever. From LIFE magazine photo archive on Google images.

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pretty sure they work with advertising

outside the box from joseph Pelling on Vimeo.

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white box

by Makoto Yabuki

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seeing type differently / type factory

Absolutely stunning branding project work done by University College Falmouth student, Huda Abdul Aziz. Type Factory is a fictional typographic museum in South Kensington, London.

"The concept revolves around the theme of deconstruction. The brand values of the Type Factory identity are informative, engaging and dynamic. The brand promise is about seeing type differently. The design solution includes the logo, a booklet to promote the venue, advertising and applications within the museum."

go forth

Just came across these absolutely amazing spots created by Wieden+Kennedy for Levi's. The audio of both of them are actual recordings of Walt Whitman's "O Pioneers!" and "America". It portrays America in a way I hadn't seen any brand do before. It's classic, rebel, young, old, diverse and blue eyed, all at once. Beautifully done.

"Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistol? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers!

We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, Pioneers! O pioneers"

"America
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love..."

tools vs. behaviors

Some posts come with very insightful comments as a bonus.

We need to be careful when we talk about digital media, that we don't get the tools mixed up with the behaviors. Obsessing over the significance of one site over another, or arguing the importance of participating on a site while not even considering what you're going to do when you get there or if it's even the right place, is a waste of time.

Facebook.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are actively building and managing a personal network of relationships that can be accessed at any time via digital technology.

YouTube.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are sharing original videos with other people all over the world at will.

Twitter.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are developing a habit of broadcasting every experience and piece of information that they think might be of interest to their network.

As these tools evolve (and capabilities and uses merge), let's remember that the tools we use aren't as important as the behaviors they create.

Here are some excerpts of a comment left by Michael Maurillo:

What I have recently found so interesting about this (incredibly) important point is that there's a very large community in our industry that obsesses about user-behavior and how it affects their craft everyday. I'm talking about designers, YET when it comes to marketing it is something we so rarely think about. And if we do, it usually ends up in a tactic or two (if we're lucky), not in the core of the strategy.

Marketing insights have always been part of the process, but they typically only touch the surface of behavior and revolve around things like shopping habits or purchase behavior.

We all give the same reasons why "advertising is broken" based on how the user's behavior is changing, yet so many creative briefs I read still describe the "target" in terms of demographics with a smidge of pyschographics when it's more than likely that the designer down the hall from you has 5 distinct personas hung up on their wall representing the same audience. Strategists must start thinking like designers and leveraging their tools. It's not just about user-centered design, it's about user-centered marketing as well.

polyester princess

This is a post from Sweet Juniper!, one of my favorite blogs for the longest. It's written by Jim, the dad, who he used to be a lawyer and go by the pseudonym "Dutch". Now he's a Gentleman of Elegant Leisure and goes by his real name.

The mother of one of my daughter's friends asks, "Is she not supposed to play princess?"

I have never told my daughter she couldn't play princesses. We may have had a few conversations about how princesses aren't good role models, but I've NEVER said she couldn't pretend to be one. Apparently while playing at her friend's house, my daughter whispered, "My dad doesn't like princesses. He says they're lazy goodfornothings." Then she proceeded to pull one of those prefabricated princess gowns over her torso and said, "I'll just tell him I was being a fairy." This pleases me, because it shows she is beginning to understand that her highly-opinionated father can be quite difficult, though easily appeased by doing whatever it is he doesn't approve of once well out of sight. This will prove a useful skill as the years go on.

When told this happened, I felt a tinge of guilt. Then the other little girl stood up and said to my daughter, "I AM THE BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS. You must do my bidding. Go and fetch me the finest flower in the land." My daughter reacted with a look of incredulity that could only be translated as, "Fuck that, dude." Or, perhaps less crudely, "My father was right: princesses are bossy and not very nice." She refused the quest, and the princess sulked.

I looked down at them in their ill-fitting polyester costumes, stained with mulberry juice and globs of yoghurt. I could have delivered the coup de grâce right then: I could have pointed out that their threadbare, shoddily-made dresses of imitation satin and tulle made them look more like Courtney Love at the tail end of an Oxycontin binge than any representative of The Crown. But I didn't. As Benjamin Disraeli once said, Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

"Worry not, your Highness," I said, winking at my daughter. "I shall fetch my steed and deliver thee the loveliest dandelion in all Detroit."

a piece of advice

You will remember from school other students preventing you from seeing their answers by placing their arm around their exercise book or exam paper. It is the same at work, people are secretive with ideas. "Don’t tell them that, they’ll take credit for it." The problem with hoarding is that you end up living off your reserves. Eventually you’ll become stale. If you give away everything you have, you’re left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish. Somehow, the more you give away, the more comes back to you. Ideas are open knowledge. Don’t claim ownership. They’re not your ideas anyway, they’re someone else’s. They are out there floating by on the ether. You just have to put yourself in a frame of mind to pick them up.

from "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be", by Paul Arden, Saatchi & Saatchi Creative Director

i don't give a shit what your stripper name is

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enough said.

we all do, honey...

[via the hilarious Aurea Mediocritas]

lies my mother told me

by Elizabeth Thomas

If you keep eating raw spaghetti
you'll get pinworms,
then I'll have to make
a necklace of garlic for you to wear
each night while you sleep,
until they go away.

If you're mean to your younger brother, I'll know
because I have a special eye
that spies on you when I'm not home.
You cannot hide from it,
so don't try.

If you touch your "down there"
any time other than when using the toilet,
your hand will turn green and fall off.

If you keep crossing your eyes
they will stay that way
until the wind
changes direction.

It is bad luck to kill a moth. Moths are
the souls of our ancestors and it just
might be Papa paying a visit.

If you kiss a boy on the mouth
your lips will stick together
and he'll use the opportunity
to suck out your brains.

If you ever lie to me
God will know
and rat you out.
And sometimes
God exaggerates.
Trust me —
you don't want that
to happen.

foreseeing

by Sharon Bryan

"Middle age refers more
to landscape than to time:
it's as if you'd reached

the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,

so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it will have,

but that it does have,
if only in outline—
so for the first time

you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space..."

Good to be bad sometimes.

her: OH, NO, YOU DIDN'T!
me: OH, YES, I DID.

back in Indianapolis

It's been absolutely amazing spending time with my friends again, after one and a half years apart. Abi, I missed you so much, I love you (I told you I'd say that here, didn't I? Surprise!) Ericka, Layla is mean and absolutely beautiful and adorable, just like her mama. I love you both, and I have the feeling that she kinda likes me, which makes me extra proud of myself. Kira, you're my sister, end of story. Jordin, I knew I'd love you. How can such a tiny girl have such a huge personality?

latest purchase

from Urban Outfitters

pop nihilism

"One such campaign, 'Whopper Sacrifice' – in which Facebook users were rewarded a free Whopper for deleting ten friends from their account, has been the most precise incidence of 'pop nihilism' to date. The underlying premise of the campaign was that the majority of one’s relationships are expendable, the Whopper serving as a material excuse to manifest this belief. The Whopper’s presence in the campaign was purely symbolic. The true appeal of the sacrifice was not the faux-nourishment of a hamburger, but for participants to relish in the misanthropic destruction of the social contract.

These campaigns are intentionally polemic – eliciting disgust in many, while others feel compelled to come to their defense. CP+B have torn a page right out of Ballyhoo in the sense that they aren’t selling hamburgers, they are selling the spectacle of advertising’s demise. Agencies who take this route and profit from its fleeting popularity will go down in history as advertising’s robber barons, those who cashed in on the medium’s social capital before it went bankrupt – signifying the moment advertising realized its own mortality and began to eat itself.

from Pop Nihilism: Advertising Eats Itself

this week's top 3

Thanks to the guys from "Massa Cultural" for featuring some of my work on their blog's Top#3 section. That was a nice surprise!

acting like they are seeing the beatles

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