A Brief History of the FIFA World Cup Logo

“Global sports are, somehow, containers of hope,” says Miguel Viana, the Lisbon designer who, while working at Brandia Central, designed the Official Emblem of Russia 2018: a World Cup trophy that swirls upward, in plumed panels of gold, red, blue, and black. Four-pointed stars twinkle in rounded blue portions of the trophy, symbolizing Russia’s achievements in space exploration. Other pieces reference the Red Square’s Saint Basil’s Cathedral. This can all be seen plainly in the logo, which isn’t a subtle piece of work. It can also be read about in the press release FIFA issued in 2014, after unveiling the logo with a light projection splashed across the entire facade of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

However, Viana can’t talk about any of it, beyond acknowledging that, yes, he was the creative director. “It’s part of the contract we have with FIFA,” says Viana, who has since gone on to found Un—lock branding studio. “It’s not possible to talk.” FIFA representatives also declined to talk, citing a tight schedule. In lieu of that, the international soccer organization offered a 10-page media background document on the brand elements, pointing out ways the “magic ball” of the emblem “unites magic and dreams.”

The Official Look, an illustrated tableau with folk figurines and symbols for the 11 Russian host cities, and the posters for each of those cities, are in the document as well. As is a single page about the physical, gold-plated trophy that World Cup winners compete for: “The FIFA World Cup Trophy has become the most sought-after and recognised sports prize in the world and can be seen as a truly unique universal icon,” it reads. At the end: “As with all of FIFA’s event brand assets, the image of the FIFA World Cup Trophy is also subject to extensive intellectual property protection.”

And of course it is: FIFA earns most of its revenue from broadcast deals. In 2014, FIFA pulled in $4.8 billion in revenue; projections for the 2018 event hover around $5.6 billion. With each broadcast and ticket sale, the logo appears. The brand is an expensive one.

Before 2002, the World Cup carried practically no traces of the FIFA brand.

Tight-lipped creative directors and non-disclosure agreements abound in the design and branding world, but as recently as the mid-1990s, that wasn’t the case. Before 2002, the World Cup carried practically no traces of the FIFA brand. The quadrennial event came with posters and a tag with the year and the host country’s name. Usually, a slightly abstracted soccer ball graphic would run along with that text. Some of these rose to icon status: mid-century graphic designer Lance Wyman’s striped op art-like type work for Mexico 1970 remains a classic. The catch is that he didn’t create it for FIFA or the World Cup; the logomark riffs on Wyman’s brand for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, contorting the same typography into a fraternal twin of a logo.

“There was no overt FIFA branding in those identities and the logos,” says Andy Mulligan, who at that time worked at Interbrand in London. “For many reasons at the time, that didn’t particularly matter.” Then forces shifted: first, sportswear companies like Nike and Adidas — or perhaps almost exclusively Nike and Adidas — grew into corporate powerhouses. Through massive sponsorships, they dressed entire teams and their logos decorated stadiums. Mulligan says many viewers at the time assumed that Nike or Adidas, or both, had an official hand in throwing the World Cup.

The second force was Michael Jordan. (Technically, it was American basketball as a whole. But from a branding perspective, can one really separate the two?) “By the mid-’90s the NBA had become a pretty well known global brand,” Mulligan says. “And football” — soccer — “and basketball are possibly the only two sports that can be truly international, because they’re incredibly easy to play anywhere.” With the NBA gaining global recognition, fueled by the megawatt star power of Jordan and his contemporaries, soccer risked losing presence. “FIFA wanted to make sure that football remained the great world sport,” Mulligan says.

From 2002, all World Cup logos would be tagged as a FIFA property, represented by a stylized twist on the shape of the physical gold trophy.

So ahead of the 2002 World Cup, which Japan and South Korea co-hosted, FIFA threw its weight into becoming a globally recognized brand. The association hired Interbrand to build what Chris Lightfoot, currently the CEO of Whitestone International, calls the “the ‘FIFA World Cup Trophy’ strategy.” Onward from then, all World Cup logos would be tagged as a FIFA property, represented by a stylized twist on the shape of the physical gold trophy.

“The pivotal event in 2002…had to reflect and satisfy both co-hosts, and simultaneously engage two non-traditional football audiences,” says Lightfoot of the Asian host countries, neither of which were previously as involved in soccer or the World cup as European countries. For that logo, Lightfoot and his design team at Interbrand created an abstract swooping figure, postured like he’s doing a throw-in, inside a circle. The zeros in “2002” are an infinity sign. “The circle has been part of the Asian culture for many centuries, having symbolized the universe, the sun, the world and even life itself,” Lightfoot says. “A sector of the outer circle was deliberately left open to symbolize the route to the trophy.”

All of this, within the silhouette of the trophy. “With the Olympics you have a recognizable logo. You can’t just use those five rings — you’ve got to pay to use it. FIFA didn’t have that,” says Mulligan, who has since gone on to launch his own branding agency, The Caffeine Partnership. But after 2002 it did, in the form of a protectable icon that could be reinterpreted to show off characteristics of new host countries while still retaining its shape as a copyright asset.

“There’s a certain amount of in-your-face potency to it. It’s not maximalism; it’s obvious-ism.”

This approach has continued in the years since: Under Whitestone, Lightfoot and his team created the branding for 2006 World Cup in Germany, with an exceedingly goofy design: the same swooping figure from 2002, topped by three bubbling proto-Emoji cartoon faces. (Lightfoot says Franz Beckenbauer, the soccer legend and German coach at the time, wanted something radical.)

For the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Switch branding agency created a brushstroke-like figure gearing up for a bicycle kick. Shards of orange, red, green, and black, loosely forming the shape of the African continent, are behind him. The little swooped man doing a throw-in appears again, in the corner. In an email, Switch creative director Gaby de Abreu said that a contract with FIFA prevents him from talking about the design process, but that he drew by hand all the type, “in a rock engraved style to give it an African personality.” With the overhead kick, “which is the most difficult kick to execute, and the most talked about kick if you can score a goal,” he wanted to revel in Africa’s panache on the field. After all, he points out, “the best and most skillful players from the continent play in Europe.”

The 2014 World Cup in Brazil marks a slight turning point. Like this year’s Russia mark, the logo more clearly looks like the trophy, formed from yellow and green hands reaching together to cradle, well, the trophy. The design criticism site Under Consideration links to a since-deleted FIFA press release that says the hands are an homage to an “iconic photograph.” Created by design agency Africa, the Brazil logo feels like a misfire: the hands look almost comically alien, and few markers of national pride shine through, as they did with the South Africa World Cup logo.

In this way, FIFA’s commissions from the past several years echo the design work used by the International Olympic Committee. The classic five rings aside, the Olympics these days are branded with loud, cartoonish icons. Everything feels like a play off Keith Haring. Same goes for the colorful, comic-strip-like World Cup designs. “There’s a certain amount of in-your-face potency to it,” says Mark Willis, founder of design shop Clean Sheet Co. “It’s not maximalism; it’s obvious-ism.” Willis, a soccer enthusiast, is part of what he calls an ecosystem of designers who create their own third-party posters and jerseys for the games — the kind you might buy in the parking lot. But he watches closely what FIFA presents every four years.

“A lot of the World Cup is about bringing cultures together, especially ones that have not been at the forefront of modern conversation about branding trends.”

“FIFA has become an absolute marketing beast,” he says. Unselfconscious logos are part of that tightly coordinated branding effort. “They want to encourage the idea of whimsy or approachability, and they don’t want to seen as a cool brand as much as a fun or celebratory brand,” Willis says. Plus: “A lot of the World Cup is about bringing cultures together, especially ones that have not been at the forefront of modern conversation about branding trends.”

“If you look at the history of FIFA World Cup logos,” Lightfoot says. “They demonstrate a clear and distinctive sense of the times for which they were created.” Lightfoot said that in reference to the poster used for the 1930s World Cup was distinctly optimistic, and much-needed for the difficult time between World Wars and the Great Depression. It feels true today, too. A loudly nationalistic design that comes with a set of opaque bullet points explaining what the brand “means,” that’s the status quo from big organizations these days. There’s simply too much money at stake — and for FIFA, an organization still working through a massive corruption case, there’s simply too much scrutiny to fear.

Speaking generally, Viana says that working on identities for sporting events means emitting a positive message. These identities, he says, “represent a lot of messages of peace, of tolerance. They try to resonate on a global level, but at the same time can promote and identify the location.” Which is as good a reminder as any that when a kid in Egypt sees the World Cup Emblem flash up on a television screen before a game, a grandmother in Nigeria, or a group of friends in Mexico, will also see it, at the same time.

For a few very exciting weeks, everyone will be watching the same thing — brought to you by FIFA.

via 99U99U https://ift.tt/2ykGvN5

Bleak Time, Bold Moves: The State of the Digital Nation 2020

Jules Ehrhardt made waves in 2016 when he published State of the Digital Nation, a raw and honest look at the major forces threatening the digital consultancy industry. Two years later, the seasoned digital exec has done it again with State of the Digital Nation 2020, painting a bleak picture of the agency landscape, pointing out flaws in the model, and urging creatives to consider their options.

The new publication coincides with change in his own life. After leaving his post as co-owner of ustwo, the digital product studio behind the wildly popular mobile game Monument Valley, Ehrhardt launched FCTRY in May. A “creative capital studio,” the company acts as an advisory for early-stage technology companies in return for equity.

In the interview below, Ehrhardt shares his views on why now is the time for new thinking in digital. So are we all doomed? Nah. Amid change, there is always opportunity.

What led you to write a new State of the Digital Nation?

I wrote the first State of the Digital Nation in 2016. It was a point in which I was reflecting deeply on what I’d seen over the previous four years and where I saw things going. It was an expression about the journey to try to evolve the typical consultancy model, or try to build the future phase of the studio.

In 2017, I was closing a chapter in my life and starting a new chapter. I had the freedom to do what I wanted. The fundamental question that came to me was, “If you could start again, completely fresh without serving any legacy, what would you do?” State of the Digital Nation 2020 is basically me ripping apart my journey, closing a chapter and beginning a new chapter and trying to organize all the thinking and inputs and outputs that would lead me to decide to build a new type of studio. So, that’s in a nutshell why I wrote it.

You say that the “death of the agency” drum is beating louder and louder. What went wrong and what’s happening now?

We’ve all been watching the epic battle between the consultancies and the ad holding groups. That’s led to a few issues. One is that design is being homogenized. If you look at how so many independent studios are being acquired and brought in to consultancies, you’re seeing what I think is a fundamental problem with how the ecosystem is designed. To use a metaphor, if you mix all the vibrant colors of the rainbow together, you get a chromatic neutral. And that’s a concern to me. What does that trend do for our ecosystem?

Another issue is that, as more work goes in-house, and fewer agencies are fighting over the remainder of the work, they’re beginning to underbid and trying to reduce their cost to secure the work. Many agencies have moved to offshoring, and what you’re seeing is the agency ecosystem begin to cannibalize itself.

For me, that’s pushing everything to a quite logical conclusion that, for an agency, what was once double-digit profit is now going to be single-digit profit, or a sea of red.

Until the last decade or so, it made a lot of sense to open an agency. It was profitable, and you could do good work. What we’d see was big brands nurturing a wider ecosystem than would provide healthy grounds and a system for new talent to emerge. But what you’re seeing, I think, is this kind of ecosystem collapse: there’s such a pressure on pricing and a procurement-department mindset that, actually, this ecosystem in which the next generation of talent should develop isn’t being sustained.

The fundamental challenge faced by the creative class is being paid for time. And that’s what’s leading to the consolidation, that’s what’s leading to the downward pricing, that’s what’s leading to the degraded environment in which we do our work.

Bleak. If that’s the case, what needs to happen?

The only way for us to escape and build a new prosperous place, a new happy place, is to basically break that model, break that bond which I call a form of “prison island” that we built ourselves decades ago—the “paid for time” client service model.

You say being paid for hourly work is at the core of the industry’s problems. Tell us more.

I believe that actual human creative output is limited to five hours a day, therefore keeping people late is creating unhealthy working conditions and is counterproductive. I recently went to a conference with some very high-level design leaders in the tech space. I asked everyone “Look, how many hours of creativity do you think a human has in a day?” I counted down the hours from 10. No one put their hands up. When I got down to six and five that’s when the majority of the hands went up. Of course this is definitely not applicable to rote tasks like outputting a hundred variations of an image. But the real creativity tops out at five hours. I believe in building a working environment around that.

So what would you recommend? How can there be a better pay model, not necessarily related to hourly work?

As it’s happening is it’s going to get harder and harder to have an agency with healthy profits. I still think that there are studios that are great, that do really good work, and they’re going to prosper. Those people usually have a good process—they agree on high-level requirements based on ‘Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have’ (or “MoSCoW”) rather than fixed cost and scope arrangements. They’re focused on product rather than marketing.

But for the agency structure—the only way we’re going to escape that is for the creative class to begin to define new models—new vessels within which we can do our work and prosper.

In your case, you decided that the best next step for you was to do venture-only work?

Yes, I guess the point is for me it doesn’t really matter what model you choose. For me, the path I chose was to explore venture where the model is funded. Funded models allow us to do the work we want to do. It doesn’t mean there’s no pressure. It just means it’s a different dynamic.

You say the talent drain is already well under way. Where are people going?

Agencies—and very good ones—are increasingly losing people to Google, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. I think that trend is going to grow. It’s almost impossible for agencies to match a tech company’s packages and benefits. If you were working at an agency doing 70 hours a week on a campaign or for a bleach brand at 30 percent or 40 percent less salary than you’d get paid at Google or Facebook, then why on earth wouldn’t you leave? I’m not saying it’s easy working in a tech company, but to work fewer hours and have a better work-life balance and be working with a bit more purpose, at significantly better benefits? It’s something to think about.

You’ve put together a big proposal and shared it out in the open. Have you received comments from anybody who’s like “I completely disagree with this and here’s where I think you’re missing the mark?”

In the week since it went out, I’ve had overwhelmingly positive comments. I’ve also had people pull me aside and go, “I’ve tried this. It doesn’t work.” And that’s fine. The point for me is I don’t have as much care for the industry as I do for the creative class within it. So if you do read the piece, you’ll see a lot of it comes from a place of care for the creative class. That has always been my mission. If you’re an individual in the creative class, there are some important questions we need to be asking ourselves. I believe that by having a more open-source mentality, by sharing what works and what doesn’t work, publishing contracts and as much information as we can, then we can get everyone to a better place. And a more healthy ecosystem for everyone is what I want. I am completely committed to that philosophy.

I remember starting the piece thinking, “We’re all doomed.” And by the time I got to the end I felt surprisingly positive about everything because you had shared. Did you mean for it to be encouraging in that way?

Yes, the feedback I’ve had, especially from younger people in the industry, is that they’re really excited after the reading the piece. I was trying to give a systematic exploration of what I see, what’s wrong with it and what the new avenues are for the creative class. The beauty is you can really have an opinion and be forthright about it. I think the problem in our industry as a whole is that that the emperor has been naked for the last five to eight years. That’s how we got here. 

If somebody is at an earlier point in their career and they haven’t committed to a path yet, what advice would you give to them in terms of the path they might consider?

I’m not really in the advice-giving game, but I think I’d definitely be weighing up which industries have longevity, which areas in the industry have too many people with a certain age and mindset who are more vested in the status quo than not. The way I like to phrase it at the moment is this: you’re either revolutionary, or you’re not. And I think that’s the moment we have to be in now. We have to be revolutionary because if we don’t know how to build these opportunities then we’ll go down with the ship.

For more, check out Ehrhardt’s full 60-minute read: State of the Digital Nation 2020.

via 99U99U https://ift.tt/2t949q3

The First Five Years: Early Creative Career Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them

Getting started in your creative career is tough. You’ve got boatloads of ambition and energy, but you lack experience, the kind of knowledge that feels like you can see into the future because you’ve been there before. So we’re introducing a new column that will allow you to get the benefit of hindsight before you’ve actually gone through the experience. Welcome to “The First Five Years” where Mitch Goldstein, a professor of design at Rochester Institute of Technology, will answer reader questions related to the unchartered waters of beginning a career. To kick things off, Mitch takes on a personal question. 

“What mistakes did you make starting out in your career? And how can I avoid them?”

My design partner (and now wife) Anne Jordan and I started our design studio in June of 2007. I had graduated with my BFA the year before, and Anne had just finished school that month. We had no business plan, no income or growth projections, no marketing strategy, and no experience. What we did each have were several freelance clients, so clearly the smart move was to start a business together even though we had no idea what we were doing. We actually said to ourselves “How hard could it be? We’ll learn along the way.”

And learn along the way we did. We had some success, and many failures. One of our first mistakes was not finding the right people to help us run the business side of the studio. We immediately hired an accountant, and the first thing he did was make us spend money we did not have to incorporate the business, so we would be able to grow rapidly (even though we did not plan on hiring anyone else — but just in case, we were ready!). We spent lots of extra money on incorporation fees and business taxes, and spent lots of time on paperwork and filling out forms that we did not need.

Had we done more research or gotten a second opinion, we could have structured our business in a much simpler way. Money is challenging, so having an accountant is critically important, and something any freelancer or small business owner should do — but make sure you find someone you trust, and who understands what you really need. This person was a great accountant for a multi-million dollar company, but not so great for a couple of naive graduates trying to make next month’s rent.

Initially, we priced most work by project instead of by hour. As new designers, we didn’t really know how long it would take to complete most of our early projects. Our biggest screw up in the first year was a bid for the design of an enormous electrical and lighting parts catalog. We did some calculating about how long we thought it would take to design each page, multiplied by the number of pages, added a little time for surprises, and sent out the bid. The client immediately approved our proposal and fee.

Fortunately, we are friends with many more experienced designers, one of whom looked at the project, looked at our fee, and told us we were off by an order of magnitude. She told us that we had bid about 1/10th as much as we should have, and from experience she knew that the project would take far, far longer than we thought — the design fee the client accepted would have completely bankrupted us. One incredibly awkward client phone call later, we were out of the project and had learned a valuable lesson.

It was not all mistakes, though. Something that we did well was having a few experienced designer friends we could talk to with questions about how to run a design studio. In addition to leaning on each other, we were able to get advice from people who had made the same mistakes we were about to make. This is incredibly important: no matter where you go to school, you will never learn everything you need to know about running a design business.

Some of it you will have to figure out as you go along (like remembering to put an invoice number on invoices — yes, that was embarrassing.) Having people we could talk to made this much easier, and avoided a few major disasters. This is where design organizations like the AIGA and events like Creative Mornings can be so valuable — they are places to meet people who know all the stuff you don’t. Design is way more fun when you don’t try to do it alone.

Got a question for Mitch? Tweet it to us @99U and we’ll pose them to him in the coming months.

 

via 99U99U https://ift.tt/2sRShJH

The Story Behind the Rainbow Flag

From Provincetown to San Francisco, and throughout much of the world, the rainbow flag has come to symbolize the power and inclusiveness of queer culture. Less than a half-a-century old, it was created with love and purpose by one man, Gilbert Baker, who through art and design helped to spearhead a movement of enduring pride and acceptance. Baker, a thriving artist and activist until his death last year from cardiovascular disease, is credited with helping to “define the modern LGBT movement” by former California state senator Scott Weiner. Today, the Museum of Modern Art considers his creation to be as recognizable and culturally significant as the ubiquitous recycling symbol. But who was the man behind the flag?

Baker was drawn to art and fashion from an early age. Born in Chanute, Kansas in 1951, he joined the U.S. Army to escape the stifling limitations of his small, conservative town, and was sent, serendipitously, to San Francisco just at the height of the gay rights movement. Here, he quickly threw himself into local culture and activist causes, working on the first-ever marijuana legalization initiative, California Proposition 19, and turning to sewing and graphics as a unique way to resist and protest. During this period, he created banners for gay-rights and anti-war protests, becoming a close friend of San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk.

Spurred on by his community, Baker began to search for a symbol that could be used in the gay rights movement. The existing emblem, the pink triangle emblazoned on prison uniforms in Nazi Germany, was seen as too dark. “Artie Bresson, the filmmaker who created GAY USA, pushed Gilbert to come up with a symbol. He came upon the idea of a flag,” said Charley Beal, a longtime friend of Baker who currently oversees his estate. Beal explains that the 1976 bicentennial’s use of the American Flag was an important inspiration. “Soon after, Gilbert was dancing at the Cow Palace with Cleve Jones and, amidst the swirl of colored lights, he was overwhelmed with the diversity of people out dancing and came up with the idea of the rainbow flag. I believe there was LSD involved.”

“He had a very deep understanding of history and politics, and had quite an intellect to go along with the drama and glitter.”

In an attic of a San Francisco gay community center, Baker began to work with a band of volunteers and friends to dye and sew the first rainbow flags, the originals including eight colors representing different aspects of the community: sex, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic/art, serenity, and spirit. Later, Baker removed pink (sex) and turquoise (magic/art)  because those fabrics were harder to come by, leaving behind panels of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple to act as a universal beacon of pride for the LGBTQ community.

“Cleve Jones helped get the money from the parade committee for the flags,” continued Beal. “Fairy Argyle was the ‘queen of tie-dye’ who instructed him on proper dying techniques.” Others helped with the endless ironing. On June 25th, 1978 Baker and his community hoisted their banners in United Nations Plaza to fete that year’s San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.

“We needed something beautiful, something from us,” Baker later said. “The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, ages, all of those things. Plus, it’s a natural flag—it’s from the sky!”

“He was very delighted and excited that he had achieved his vision,” explained Cleve Jones, one of Baker’s closest friends and the mastermind behind AIDS Memorial Quilt project. “Rainbows have been used as long as people have been creating art. But it was Gilbert, and Gilbert alone, who imagined the rainbow flag as the symbol of the people now called the LGBTQ. It was his sole mission on this planet to spread that sort of symbol around the world.”

Over the decades, nothing brought Baker greater joy than seeing photographs of his flags in “unexpected” cities, from Moscow to Beijing and Havana. Gilbert, as friends described him, could be “quite difficult, quite challenging, often opinionated and quite imperious,” but with a gentle, caring side. “He was one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known,” Jones told us. “He had a very deep understanding of history and politics, and had quite an intellect to go along with the drama and glitter.”

After the success of the rainbow flag, Baker began working for the Paramount Flag Company, his work catching the eye of then-mayor Dianne Feinstein, who later commissioned him to design flags, banners, and materials for her inaugural ceremony. Afterwards, Gilbert went on to create flags for the presidents of France, Venezuela, and the Philippines, the King of Spain, and numerous Gay Pride events across the country. But one of his proudest moments was when he designed flags for the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

In 1994, Baker moved to New York City where he crafted what, at the time, was the world’s largest flag, a mile in length, which was later carried by 5,000 people in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. In 2003, to celebrate the Rainbow Flag’s 25th anniversary, Baker outdid his own record, crafting a gigantic flag for Key West Pride that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, and was later cut into sections and distributed across more than 100 cities around the world.

“I think Gilbert’s lasting importance is that he created a symbol of hope and inclusion for an oppressed minority at a time when their efforts at liberation were new,” said Beal. “He then worked tirelessly for almost 40 years to ensure that this symbol would be recognized and understood worldwide.”

“At that time, and in that location, it was an act of courage to display this symbol.”

“The rainbow flag has become such a potent and immediate symbol of pride and solidarity with the LGBTQ community,” says Tim O’Brien, Assistant Director of Exhibitions at the SFO Museum
, which currently has up an exhibit of Baker’s work. “Many of us here in the San Francisco Bay Area take it for granted, as if the symbol has always been with us and has always been easily displayed. When I was growing up in a smaller town outside the immediate Bay Area, the flag made a tremendous impact. Just seeing it flying in front of a home or as a car’s bumper sticker immediately indicated that this person was a member of a tribe of sorts. At that time, and in that location, it was an act of courage to display this symbol.”

Baker’s flag has also left an impression on younger members of the LGBTQ community. Jordan Eagles, 41, is an artist whose work highlights the plight of gay men who pursue blood donation. In the United States, gay men must remain celibate for a full year before being eligible to donate, which most members of the community see as discrimination, given advanced screening processes. Like Baker, Eagle uses art and design to combat oppression and celebrate queer culture. “I don’t remember the first time I saw a pride flag. I feel like it has been in my consciousness forever. I haven’t always found it to be visually appealing, yet I have always understood that it stands for something good, and that is the most important. Gilbert Baker’s flag is iconic and a symbol of gay pride and probably will be forever.”

Mike Devlin, manager of the Blood Equality, a pro bono campaign by FCB Health, is a fellow artist who’s been working with Eagle to fight the blood ban, both legally and ideologically. “Our message is, if we’re serious about LGBTQ rights, it’s time to get serious about Blood Equality. And selectively choosing some rights to support, while ignoring others, does not equate to actual support.” So far, Devlin and Eagles’ work has garnered praise and press and, more importantly, brought the government to the table to discuss and advance policy. “We’re in the midst of hopefully executing research and studies that will spark the conservative (i.e. slow) decision makers to action, providing the evidence they say they need to lift the ban.”

While Devlin is pleased with the campaign’s successes, he realized that he needed an easily recognizable signifier to serve as an icon for this struggle. Inspired by Baker, he has helped to conceptualize and create BLOOD FLAGS, a series of all-red banners to be unfurled at this year’s Blood Donor Day. “The pride flag was the centerpiece of our team’s inspiration: the colors meant to symbolize and unify, yet the colors of the national flags in which LGBTQ men remain stigmatized sits in sharp contrast to the strength of the pride flag below. All in the context of the one color – red – the color of all of our blood. We are the same, one in our blood, yet our blood is not seen as equal.”

Today, a full range of identity-driven flags exist, from those celebrating the leather community to asexuality, to a modification of the rainbow flag itself with additional black and brown stripes added to protest discrimination against people of color in Philadelphia gay bars.

Ultimately, Baker was a street activist who saw the use of protest banners and flags as a political tool. “Gilbert worked his entire adult life to make this happen,” says O’Brien. “I’m sure if he were here today, he’d take understandable pride in this achievement. But I’m guessing he’d read the news about someone somewhere being harassed, abused, evicted, etc. for displaying the rainbow flag, and he’d remind us all that the work remains unfinished.”

via 99U99U https://ift.tt/2Hs3Ewe

From the Drawing Board to the Board Room

When Lisa Lindstrom and her co-founders were first starting design firm Doberman in 1998, the world was a very different place: Adobe Flash was hot, Google was not, and the iPhone was still nearly a decade away from existence.

But while technology has transformed design over the last few years, the fundamentals of Lindstrom’s business philosophy have remained the same. At the top is the notion that employees should have a say on how the company is managed, not only for their own sense of wellbeing and engagement, but for the firm’s overall success.

That’s why Doberman allows all 100 of its employees in Stockholm and New York City the chance to be part of the company’s management committee. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a designer, a developer or an office assistant — for 12 to 16 weeks, you’re asked to make important business decisions alongside the CFO, managing director and other top execs.

We caught up with Lindstrom, 44, to talk about this unique strategy and why she as CEO feels the rewards far outweigh the risks.

You allow all of your employees to rotate into the management committee. How does this work, in practical terms?

We have two rolling seats in our office in Stockholm and one in our office in New York. We have people sit in those roles for 12 to 16 weeks in addition to their regular job. Each committee does it differently — in Stockholm the committee meets every third week and also communicates in Slack. In NY, which is a smaller office, they meet every week. We’re a fast-moving company, so within that time a person will have gone through lots of interesting decisions. (Employees aren’t required to participate, though most do.)

You’ve been doing this since the earliest days of your company. Where’d you get the idea?

We were seven founders when we started the company, and we were focused on how to avoid the hierarchy and really co-create the company. It was one of the other founders who said, “I think it would be so good if we include people on the management team.”

What is the thinking behind it?

When we started off 20 years ago, we hadn’t gone to management school; we had gone to design school. And we felt that the business world was kind of awkward, fitting people into roles but not really recognizing the capacity that talent has. So we said to ourselves what if real quality comes out of investing in your people? We set up this triangle idea — we wanted to balance quality with profitability and wellbeing. The core thing is that wellbeing comes out of feeling included, feeling that you have a say, knowing that people listen to you and that you can be a person within a company, not just a role. How to execute on this has been a constant exploration. There are no books on this type of management. It’s just trying things out and seeing what works.

Why does it work?

Some people mistake this as some sort of consensus culture where everyone decides everything. That’s not what we mean. It’s also not about deciding what coffee to have or what colors we should use on the floor. The core thing is to include in your employees in the really tricky, important and difficult decisions. To get people there, I always ask myself: In what way can I be explaining the complexity of an issue to make sure that everyone understands that issue, and will be able to contribute to that issue?”

For example, 15 years ago I wanted everyone including designers to contribute to the budget strategy…when I asked them to join the discussions, you can guess what they said. (Laughs.) What I did was I translated our budget into Legos. I showed them, in different colors, the costs we have today and how it all fits together with our income. And I said to them, if you want to change something, show me in Legos how the whole equation goes together so it’s not just me getting this wishlist that I can never deliver on. What they were able to come up with was so clever. They had great insights and contributions just from seeing what was at stake.

From a business leader’s perspective, it seems you’re giving up a lot of control by letting employees have a say on major decisions. How do you manage against that risk?

I actually think it’s a larger risk that you delegate all decisions to the CEO. I don’t think that any CEO in the world is smarter than their employees. For this to work, you have to make people understand the full complexity of an issue. If you only give halfway — if you only tell people on the surface that they can contribute — it’s a bigger risk because they’re acting without full information.

I don’t think control is a good steering mechanism at all; I actually think trust is a better steering mechanism. Because what I get in return is people’s engagement, I get their passion, I get lots of ideas, I get their sense of responsibility. So I would call this management by trust. When you see management by control, you get fear, you get anxiety, you get people who just deliver exactly what they were asked to do but not more because they were only asked for that… that is more a risky scenario than the one I’m exploring.

Has it ever backfired?

I have to tell you — I’ve been doing this 20 years and no one has ever misused the trust they have in the management team. Sometimes we have pretty important decisions and tricky things — no one has let us down. Each time it brings new perspectives.

What’s one example of something your employees came up with?

Opening an office in New York! A few times a year we close down the office and we all go away for a couple of days. We call these “exploration days” and we use it to talk about really important things. On one of these days, we had discussion with 60 of our employees about what we should be doing as a company; they said we should open up an office in New York. If it was my call as CEO, I would have said no. I thought it was a bad idea, a very difficult market. Instead I said “OK, how should we do this?” We delegated to the people who were ready to move – asked them to give us a business plan – and they came back and said here’s how should we do this. Today, we have a fully functioning, super quality, super profitable studio in New York. Just imagine if we had trusted my gut feeling?

What advice do you have another company wanting to employ a similar strategy?

My advice would be to start first by creating a more transparent culture. The only way for a CEO or a managing director to ask for an organization to be more open is to start being more open themselves. You cannot ask employees, “Can you be more open, please? Can you be more trusting, please?” The way to start digging into this culture is for the top person to show some vulnerability, ask for help. When you do so, you’ll get paid back with trust. You can’t be the executive who knows everything — you need to pay attention, show some realness.

via 99U99U https://ift.tt/2sgliP0

The Best and Brightest Ideas from the 10th Annual Adobe 99U Conference

If there is one pervasive theme that has taken hold of our work lives, private lives, and digital lives in the past year, it’s that challenges are always present — and they demand confrontation. This year, the Adobe 99U Conference focused its theme around tackling challenges by exploring new approaches to creative leadership, overcoming hurdles that limit our own work, inventing and reinventing formats, and using creativity to effect social good.

From 99U founder Scott Belsky to CreativeMornings founder Tina Roth Eisenberg to John Maeda, speakers dug into how to design the immersive experience of our future, how to replace job perks with passion, and why the future will be crafted by those who do the work beyond the scope of what their job title requires.

We’ve rounded up our speakers best and the brightest ideas so you can incorporate their insights into your career and reshape, upend, and nurture your creative life.

Lead fearlessly and from the heart.

You get to mindfully pick what kind of leader you are—whether you lead from fear of failure, or are joyfully driven by your vision. For CreativeMornings and Tattly founder Tina Roth Eisenberg, the best method is to make your work a playground for your future best self. “I am learning everyday to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be to inspire and not terrify me,” she said.

Don’t protect yourself from failure.

A culture of consensus building can kill any chance of disruption and innovation. Instead, Todd Yellin, VP of Product at Netflix, encourages his team to challenge convention, even if there is the risk of failure. “You want to lean so far forward that sometimes you fall on your face,” said Yellin. “You can never make it to a true utopia, but you should keep on pushing.”

To be a creative leader, start silly.

Whenever we begin a project we tend to also begin with an ambitious goal and that can make the whole project feel super serious and pressure-filled right off the bat. But what if we sometimes began with play and discovery rather than metrics and objectives? According to Google Creative Lab’s Tea Uglow, there is no reason that approach also can’t yield a successful result. “You can start with stuff that feels dumb and stupid, and play with it and you will get to places where it becomes potent and powerful.”

John Maeda and Adobe VP of Design Jamie Myrold/Photo by Ryan Muir for 99U

Be inclusive.

“Being inclusive means welcoming the unknown,” said Automattic’s John Maeda who has made it his mission to rehabilitate the design world with a broader and braver sense of who we’re designing for. And when we design for everyone, we can reach everyone.  “Better products are created in tech when we’re inclusive-minded because the total addressable market increases,” he said.

Do, delegate, or drop.

In order to write compelling new chapters in our career, we have to give ourselves permission to drop a ball or two. Or better yet, learn to delegate—even if that feels totally unnatural. “If you want something you’ve never had before you’re gonna have to do something that you’ve never done before in order to get it.”said Drop the Ball author Tiffany Dufu said, So either do it, delegate it, or drop it. (And, as Dufu reassured everyone, if you drop unrealistic expectations, nothing bad will happen.)

Make your message the focus of your work.

Artist and author Adam J. Kurtz admitted he doesn’t necessarily aim for by-the-book visual perfection. Instead, he embraces an unpolished aesthetic and a habit of churning out a lot of ideas for the internet to either adore or ignore. “My work looks bad, but I have a lot to say,” he said. “My visual voice, the handwriting that I use, is emotive and disarming and it allows me to tackle difficult topics.”

Set your own house rules.

Sound artist Christine Sun Kim viscerally feels the effect of sound when it invades her home. Rather than be a passive player, Kim builds house rules and art projects like performances and sound diets to wrestle with the role of sound in her personal space (including asking a nearby church to cut back its bell-ringing schedule). “For me home is where my deaf identity and deafness are one and the same,” she said.

Walk your stakeholders through your ideas, literally.

Duncan Wardle, the former Head of Innovation & Creativity at Disney, recommends printing and posting your ideas around the walls of a conference room and physically walking your team and clients through them. “People sitting behind tables will judge you, they can’t help it,” says Wardle. “When you walk with somebody, a presentation turns into a conversation.”

Tiffany Dufu/Photo by Ryan Muir for 99U

Start your business with a problem you want to solve.

“Sometimes when people talk about their business idea, they jump to the benefit of their business,” said Emily Heyward, Red Antler co-founder. “But people are not sitting around wishing your business existed—no one is sitting around wishing for a crunchy cereal with raisins.” However, they might be wishing for a quick answer to breakfast, or to lose weight—their motivation for buying the product you’ll make. “You have to go deeper to the actual problem behind why someone might care about this idea.”

Mindlessness is an affliction. Mindfulness is the cure.

These days you’re either at a company that is disrupting, or one that is being disrupted. As a leader, embracing change starts at the individual level, said SYPartners’ Rachel Salinas, who advocates for scheduling time for mindfulness into everyday life, through things like meditation or setting down your phone and disconnecting from the always-on mode. “If you don’t let your thoughts control you, you can be responsive, not reactive,” said Salinas. “That is hugely important for leaders.”

Risk-taking is an art…and a playground.

Our most valuable contributions can come from the times when we launch into untrammeled territory. But risk-taking is uncomfortable, awkward, and frightening. To keep creatives from shying away from going out on a limb, Good F***ing Design Advice co-founders Brian Buirge and Jason Bacher recommend adding partners-in-crime to share the burden of your risk, injecting playfulness to energize your process, and to embrace—not avoid—a sense of fear. “Pride and insecurities are responses to vulnerabilities,” they said. “They are telling you something. So listen!”

Don’t be afraid to ask the obvious question.

Iteration through prototyping is one of the most integral steps in the design process. It’s often the best way to bounce around new ideas, question creative solutions, and unearth new problems. But we often skip the most important piece in the prototyping process. As we rush to dream up new solutions and ideas, we often forget to ask ourselves ‘why?’ Why do it this way? Why prioritize that? Adobe Creative Resident, Natalie Lew alongside Donors Choose, said to ask three ‘why?’ questions after someone gives an initial answer, so you can get to the heart of what is really driving the change.

Attendees workshopped their own ideas during break out sessions/Photo by Ryan Muir for 99U

If you’re not designing for the future, you’re designing for the past.

Brand strategy firm Lippincott highlighted three key human experience design trends to help us plan ahead: a world of devices and systems treated as intimate resources and friends, which will set higher and higher bars of trust in order to access with your product; an increasingly customized world, where every moment and experience is designed for each individual; plus a new synthetic reality where the real and virtual meet and blend. In order to keep pace with the future, designers must address these shifts now. After all, the Lippincott team points out, “If you’re designing for today’s customer, you’re probably designing for the past.”

Think forward with your feedback.

Feedback is one of the most valuable and yet unspoken gifts we can offer our colleagues. Why is so much left unsaid? ustwo believes we don’t have the roadmap to manage our fear of crossing the line from feedback into critique. The most important thing to remember? “Be actionable,” said the team from ustwo. “Effective feedback is specific, relates directly to the goals of the project, and suggests a possible next step.”

Sometimes the most effective tech is the most old school

Stop motion animation brings to mind whimsical characters navigating a bumpy existence. But animation studio Mighty Oak says there’s more to stop motion than a wink and a smile. Major brands, from Volkswagen to Sun-Maid, have put animation at the center of their campaigns, embracing the personality that animation can add to the simplest shapes and images. According to Mighty Oak, animation keeps viewers engaged for longer lengths of time than live action. Even more importantly, the simplicity of the medium makes more complicated messages possible. “It allows us to discuss tough issues, explain complex information, remove barriers, cut through the clutter, and make memorable impressions,” said Mighty Oak CEO Jess Peterson.

99U founder Scott Belsky/Photo by Ryan Muir for 99U

The messy middle of a project can hold the biggest rewards.

99U founder Scott Belsky is no stranger to launching new endeavors. His current focus? That mysterious middle no one talks about in between inception and shipping; the time when you can’t see the finish line and you’ve forgotten what got you into the project in the first place. “Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that long-term vision is enough to keep us motivated,” said Belsky. But that’s not enough. In order to stay motivated during that muddle of a middle, Belsky advises building a team that accepts the burden of processing uncertainty, enjoys being together apart from product success, and to set whimsical milestones that lead to team excitement when there are no formal rewards in sight.

Deliver your wordy message in a visuals.

An audience’s attention is one of our most valuable resources. How can we make sure to keep it long enough for them hear our whole message? Data journalist Mona Chalabi transforms numbers into witty, incisive visuals that both delight and surprise and drive home serious facts and figures.

“Charts don’t connect the subject matter with the visualization themselves,” said Chalabi. “I try to connect the subject matter with the depiction of the visualization.” So if she’s been assigned to design a chart showing a major world event, she surely isn’t going to a ho hum bar chart. “If you’re talking about an economy that’s in freefall, that’s diving, why not show a diver?” she says. “The surprise is meant to hold your attention.”

Speaker Mona Chalabi/Photo by Ryan Muir for 99U

Fun fact: Alternate realities are the product humans desperately desire.

Meow Wolf CEO Vince Kadlubek didn’t plan to get into one of the fastest growing economies of the 21st century. He originally set out to build an arts collective. But the immersive installations he launched at Meow Wolf fed into our desire to experience the avante garde. Kadlubek sees a growing opportunity  between reality and design as the two shape the world, and he challenged designers to think of themselves as shapers in the new freedom of this landscape. “The world has felt limited by previous infrastructure that we can’t affect,” he says. “That’s changing. All creatives around the world should start thinking about how together, over the next 20 years, we can create a beautiful new world.”

Replace perks with passions.

It’s no secret: tech and media are great fields to work in. Entry level talent can get unlimited vacations, three free meals a day, and workspaces with Kombucha and nap pods. But Audrey Liu, Lyft’s Director of Product Design, cautions against emphasizing all-day fun, not fulfillment, to attract talent. “We’ve lost sight of the one perk we should all care about,” Liu said. “A shared sense of passion for the problem we’re trying to solve.”

Inspire the dreams of others by chasing your own.

Super Heroic CEO, and former Nike Senior Global Design Director, Jason Mayden is driven by the philosophy that if we can play together, we can live together. Through his company, Super Heroic, he’s created a world of play that coaches kids toward creativity, agility, and perseverance. But to raise a new generation who can play and dream together, adults have to set a good example by tending to their own dreams. In order to inspire new generations, we must follow our own dreams. “You being comfortable with your dream,” said Mayden, “Allows someone else to be comfortable with their dream.”

Speaker Audrey Liu/Photo by Ryan Muir for 99U

Shoot for the mundane, not the moon.

On a trip to Cuba to work with local start-ups, Marcelino J. Alvarez, founder of Uncorked Studios, discovered an entrepreneurial culture that, unlike in the U.S., wasn’t obsessed with profits and products, but with contexts and communities. Inspired by them, Alvarez advised designers to zero in on the everyday needs of systems and communities, “There are way more opportunities to scale impact through the mundane than through moonshots,” he said.

Unbury your greatest hopes and fears.

Ashleigh Axios, design exponent at Automattic and former Obama White House creative director, wants us all to be a little more self-centered. Not in the way that makes us design unnecessary products for a quick buck. She means self-centered in a more introspective, vulnerable way. Axios challenged designers to dig deep into the things that frustrate us—whether it’s hurt about racial inequality or an experience being bullied as a child—and create products that address those problems. “Every frustration,” she said, “every fear, every hope that you’ve buried really deep down inside thinking there was no way for it to change into something positive, I want us to pull that back up. Those are the things that will make us better off.”

Resistance at its best will slow the pace of change. Resistance at its worst can decimate a company or career.

The key to understanding why people resist change, said NOBL’s CEO Bree Groff, is to understand why exactly people are resisting. “I would argue that people aren’t resisting change—they’re resisting loss,” said Groff. Based on NOBL’s work with brands and agencies, Groff pinpoints six types of loss employees feel during organizational change: loss of control, pride, narrative, time, competence, and familiarity. Her advice for someone who is trying to enact change is to follow three steps: Honor the end of what you’re saying goodbye to, address the loss, and celebrate the beginning. Most people start with celebrating the beginning, noted Groff, but first they need to lay the proper groundwork for turning the page.

Learn to speak the language of every medium you touch.

We can’t be an expert in every medium, but our jobs require often require us to go beyond our speciality and work in new formats. What’s a creative to do?? Make sure you learn the language of the medium you’re in charge of. For instance, if you’re the brand director on a photoshoot, have a palette of visual language to communicate with your photographers so you can articulate direction to them. The best tactic for framing the initial conversation? “Make multiple mood boards,” said photographer and Adobe Creative Resident, Aundre Larrow. “A mood board for how you want expressions, how you want the light, and for the general feel.” You might not be a photographer, but you are still in charge of the photoshoot.

Attendees participating in Google’s break out session/Photo by Ryan Muir for 99U

Get to the point (and then you can embellish)

What if you only had five seconds to sketch out your idea? What would you put down on paper? Some intricate design? Or the bones of the problem you’re looking to solve? In her breakout session, Adobe Creative Resident Jessica Bellamy challenged her audience to draw certain objects in five seconds to show how, when you get to a design’s essence, function precedes form “Beautiful design does not mean it communicates its function,” said Bellamy.

When in doubt, do as Google does.

Over the last 10 years, Google has become one of the largest and most important companies in the world. Even though its employee count has quadrupled during that time and its reach spans the globe, the company’s philosophy today remains the same as it was in the early years. “Focus on the user and all else will follow,” said Jens Riegelsberger, UX Director, Google, sharing a mantra that, come to think of it, companies of any size can follow as the golden rule of business.

Bottom up in the new top down.

Brands today have more dimensions to them than ever before, and experience, experience, visual, and verbal design must connect to each other, and to a brand’s purpose. This means companies have to be built in a whole new way, said the team at R/GA. “Modern brands are built from the bottom up because today, behavior is as important as belief,” said R/GA’s executive creative director Mike Rigby. “Bottom up means starting with designing the system and thinking about all of the interactions the audience has with the brand first instead of pushing a brand directive from the top to the bottom.”

Take Time out for Pen and Paper

 

Effective Brainstorming = Frame > Open > Close

Who hasn’t been in an ideas meeting that has gone completely off the rails? Sure, we want to be open to any and all concepts, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use a strategy to keep us on track. “The best way to brainstorm is Frame -> Open -> Closed,” said Jason Cha, director at The Design Gym. “Frame is where you figure out the challenge or problem; open is where you think of ideas—anything goes, you can just spitball the broadest ideas. “Closed is where you figure out how to actually solve the challenge using your open ended ideas.”

Bring in new voices and onboard them to lead the conversation.

General Assembly advised creatives to open up the pearly gates of design to new voices and new experiences. After all, the collective is stronger than the individual. The new mindsets General Assembly looks for? A full systems approach to design, and people who think ahead to design for evolution and adaptation. To bring those new voices in, Tyler Hartrich advised, “build a culture that allows newcomers to contribute to the way you do things.” The more we open up the doors, the better we will be as an industry.

When you demo new tools, demo new ideas too.

When working with new products, your key ingredient is the desire to try new things. That means, lead with a wish to learn, not a desire to be perfect. “Be inspired to make something you’ve never made before,” said artist and designer, Jennet Liaw.

When it comes to branding, sound matters.

Design is often thought of as a visual journey, which leads us to overlook one of the most powerful ways to connect with an audience—through sound. Emotional response to sound is strongly linked with the desire to engage or avoid an experience. “Our role is to score the brand experience,” said Kristen Lueck, Director of Strategy for Man Made Music. “If a product or experience makes a sound, it will have personality – you have no choice in the matter.”

Go with your gut.

It’s tough to evaluate and critique a partner’s work. We worry about hurt feelings, or possibly squashing the germs of a good idea. But DKNG founders Nathan Goldman and Dan Kuhlken say lets your instincts guide you. “Whatever your initial reaction to your partner’s work, don’t take it lightly,” they said. “It’s quite possible that anyone viewing the work will have a similar opinion.” Be upfront and honest, and, if you have to have a hard conversation, better it coming from you than a client who feels the same way.

Make thinking and making the same thing

Artist Jon Burgerman has crafted a career out of doodling. But there’s more to that practice than whimsical lines. “Doodling is thinking and making at the same time,” Burgerman said. Sometimes the best ideas, with the biggest impact can come from the very simple, silly, and quick, so find ways to remove the barrier between your thoughts and your attempts. “Allow your imagination to be your raw material,” advised Burgerman.

Attendees toasted two days of ideas with a dance party at MoMA/Photo by Ryan Muir for 99U

via 99U99U https://ift.tt/2rFDss4

Does Your City Need a Chief Design Officer?

There’s no disputing design’s growing contribution to the evolution of cities. From ambitious public art projects to the rise of the global “design district,” both private and public sectors have begun weaving aesthetics into daily life. This has led to the ascendancy of the “Chief Design Officer”—a figure who often works within tech companies, non-profits, even government agencies, to improve the overall design culture.

Recently, Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne left his role at the paper to step into the newly created position of Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles. According to L.A.’s Mayor Eric Garcetti, Hawthorne has been tasked with “bringing a unified design vision to projects that are shaping Los Angeles’ urban landscape,” collaborating with city officials, departments, and architects on a wide range of public projects, from housing to transit. Los Angeles isn’t alone in creating this position. Helsinki, Finland and Edmonton, Canada both recently appointed Chief Design Officers to encourage local governments to reimagine their cities. But what exactly do these CDO’s do? Will all cities one day need them? And can design, let alone a designer, really have an impact on something as big and sprawling (and complicated) as a major metropolis?

To answer the first question I reached out to Anne Stenros, Helsinki’s former Chief Design Officer. One of the first to hire a CDO, Helsinki recruited Stenros, in part, because of her experience as former Managing Director of Design Forum Finland. “The City of Helsinki is going through its biggest transformation in 100 years,” she explained. “There is a new organization and leadership model.” In 2000, Helsinki became the Cultural Capital of Europe, and in 2012 was appointed a World Design Capital. “They realized they needed a leadership-level representative for design to go further,” she explained.

Does design-first public policy stand a chance in the U.S.?

Her role, ultimately, was to help bring new ideas and design approaches to the city’s strategy process and develop and implement standards and best practices. She quickly learned, however, that most of the issues afflicting cities can’t be easily fixed. “They are so-called ‘wicked problems,’ open-ended and complex. The only way to try to solve them is through [collaboration] across disciplines.” She explained that designers “cannot do it alone”— they must also work with the public, and other organizations, to strategize what’s best for a larger population. “We need to join our forces with other professionals.” Scandinavia’s government entities are notoriously progressive, but does design-first public policy stand a chance in the U.S.?

L.A.’s newly-appointed CDO declined to be interviewed, but we spoke with Alex Kuby, senior project designer at Hirsch Bedner Associates, one of LA’s top design firms, regarding the city’s attempts to integrate design into daily life. “What was once a blank canvas has become a hub of design and creativity,” he explained. “Creatives settled in L.A. for practical reasons–space and weather. In return, their contribution to the city has been dynamic design that touches every street corner, whether intentional or not.” He believes this boom in great design has enhanced the overall quality of life, not only serving as muse to residents but also revitalizing rundown areas. “Los Angeles commissioned artists to paint murals on utility boxes on city streets,” he cites as an example. “What was once an eyesore is now a piece of art that softens daily life. In this way, design is a means of passively taking care of each other.”

“Every kind of business needs design in some way.”

Detroit is employing a similar, if far more active, approach. While the city’s financial woes over the last decade may have dominated headlines, much attention is now being paid to its commitment to rebirth through design. One organization driving the conversation is Design Core Detroit, a non-profit that offers support to local creators and businesses, and believes design plays an integral role in the development of cities. “It’s the thread that weaves through everything,” said Olga Stella, Executive Director. “Almost every kind of business needs an aspect of design in some way.”

She notes Detroit is the only U.S. city to be named a UNESCO City of Design. Through this, she hopes, it can demonstrate how design is able to drive sustainability and equitable development. “We believe by building a practice of inclusive design, design can become more accessible for all people to live independently and successfully in society.”  As part of the Detroit City of Design Action Plan, spearheaded by Design Core, over 50 organizations have joined as partners, committing to 60+ projects that can help advance design in the city.

“Most designers are motivated to improve human experience and most human experience now happens in a city,” explained Mat Hunter of Design Council UK. “With urban populations continuing to rise, and the negative consequences ever more apparent in our quality of life, more designers are aware of their effect, and therefore their obligation.”

“The good news,” he continued, “is that more designers than ever are being recruited by public organizations, whether local authorities, public health services, charities and voluntary groups or private sector organizations seeking to deliver on a wider mission. This allows them to have a different agency that can deliver on their obligations and motivations.”

“There’s a larger trend towards design in society in general,” stated Justin Garrett Moore of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Program (GSAPP) and Director of the New York City Public Design Commission. “There’s been a broadening of the understanding of what design is and isn’t, and what it offers to society in general—so we see this now percolating into government; the idea of design process as a way to problem solve is something that is gaining traction and weight.”

He believes more cities are seeing the value in design and its approaches to problem-solving, even pointing to former Mayor Bloomberg’s ongoing Innovations Teams. “American society is becoming more design literate, so more people understand and value design.” Moore cited the ongoing global conversations around sustainability and climate resilience, and what role design is playing. “Both of those very large policy objectives and policy tracks have a connection to design work, design expertise, and design process.”

“Most designers are motivated to improve human experience and most human experience now happens in a city.”

“I’ve always felt design is a critical part of how cities and societies manifest themselves and their values,” said Tim Tompkins, President of the Times Square Alliance. “Especially with respect to public spaces, design can be a place that represents the aspirations of a society for all of its people—or can be a place that signals indifference and disrespect.”

Tompkins, also the founder and previous director of the program Partnerships For Parks, a non-profit that helps parks groups and neighborhoods, especially low-income neighborhoods, receive resources to revitalize their public spaces, cites the lasting impact of Elizabeth “Betsy” Barlow Rogers, founder of the Central Park Conservancy. Rogers made it her mission to restore Central Park to its original glory for the betterment of the entire city. “There was a school of thought within the Parks Department, and the city in general at the time, that there was no point in making an investment in ‘something nice’ because it’ll get destroyed by vandals,” says Tompkins. “But Betsy believed if you make a commitment to design that’s aspirational, and signals respects for people, they will treat it with respect.”

Rogers used her own money and network to fund the restoration of the park’s beloved Bethesda Fountain, which ultimately became a symbol that “beautiful design could be restored. And once restored, and not destroyed, that design itself could change the behaviors and the people experiencing it, as well as the public’s appreciation of design.”

Later, when Tompkins was tapped to help reimagine Times Square as part of the Times Square Alliance, he looked to Rogers for inspiration, shaking off the naysayers who said the area was irredeemable. He was convinced that it could be a place for all New Yorkers, that “if you create design it will elevate the entire city. This is part of a belief I have that design should be exceptional and aspirational. That that can profoundly change a place.”

He points to the fact that 25 years ago the city was in decay, but through smarter design choices, collaboration, and greater resources, the tide changed dramatically. “Fifty years ago, all people could hope for in New York City was a clean subway,” he continued. “Now we have a robust public art program on the platforms and in stations. In general, there’s been an ever-rising set of expectations we have of urban spaces—and that’s ultimately good for cities and good for design.”

via 99U99U https://ift.tt/2jFqfvO

Public Speaking is Terrifying—6 Ways to Deliver Like a Pro

Two weeks ago I woke up in a Copenhagen hotel room and picked up my phone to check the time. It was 7 a.m. In six hours I’d be hosting a panel discussion featuring a famous rapper, which would be live-streamed via social media to around 24 million followers. I had a crippling shudder of anxiety and began eagerly fantasizing about a deranged killer breaking into my hotel room and murdering me so I wouldn’t have to take part in the event. 

I don’t know why this still happens. In the last eight years I’ve hosted creative events, lead panels, and given hour-long lectures to crowds ranging from 15 to 1,500 people. But for some reason, it never gets any easier. If anything, the nerves are getting worse. What I can’t get over is how it just doesn’t seem natural to stand up on stage and talk to a room full of people. Many of us are computer nerds, hermitty writers, shy illustrators—we’re not actors! We don’t all have “the X factor,” and we most certainly haven’t been trained for this. It’s ludicrous, yet we politely accept the offer and get on with it, sometimes sprouting a few grey hairs and a forehead crease in the days preceding the event. 

In Copenhagen, I tried to work out just what it was that I was so afraid of. There’s the classic fear of falling over, burping, inexplicably saying something bad that then goes viral, having your skirt tucked into your underwear. Then there’s the fear that your presentation will be too long/short/boring/lame/weird, which is totally valid. We’ve all been to enough lengthy, monotone, heavy-on-the-bullet-point talks to know that the chances of people drifting off and thinking about what to make for dinner are pretty high.

But the clock ticks, it’s time to go on stage, we rise to the occasion, forehead dripping in cold sweat and hands trembling as we clutch the printed-off notes, dying for it to be over. Autopilot kicks in, then, as quickly as the email inviting you to even speak at the event flew into your inbox, it’s all over. People are clapping. You’ve done it. 

I wanted to explore the art of speaking in public, so I decided to contact people in the creative industry who have seen and given enough talks to be considered experts on the subject. What advice can they pass on? Because we’ll gladly take it. 

View public speaking as a career skill, not an exercise in potential humiliation.
Danielle Pender, founder and editor-in-chief of Riposte magazine, is one of those unlucky people who really, really hates to speak in public, but has a job that necessitates it. “The first large-scale presentation I did was at an editorial conference in Munich in front of 600 people,” she recalls. “For weeks leading up to it felt physically sick every time I thought about the talk. I prepared and practiced relentlessly. I took Kalms tablets for days before the event and downed sooo much Rescue Remedy on the actual day. I was so nervous I broke out in a rash and thought I was going to be physically sick minutes before going on stage.”

“I force myself to do it so I get used to it, even though it can be a torturous experience,” she adds. “I don’t always feel elated, but sometimes I’m really happy I’ve done it or even just that’s it’s over. It’s like a masochistic drive because I want to get better at speaking publicly—it is such an important career skill to have and to be able to master.”

Experiment in practice, focus on the stage.
Similarly, deputy editor of Gal-Dem magazine Charlie Cuff admits she has no choice but to put her nerves to one side, purely because she’s aware of the value and impact of public speaking. “One thing I’ve honed over the years is working out how to tell a story in the most direct way, leaving out anything that’s boring or irrelevant and only having stuff in there that’s either absolutely essential to the story, or just plain entertaining.” 

Embrace the nerves.
Will Hudson, co-founder of It’s Nice That and Lecture in Progress has been speaking at events and putting on conferences of creatives speakers since 2007. “With regards to nervousness, I heard a great story the other day about Bruce Springsteen which is still great and so helpful to remember,” said Hudson. “Someone asked if he got nervous and he said that feeling you get, stomach turning, heart pounding, sweaty palms, that was just his body telling him he’s ready. Ready to go on stage and do that thing he’s really, really good at.”

And finally a primer on what not to do when speaking in public.
Mr. Bingo, an illustrator-turned-traveling lecturer did 50 talks last year. “I speak at big conferences, smaller local creative meet-ups, and also at companies like Channel4, BBC, and Universal Music. This year I told myself I’d do less and spend a bit more time making work, but it’s addictive and I genuinely love it, so the diary is starting to fill up again!” After touring the speaker circuit for nearly eight years, here is his hit list of things to avoid. 

“Don’t just show your work: “People can usually already see all of this stuff online, so seeing you show it on a stage is kind of pointless.”

Don’t be a show off: “Tell the audience about bad things. Failure and uncomfortable situations are part of life and people appreciate you sharing this stuff. It makes you more human, more believable, and people can relate to it.”

Don’t read your slides: “Avoid word-heavy slides. In fact, if you can do without words in slides at all, that’s brilliant (I’ve never actually managed this). The words should be coming out of your mouth, not being read by the audience from a screen. Slides are visual aids for your speaking, not a book.”

See? Easy. Just remember all these do’s and don’ts and you should be fine. The thing is, we know that hearing advice from professionals is all well and good, but when it comes down to it, you’re still going to get sweaty palms before you step onstage. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to work out how not to be nervous, and maybe that’s a good thing. As annoying, crippling, and embarrassing they are, nerves mean you’re not arrogant or complacent. Just ask Bruce Springsteen.

via 99U99U https://ift.tt/2HHh9wZ