In the Bubble : Designing in a Complex World: John Thackara

I’m reading this book (Inside the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World) by John Thackara. So far I’m blown away by what he’s writing about. Finding a way to integrate this into my daily life is easier than finding a way to integrate it all into video production and design.

Thackara’s point – that we can do good for our world by integrating “local” and “here” and “now” and “lightness” into how we design everything – becomes clear when you study your interactions on a daily basis.

Many of the trends he recommends are at work currently in our world. In order to sustain our planet and our lives I think we need to work so that technology is a means again, and not the end.

A Website Creator Pokes Fun At His Industry

It’s always good when people poke fun of the advertising industry. Here’s an article about a guy who site does just that.

Deconstruction – thank god some people have sense of humor.

Learn art direction with paper and pencil, not a computer.

That’s basically one of the “rules” of advertising I heard from American Copywriter the other day.

Nothing could be more true.

I didn’t go to art school. I didn’t go to business school. I didn’t go to music school. I graduated with a Bachelor of Art in Labor and Industrial Relations and Psychology. So a lot of people without much experience would say I don’t have the academic qualification for what I do. Neither did Hitchcock. Johnny Cash doesn’t have a degree in songwriting. Blah Blah Blah.

I learned all of these things – photography/cinematography, design, orchestration and instrumentation – through doing them. Now, there are some who would say that I have no business doing these things sense I’ve never been formally trained in them. Well, even a pretentious audio production professor once told me that the sum total of what he teaches is physics and how to get a job as a studio lackey. “If you can shoot pool you can record music; it’s all angles and impact.”

We learn these things by doing, and by being smart enough to see their connections to one another.

When I was 13 years old and using my dad’s Mamiya Sekor 35mm still camera to shoot pictures on our family vacation to Pagosa Springs, I had no idea I was training for professional cinematography. But 20+ years of taking pictures later it’s pretty clear that trying to understand light and composition was a huge part of what it takes to do this thing.

And banging on my Hofner acoustic into a SM58 for hours a day certainly didn’t give me that Berkeley school of music pedigree or that Full Sail certificate. But, again, 20 years later that was the foundation of what taught me how to write, perform, record and mix something that my teenage stepdaughter will hum along to by the thirteenth measure.

Over the intervening years I’ve learned the rules of musical composition, design, eye line, aperature and f-stop settings, color balance, etc. etc. etc. And it’s been important to learn the rules of whatever you do, but the rules aren’t important so you can feel superior to your client or co-workers (in those cases rules just make you look like a jackass). The rules are important because they enable you to help people and so you know when it’s appropriate to break them and when it’s best to not.

The point isn’t that you don’t need school or training. The point is that you need to learn creative processes by doing. Learning is not a binary process. Learning is the ultimate analog. Why else to do we learn best by metaphor, concepts, trial and error? I feel sorry for all these people who’ve learned how to make music using a computer (I’m NOT saying their not musicians) or how to make films without holding a heavy metal camera up to their eye and cutting negatives, burning photo paper or splicing tape.

Bloody fingers and broken strings are just how you get there. And if you can’t play a left-handed instrument backwards, how are you gonna learn that in school?

I’m not a historian, but I have studied some linguistics; specifically, history of language.

I know for instance that the Romans spoke Latin and carried that language to almost all of the surrounding areas they conquered. I guess it’s possible my linguistics professor left out the part where the romans adopted the accent of Old English speakers. But I doubt it.

I’m watching HBO’s Rome for the first time and I call out to anyone else in the house who’ll listen “Why are these Romans speaking with a british accent?”

Is this part of some suspension of disbelief? Is it supposed to give more credibility to the show? If so, then why didn’t the people on Six Feet Under have a surfer accent? If I remember correctly, the producers of that show made Rachel Griffith lose her Aussy accent to make her – and hence the show – more credible.

When Mel Gibson did The Passion of the Christ he made Jesus speak Aramaic. I guess maybe the guys from Rome decided that “British” was the accenta franca of ancient Rome. (Wait. Did I just use latin?)

So I guess it best the question; why can’t the producers of Rome trust that the show will be compelling without the all the limeyness?

I will say this, they got a couple things right about ancient Rome, copious sex and “copious puss.” Now THAT’S authentic.

The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News – 04-Sep-05 – Bush and Katrina:
A time for action, not aloofness

This article from the staunchly conservative Manchester Union Leader regarding Bush and his actions in dealing with Hurricane Katrina says more than I ever could

This article from the Manchester Union Leader, a staunchly conservative newspaper from New Hampshire, says more clearly than I ever could the blunders of the current administration in the wake of the hurricane. So I’ll leave that part to them.

I took the picture above in New Orleans in Jackson Square in May of 2001. To me it embodies what the culture of New Orleans is about – the people who make it up.

The thing that overwhelms me about this tragedy — as if there wasn’t so much to overwhelm — is that the greatest loss from this whole thing is the loss of a culture. New Orleans is a culture unique unto itself. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. And in this world of free markets where ANYthing can be a commodity not much remains unexported.

But New Orleans culture, if you ignore the Popeye’s Chicken and “Girls Gone Wild” videos, has had but one distribution network – the home-bound citizens of New Orleans themselves. You have to go THERE to get it.

This hurricane and flood has wiped out all of the things that make the NOLA culture so beautiful. The people, especially those poor who couldn’t evacuate when ordered, ARE the culture of NOLA. They not only are the street dancers and musicians, the cooks and bartenders but they owned the city without ever paying out a dime.

The culture of NOLA is the voodoo shops, the bars, the junk shops, the folk art places. With these places gone, the culture goes with them.

Isn’t it ironic that the people who were left, the poor who couldn’t afford much, but owned the culture that is NOLA, were evacuated to the Super Dome. A stadium their tax dollars paid to build but into which their pennies couldn’t grant them entrance. In the end it was the impending destruction of their culture – their only asset – that guaranteed them a seat.

I will say this to anyone in America who’s reading; we, the people, (not the government) have made a beautiful outpouring of aid to the people of New Orleans. And THIS is a tribute to the culture that this tragedy has cost us all.

Please listen to this. Nagin’s message is getting lost in all of the hype about the “lawlessness” in New Orleans.

If Stone Phillips can get to the surviors with a camera, why can’t the federal governement get therre with water.

MetaChat – Nagin Interview from WWL-AM.

To live in New York must be what it’s like to live inside an audio compressor. Everything moves a such a pace, and all these diverse sources come through that one spot before they are processed and spit back out to dissipate into the world.

It doesn’t surprise me that those people can be so creative. The diverse types of people who live there, the amount of cultural influences all impinging on them from different angles.

I had a chance to listen to Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra speak. That guy has his head screwed on askew; which is a HUGE compliment.

Ben talked about possibility. The fact that everything around us is invented, made up, bullshit. The good, the bad, the ugly; it’s all an invention of someone. Whether we invent it for ourselves, or someone else invents it and forces it on us in some attempt at throwing us into the downward spiral of worrying about whether we’re good enough, measuring up, doing okay.

Things like “good enough,” “measuring up (or down),” and “doing okay” are ALL invented. It’s ALL invented. They’re simply standards someone (often someone else) puts out there for us to trip over. To feed an ego or to establish a hierarchy of existence among people. Doing the right thing, being the “right” person, being “cool” is all made up bullshit. It’s all INVENTED bullshit.

The standards that REALLY exist in the world are the standards of possibility.

How are you falling into the trap of wondering if/how you measure up, rather than inventing a possibility for yourself and others to live in?

You’ll spend your whole goddamned life trying to live up to the “measurement” world, and COMPLETELY miss the process of possibility.

Ask yourself, which is worse? Not meeting some invented standard, or not finding the possible?

And remember rule number six . . .

DON’T TAKE YOURSELF SO GODDAMNED SERIOUSLY.

Yesterday we recorded radio broadcasting hall-of-fame nominee Mike Murphy. He was in recording a series of radio and TV ads for our client, Dry Basement & Foundation Systems. Mike is the consumate professional; great personality, no nonsense, amazing and natural delviery, very off-the-cuff and great to be around.

When you watch and listen to someone like Mike work you realize what nearly 50 years in the business means. As Copywriter Steve Jackson put it, “Mike is a Copywriters dream.” And he’s a producers dream too; hit record and go.

We’ll do more work with Mike in the coming months so check back for pictures and samples of his ads.

Rockridge Institute – “War on Terror,” Rest In Peace

George Lakoff looks at the armistice of the phrase “War on Terror.” Very interesting read.