Element22.com Blog

10 rules for setting goals that can change your life

Mitch Meyerson seems to have a bit too much energy. He's written more books (mostly on guerilla and online marketing) than you have thank-you notes, and I suspect that he somehow pumps out how-to downloads while he power naps. The good news is that his advice is warm, encouraging, and spot on. Start with this. It could realign your whole life. More.

Stop being afraid

While driving to visit my friend and colleague Michelle Fanzo in upstate NY a few weeks ago, I was literally stopped by this sign. A few days later I visited her in her midtown office and saw that she had a print of the same sign prominently displayed on her desk. It is brilliant advice.

How groups become smoothly functioning, collegial, collaborative, and enormously uncreative teams

Andrew O'Connell is working his way through an article with the sexy title "The Effects of Repeat Collaboration on Creative Abrasion."�That's academese for "groups tend to get stuck in a rut." He cites the article as saying that a group's mental models may cause it to "adopt courses of action that are good enough rather than optimal," and that these patterns "become more fully internalized and therefore more resistant to change the longer the collaboration continues." In other words, groups kill new ideas and established groups kill them more. More.

Changing the development paradigm. Supporting entrepreneurs to find the solutions to poverty

Jacqueline Novogratz knows that neither charity nor the marketplace alone will address the root causes of poverty. So she is designing a better way to do things. Her 9-year-old Acumen Fund employs an approach that she calls "patient capital." She uses philanthropic capital to make disciplined investments–loans or equity, not grants–that yield both financial and social returns. It is so cool when people just say, "Screw it, I'm doing it the way it should be done." More.

What Robert Paterson would do instead of advertising

Robert Paterson runs a consulting group that provides "deep insight and broad context." While his product description is vague, his insight isn't. In a recent blog post he took the Prince Edward Island's annual tourism ad campaign to task for being, well, advertising-centric. Sure, he suggests, it's cool that the council is placing ads online instead of on TV, but they're still going to fail. He thinks they should have started a community instead. More.

How group norms kill creativity

Want to develop game-changing ideas that will disrupt your industry and bring you wealth, fame, and the respect of your peers? Then do it by yourself. Research consistently shows that groups redefine creativity as conformity. Group norms—the unwritten rules that describe how individuals in a group "are" and how they '"ought" to behave—flow imperceptibly from one person to the next, making variance and the development of new ideas hard at best.��More.

Think before you speak. How to participate in a critique

Once upon a naive time I believed that good design and communications spoke for themselves. Surely if a concept was right, everyone could see it. Ouch. It took me many years of seeing great work shot down for the wrong reasons to really understand the job of developing great creative: it has as much or more to do with the process used to critique it in its developmental stages as it does with brilliant ideas, and there are basic guidelines that will facilitate any critique. More.

Ten things Debbie Millman has learned by making a lot of mistakes

Your mother wanted you to be Debbie Millman when you grew up. A woman who apparently doesn't sleep, she is the head of design at brand shop Sterling Brands, a contributing editor at Print Magazine, chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts, the host of the first weekly radio talk show about design on the Internet, and the author of three books on design. Lucky for us she shares what she knows in an open and "you can do this at home" style. More.

Practice daily meditation to boost your creativity

Mark McGuinness is a poet and creative coach who thinks we're looking for creative insight in the wrong places when we seek out glamour and stimulation. He suggests we're better off looking for focus, calmness, clarity, and insight. "Amid the bustle of daily life and the chatter of social media they are the qualities most easily lost." More.

Olympic pictograms through the ages

Steven Heller has left a cool animated film at the NY Times on the various pictograms that have been used to mark the Olympic games. Appearing for the first time in the 1936 German games, they became standard after the Tokyo games in 1964. It's a fun history complete with frank descriptions of the successes and the failures. Link.

How to get someone to change their behavior? Rule 1: don't preach

This is not your average wear-your-seatbelt spot. It is an elegant short film about how families connect us, why we care about them, and how they nurture us. And oh yeah, after watching it you'll never not buckle your seatbelt again. We can all learn how to teach from this beautiful work. Rule 2: remind me why I care. Rule 3: touch my heart, not my mind. Watch the spot.

Good design is as little design as possible

Some ideas are so simple that they stand all by themselves, without any need for elucidation. Such are the design principles of Dieter Rams, the head of design at Braun throughout the late 20th century. Every time I read them I get new insight. More.

Trust within organizations is easily broken, and we need trust to nurture creativity

One of the reasons organizations see their creativity streams dry up is that they don't nurture and protect a trusting environment. People simply stop sharing ideas when they feel that they might be ridiculed or misunderstood. Innovation steward Carol Kobza has a list of practices that can build trust in your organization. More.

An accidental graphic history of mid-century Paris

Last summer construction workers renovating La Muette, an underground station in the Paris M�tro, uncovered layers of posters, maps, schedules, and ads that had been hidden behind tiles for 50 years. Gene Tempest wrote about the findings, Paul Shambles photographed them, and through the magic of the Internet, I get to share the whole cool discovery with you. Voil�.�

If we are to understand storytelling, we need to understand how stories move across media

Henry Jenkins studies how we learn in the participatory culture that is enabled by new media. He's just finished posting a three-part interview with educational researcher Pilar Lacasa about the "new media literacies." In the last segment they explore how YouTube, fan fiction, and Facebook can be deployed in meaningful ways in educational environments. Her insights are relevant to any organization with a pulse. More.

Can social networking save the planet?

In the wake of another failed climate conference, it would seem fair to conclude that we're screwed. We human beings are too selfish and shortsighted to save ourselves from the disaster of rapid climate change. Well, maybe not, says Jeremy Rifkin in his new book, The Empathic Civilization. He points to recent discoveries of "empathy neurons" that allow us "to feel and experience another's situation as if it were [our] own." And to the fact that historically, our capacity for empathy has broadened and intensified in tandem with revolutions in communications. You can see where this is going. More.

Everything I need to know about advertising I learned from ads for the Mini Cooper

Regular listeners get tired of hearing me say it. No matter the size of your budget your communications tool box has just two tools that really work: clarity, and repetition. Be hyper-clear about your core promise, and then repeat it wherever your audience may come in contact with it. One brand that gets this is Mini Cooper. A recent "out of home" campaign for the brand demonstrates this beautifully. More.

A faucet and a sorting bin for your info fire hose

This week I stumbled upon this fabulous new web app, and it quickly achieved most-favored tool status. Download Bag The Web and it shows up in your browser's toolbar. Now when you find yourself on a web page that you want to file, sort, or share, just click "Bag It." It automatically places the link in a "bag"—with its own URL—of your own definition. I've started bags for each of my clients, another of links I want to blog about, another for future projects ... You get the drift. Simple, intuitive, transparent, and totally useful. Link.

You cannot not communicate. A discourse on the process of designing for real people

Joshua Porter and Joshua Brewer have just launched a must-read web project. Called 52 Weeks of UX, it delivers weekly missives on the art and science of user-interface design. If you have anything to do with how your organization's audience touches your product, service, or communications, please subscribe to this blog. The world will be a better place for it. More.

If we can't imagine it we will never create it. But we need to measure it, too

Good management has traditionally been associated with good measurement. Quantification provides a sense of comfort and security that bean counters just love. But Roger Martin of the Rotman School says this practice is too limiting. He proffers that no new idea in the world was ever produced by inductive or deductive logic. "If you stick to measuring what you can already measure, you cannot create a future that is different than the past." He proposes that the future is about imagination, not measurement. But I suggest, not so fast. More.

"10 Climate Trends That Will Shape Business in 2010"

Ryan Schuchard of BSR, a global business network and consultancy focused on sustainability, has summarized some of the implications of climate change for business in the year ahead. His underlying theme is that we all have an opportunity and a responsibility to embrace a holistic, full life cycle approach to the climate impacts of the products and services we make and sell. More.

A public space for meditation

Noah Scalin of Another Limited Rebellion has been doing a lot of traveling lately. Last month while passing through the Newark Liberty International Airport he spied this sign advertising a meditation room. Don't you think that more public places should provide quiet space to stop the monkey chatter for a moment or two? Link.

What we can learn about how we learn from "How Children Learn"

Doh. This has been sitting under our noses for decades. First published in 1967 (the summer of love!), John Holt's How Children Learn was called ”the gentle voice of reason” in understanding how kids do and don't learn. Forty-three years later it occurred to urban planner Noah Raford that the lessons in this groundbreaker might help "us adults, and the organisations we run, learn from turbulent environments and how to make better decisions in times of change."�More.

What is design thinking, really?

Venessa Miemis has added her voice to the design thinking discussion. She describes the practice as "a new ecology of mind, that ... requires an adherence to sound business decision-making, but also a commitment to challenge one’s own beliefs about 'the way things work.' "�Part critical analysis of Tim Brown's Change by Design�and part consideration of the midwifery of innovation and change, it is well worth some minutes of your attention budget. More.

The new ideas for your business probably already exist in some other industry, in a parallel world

Old way: use the recession as an excuse to withdraw, slash budgets, and cut head count. New way: embrace the opportunity to make new rules and innovate now, while competitors are weaker and there's an opportunity for share gain. But Phil Roos of GfK Strategic Innovation says that to do so we need a corporate mind shift on innovation. New Rule 1: embrace the fact that new ideas don't just drop from the sky, and big ideas—really out-of-the-box ones—don't usually work. More.

Paula Poundstone on life planning

"Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas." �—Paula Poundstone

In 2005 just 8% of Americans used social media. Last year 46% did. Wow.

Pew Internet has been tracking a trend they call the democratization of online social networks. It seems that more of us are using them. A lot more. No surprises here, but there is a lot of confirmation of a groundswell. More.

Why do smart people have such dumb ideas?

Paul Graham is a pioneering programmer and partner in venture firm Y Combinator. Along the way he's seen his share of ideas that suck and those that don't. It's made him ask, why do such smart people have such stupid new business ideas? He's got some theories, starting with the fact that people often follow the first idea they have, then commit so much time to it that they don't want to forfeit their investment. More.

Marketers say e-letters most likely to lead to a tangible improvement in online customer engagement

Ecoconsultancy has just published their fourth annual�Customer Engagement Report. It is based on a survey of 1,000+ respondents from client-side digital marketers and digital agencies that was carried out in October and November of 2009.�The big news is that e-mail newsletters are the effort most likely to work, with a full two-thirds of respondents reporting a "tangible improvement" in their organization's online customer engagement. More.

30 tips for using social media in your business

Given how much buzz there is about the migration from conventional to social media, you would think that every marketing manager capable of keeping a job is an expert. Not so. Most are more than a little confused about how to get this revolution started, let alone use it to build their business. April Joyner has a quick primer on 30 of the ways this game-changer can be harnessed by businesses and organizations of all sizes. More.

10 behavioral characteristics of innovators

Saul Kaplan is the founder and chief catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory. He believes that people are either wired as innovators or they aren’t. "The trick ... is to identify them, connect them ... and give them the freedom to innovate. A leader’s job is to create an environment where innovators can thrive." He uses 10 behavioral characteristic to recognize an innovator. More.

JWT's 100 things to watch in 2010

The pace of change is getting so fast that trends forecasts are starting to feel like yesterday's news reports. Maybe that's why JWT calls their forecast "Things to Watch." It's a great list of the cultural, economic, and technological changes that are shaping our collective reality. Number 1: 3D at home. Number 10: Bogot�. The space between those things kind of says it all. More.

The role of values in design

Jack Ricchiuto works with groups to design better ways to work together and discover "thrivancy." In a recent post he explores the relationship between our values and the design of any "future possibility." "Think of values as design principles," he says. More.

When a word�s look counted as much as its meaning

Founded in 1984 by Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, the Emigre font foundry—and the magazine that bore the same name— fundamentally changed graphic design in the '80s and '90s. Perhaps more than any others they were responsible for freeing font design from the constraints of functionality. But today commercial interests have reduced typeface design to cookie-cutter templates and formulas, and such raw and unbridled innovation has largely been supplanted by nostalgic exhibitions and commemorative books. Including one of each for Emigre. More.

A history of Swiss graphic design

Here's a pleasant weekend time sink: a carefully curated and annotated history of Swiss graphic design. I've pointed to Maryellen McFadden's Flickr streams before. She is a retired graphic designer with an apparently insatiable appetite for great design. Be warned, if you love design you are likely to get stuck in her photostreams. More.

How to build a reach strategy for any digital demo

Deborah Bothun has great advice on how to build a reach strategy for teens. Target peer influencers first, offer opportunities for brand collaboration, focus on stylish design, and utilize texts and viral video. Freaking simple. It's so simple that it's easy to see how to translate the same advice to other demos. I've got a client who wants to reach smart 35+ women, for example. MediaPost.

5 sleeper marketing trends to watch in 2010

Ogilvy's Rohit Bhargava sees five trends in marketing that aren't yet getting the pixels they will in the year ahead. He leads with timing. "So much of our focus as marketers tends to be on the messaging, but how much attention do you pay to things like time of day that your messages run?" And he sees that refocusing on usability is inevitable, as is marketing with customer service. More.

How to use behavioural-descriptive interviewing techniques to find better fits for your team

Team building is tough. It's really hard to anticipate who might catalyze with whom and what strengths they will bring to bear. Ian McKenzie suggests that we bone up on our behavioural-descriptive interviewing skills. It's an approach that considers past behavior as a predictor of future performance. The secret is to ask the right questions. More.

Chanel? Is branding surfboards? Did someone dose my coffee?

Chanel, the classic haute couture house known for its ridiculously overpriced bling, is launching a line of surfboards. I know I sound like a cranky old man when I say it, but in my day, surfboards bore the names of the shapers who crafted them and the surfers who rode them. When a sport that has always meant independence, autonomy, and freedom is co-opted by a brand known for being (or looking) rich, then I ... �just ... don't know ... anymore. Do you? More

Experience is the new currency

As U.S. culture reels from decades of "I shop, therefore I am," we are rediscovering the simple joys of spending time with family and friends, and of activities like gardening, cooking, and reading. A new poll by New York Times/CBS News reports that while more than half are spending less money in stores and online, priorities have shifted from products to activities. Richard Florida calls it "a different kind of recession."�More

Learning from a master. The colors in Tim Burton's films

COLOURlovers has a great post on how Tim Burton uses color in creating his captivating worlds. With a variety of light sources, color tones, and hand-painting techniques, the filmmaker conveys meaning and tone at once, and in a glance. So expert is his stroke that the viewer never notices it. We are simply transported to a different frame of mind. More.

Your heart is a weapon. Keep fighting. Keep loving. An ad campaign to inspire benevolent action

Sean Woolsey is an artist, an entrepreneur, and "a firm believer in the intrinsic value of life." Of late he's been "reappropriating" advertising posters by painting them over and reinstalling them in their bus shelters. It's "an ongoing experimental campaign to raise cognitive awareness and to inspire benevolent action that we often forget, oversee, or might be in opposition to our often hedonistic culture." More.

Coke thinks that cool graphics can change the climate too

This is creepy. Last week I was bitching about the distraction caused by feel-good ad efforts like Hopenhagen.org. To make the point that the serious business of climate change is not served by cute and fluffy advertising, I suggested that the same ads would serve Coke just as well. Then today I stumbled upon this ad by the sugar water master. Separated at birth? More.

January issue of Esquire is available as an iPhone app

Apple's app store just turned into a newsstand, and something tells me this is just the beginning. Hearst has repackaged their monthly trend capture for mobile devices, and the result is a satisfying media meal. Want to share an idea? E-mail it. Post it on Facebook. Video, music, and cross-referential links are all here, right in your pocket. It will be even cooler on the iSlate. More.

Santa's first gig was as a selfless advocate of the disenfranchised

The legend of Santa starts in the third century with the birth of a guy named Nicholas in the then Greek village of Patara. He used an inheritance to assist the needy and was named Bishop of Myra for his work. Within a few generations, he was named the patron saint of Russia and was known for a red cape, flowing white beard, and bishop's mitre. The jump from saint to pitchman took a bit longer. More.

Mother Teresa on personal productivity

"In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love." �— Mother Teresa

Lines in the sand show the graphic roots of human thought and language

Andrew van der Merwe is a calligrapher with a "particular interest in African colonial and pre-colonial writing systems." He explores these forms by doodling on the beach. "The more angular letter styles take their inspiration from Tifinagh, the script of the Tuareg people of North Africa. It is interesting how that, even to this day, the Tifinagh resembles ancient Greek and Phoenician." More.

The end of the corporation as we know it. (And I feel fine)

Charles Green is wondering exactly why we need corporations anymore. Oh, sure, in the past they contained networks: of business processes and of people. But today those same networks wander across corporate boundaries without passport or guard. So what becomes of corporate and organizational design, strategy, and leadership when the organization itself becomes irrelevant? Such big questions deserve big thinking. More.

Together we can fight climate change? Don't I wish

I've long been a glass-half-full kind of guy. But as our one-world problems are repeatedly ignored by our me-first leaders, I'm getting more and more pessimistic. So this "we are the world" campaign for Hopenhagen.org strikes me as cliched, obvious, and dangerously naive. Nicely done, a good reminder, but strikingly simplistic. More.

The kind of faded backdrop Scott Hansen perceived the 60s and 70s to be

Scott Hansen, aka ISO50, is a San Francisco–based graphic designer, musician, and photographer. He cites modernism, Otl Aicher, and Bauhaus as influences, "but I think the main thing driving me is the collective visual ideal and aesthetic of my parents' generation. The kind of faded backdrop for everything I perceived the 60’s and 70’s to be when I was growing up in the 80’s." More.

Prewrapped gifts in an express shopping lane. Duh

Yet another piece of retail that Apple gets right. Shoppers in Chicago's Michigan Ave. Apple Store describe a roped-off "express" line where you can grab a selection of the brand's most popular items—from iPods and iPhones to MacBooks—already wrapped for gift giving. More.

Mediocrity is not a sustainable strategy. Being able to recognize your own weakness is a profound strength

Brain feeling a little stiff? Spend a few minutes at Bud Caddell's What Consumes Me. He'll loosen your synapses. He does stuff like draw venn diagrams of "How to be Happy in Business." �He asks age-old questions like how do we make enough money from the things we want to do, and do really well. More.

Do you hear rock and roll when looking at wall stains?

That's the name of a documentary film that photographer Sherry Mills wants to make about her efforts to capture the emotional landscapes of human behavior. She's posted her request for financial support at Kickstarter, "a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors." Project (books, art, albums, fashion ...) creators post their idea along with the total amount of dollars they seek and a promise of what donors will get in return. More.

Reflect. Recharge. (Re)Act. Winston Churchill on failure

John Baldoni picks out a great story from Winston Churchill's bio. In 1915, long before he was a rock star, he was kicked out of the cabinet for his role in an ill-fated plan to knock Turkey out of the Great War. He was alone and reviled. His wife, Clementine, said, "I thought he would die of grief." But then Churchill found a new hobby—painting. More.

How to create a Social Learning Environment for your organization

A Social Learning Environment is an online destination where people can come together and co-create content, share knowledge, and learn from one another. It combines social elements like networking, tagging, file sharing, and microblogging to create a safe space in which to work and learn collaboratively. Social learning consultant Jane Hart just finished a three-part series on the art and practice of building these learning places. More.

Want to get your team on the same page? Create a one-page strategic plan

In consulting we call it the "thunk factor." You struggle and strain to create a giant 3-ring tome with thousands of words of explanation and justification, you thunk it on the conference room table, everyone expresses suitable oohs, aahs, and pledges of allegiance, and then it assumes its resting place, right next to the other trophies on managers' shelves. Ben McConnell thinks this is stupid. He says to make a plan real it should fit on an 8.5 x 11 sheet. More.

Converse shows how to turn their shoe box into a pinhole camera. (Because it gets the customer involved, you see.)

Cool idea by Converse. 1. Make a simple video with a great rock sound track to show how their package can be reused as a pinhole camera. 2. Give customers an easy way to share the images they make. 3. Watch the name Converse get passed around the socialsphere. More.

Confused about how to integrate social media into your communications plan? Here's a punch list of things to do

Read the morning news feed, and it would seem that all companies have already integrated social media into their marketing plans. But when I talk with clients it is obvious that we are still at the very start of this revolution. Many leaders today don't even have a Facebook account, let alone understand how to use one to make their company more visible. More

Listen to a customer. They'll turn your business model upside down, if you really listen

The big D Design Process has been getting a lot of pixel dust of late. And no matter which model you choose, it starts with stepping back and learning from the user. User experience guy Mark Hurst says that to make something good, you just need to ask someone what they need. More.

Betty Crocker is using Flickr to post recipes. Quite nicely, thank you

This is freaking brilliant. While we are sharing family photos in our dens, Betty Crocker is baking cookies and showing them off. They've posted hundreds of photos of finished recipes in more than 40 separate photostreams with names like Gluten Free, Cinco de Mayo, and Grilling. In lieu of captions they've got full recipes. More.

Keds makes limited edition sneakers very personal

Keds has made a wholesale change to their business model. A new site called Keds Collective lets sneaker fans act as designer, marketer, and, oh yeah, consumer. Use the site's 3D-modeling software (easy) to upload a design of your own, and if Keds likes it they'll make it and sell it. Keds supplies social media tools so you can tell your friends of your own creation, as well as a cut of the sales. reveries.com has the story.

Henry David Thoreau on learning communities

"It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities...." — Henry David Thoreau

Eight questions that will help you clarify your marketing plan. Or website. Or life goals...

There's a reason Seth Godin is considered such a marketing guru: his coaching helps turn pie-in-the-sky ideas into can-do action plans. Here are eight questions that he suggests we always ask. There's such power in reducing your audience and defining your promise. More.

10 most common misconceptions about user experience design

Whitney Hess "makes stuff easy and pleasurable to use." She says that user experience design is not a choice, easy, or just about the user. She's got seven other misconceptions that too many of us carry around. More

Walt Disney had an org chart based on process, not status or position

Delphine Hirasuna has a great post on Disney's 1943 org chart. In Walt's world every position was in service to a clear process flow. She contrasts it with "corporate org charts ... with operating divisions isolated into silos.” Then she asks, in an idea-based economy how should a business organize itself? More.

Before there was photography there was illustration. It still kicks ass

Swedish illustrator and graphic designer Jonas Bergstrand has a delightfully simple mission: "See things clearly, make things clear. In an entertaining way. That's what I always set out to do." In an oversaturated media environment his work reminds that the idea is the medium that works best. Some of my faves after the jump.

We need to think of a whole new approach to managing

Ed Lawler teaches management at USC. Of late he's been considering how management must change to meet the new conditions of a new era. His biggest takeaway is that while leaders do need to inspire people with a sense of mission, sustainability, and accountability, they also need to reinvest in a valid management approach that deals with fundamentals like goal setting, work specifications, and product evaluation. More.

Microsoft says that cognitive engagement is greater with Xbox LIVE campaigns than traditional tv spots

Why do I get so nervous when I see the words "Microsoft" and "neuroscience" used in the same sentence? But here they are, right in a new research report that says that when people are strapped in to a bio-sensory measuring device it can be proven that they spend "more time, (have) greater recall and higher levels of emotional and cognitive engagement with Xbox LIVE campaigns than traditional 30 and 60 second spots." I'm not being paranoid, right? Link.

Improve your design literacy, improve your design. Free lessons in graphic design theory

Want to improve the quality of the design that you and your group are responsible for? Then raise your design literacy. Design is a process with its own language, and it can be taught. To get you started, designer Danny Outlaw has curated the Net's best tutorials on type, layout, color, and perception. They'll deepen your understanding of how we learn and how we communicate. More.

An annotated catalog of Web 2.0 tools

Warning: approach this site with caution, it is a major time sink. It is a simply designed (read: intuitive and usable) directory of hundreds of online apps that help you do dozens of things better than you do now. Pick a tag and start learning. Link.

The color of the year bears a striking resemblance to the water you can't afford to visit this winter

Your breathless wait is over. Pantone announced today that the official color of the year 2010 is PANTONE� 15-5519 Turquoise. It's "an inviting, luminous hue, combining the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green...." Right. Is it just me, or does the idea of one lead color for an entire year seem like it's exceeded its sell-by date? More.