North
A curtmerrill.com blog
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The following are my notes from A Web Afternoon, typed hastily while listening and edited lightly just before posting.
Leslie Jensen-Inman
State your destination or one will be chosen for you by others.
Map 4 Awesomeness
Passion > Purpose > Promise > Pursuit
Passion
Embrace it.
What makes you happiest? What excites you most? What do you want to spend your energy on? What do you dream about doing?
Purpose
Define it.
Passion + Purpose = Power
Sense of meaning… intention
What are your priorities? What do you value most? Who do you want to spend time with? Who do you dream about being?
Promise
Foster it.
A commitment to selves, others, world.
Distill core values -> Promise
Apple: “We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.” Zappos: 10 statements of core values
Leslie’s lasso of truth: Make awesomeness and do good.
Promise becomes a mantra.
Keep promises …
Pursuit
Engage it.
Put promise into action.
Ben Friedman, Iconologic
“Designing profound connections”
Iconologic POV
People are not interested in your brand.
Help them make their life easier, more fun, interesting, fulfilling and they’ll respond.
What we do
Design profound connections between clients and the people who matter most to them.
Case study: Expedition 206 (Coca-Cola)
Most recognizable brand; sold in 206 countries (more than UN); 125+ year history
Concept: Year-long search for happiness around the world.
…
“Fish where the fish are.”
Visual + Verbal identity, not just how it appears, but how you talk about it.
Success for two masters: Consumers engage with it, And managers/clients use it appropriately
Michael Mogill
- Know your brand
- Produce great content
- Engage effectively
- Less is more
- Beware of data and “experts”
“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Denise Jacobs
Art of disciplined creativity
On Creativity
“Creativity is about embracing paradox. Creativity is the merging of two incongruent ideas.” — Frank Chimero
Alchemists
“Take ideas out of ether and bring them into tangible form”
Creativity is magical, but not magic. — Charles Limb, TED Talk
Structure, discipline, path…
Three facets of the way:
Path of one, it takes two, many
Path of One
Eliminate bad habits/creativity killers
- Communication addition — cut it out
- Multitasking — don’t do it
Inner critic — get rid of it
FEAR “False evidence appearing real” — on a biochemical level, fear obstructs creativity
Imposter syndrome — “I just got lucky” “other people are better”
- Comparisons — avoid them
Incorporate creativity supporters
- Show up every day — do it every day and you’ll gain mastery
- Habit fields — A List Apart article — when you’re in a certain place, you’re doing a certain thing. Is habit field at “work” a distraction space?
- Sprint — Pomodoro technique.
- Delegate — brain trick: giving task away takes your mind off it
- Think with your hands —
- Lo-fi time —
- Train your brain —
- Get your alpha on — alpha waves — associative state
- Balance your brain — get physical
- Be willing — don’t try to force it, “I’m willing to…”
- Be mindful — pay close attention to what’s going on, one-point focus on something.
Gather and document
- Collect and curate
- Get idea down as soon as possible no matter how (write, sketch, voice)
Gamify it
- be heroic, act like it’s a heroes journey to solve problem
It takes Two (you and your idea)
Externalize
- Genius — being able to understand the essence without having all of the information — the ability to see through to the essential
- Not “be” a genius; have a genius
- Muses — Memory, thikn about when you were inspired in the past; Voice, do something authentic and genuine; Practice
- If you don’t do it, the idea will find someone else
Invite
- Make it clear
- Engage in regular dialog
- Sweet talk your ideas
- Be ready
THe way of many
Collective ideation
- incubate to generate
- ideas are networks, they come from array of associations, cobbled together from what’s handy
- AVOID: being where everyone’s the same
- Go to intellectual diversity places
- Invite others to wonder, too
- good ideas fade into view over time “Slow hunch”
- Co-work to collaborate
- Plus it: keep extending ideas
- Reframe #fail, embrace the fail whale
- Share mistakes, not just successes
Learn, teach, master
- Learn from the masters of creativity (children)
- Teach what you know. If you know one more thing than others, you have something to offer
Discipline is victory
What do you get through the process?
- Expression
- What you produce is unique — “Doing you = Awesome”
- Productivity — Take small chances, ‘little bets’
- Flow, gotten
- Creative confidence —
The process does work.
Final outcome: Live what you love.
“Chance favors the connected mind.” - Steven Johnson
“Inspiration favors the creatively disciplined mind”
Trip Lingo (Pritik Patel)
Mobile web? Use Webkit
Theo Rosendorf
Typography desk reference author.
- 55-75 chars per line (incl. spaces)
- Use “smart” quotes
- Space around apostrophes
- Don’t bold punctuation, but italicize commas, etc.
- Parens/brackets etc. should not be italicized
- Adjust spacing on brackets/parens to avoid collisions (FIX COLLISIONS)
- Adjust tracking
- Small caps/reduced caps on acronyms
- Don’t trust stock leading (120%)
- One space after a period. Always.
Faruk Ates
Modernizr
Detects features in browsers that can be used by devs
Through js object properties, or appending classes to objects
Allows graceful degradation (use borders instead of box shadow, for instance)
“Make tailored experiences easy”
Forward-compatibility - experience gets better when users upgrade browsers (?)
Ends User-Agent sniffing
Doesn’t make old browsers support new features (except HTML5 Shiv / IEPP)
The Right Way™
Design for browser of the future Feature detect to see if X is missing / present — Enhance or degrade Speed+Performance > visual consistency
Regressive Enhancement: “mega responsive” - Modernizer/yepnope.js: quick if/else feature tests for loading
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