bad banana blog

Reinvention

HILLMAN from Hillman Curtis on Vimeo.

I was saddened to hear about the recent passing of Hillman Curtis, a true pioneer in the world of design and creativity. In the video above, where you will see a man ravished from the cancer which would eventually kill him, you will also see a man who had the courage and drive to persue his creative calling.

Near the end of the video, he tells young designers to "be prepared to reinvent yourself."

"Be prepared to go out on a limb, occassionally. And be prepared to do the things that you feel strongly about, that maybe other people don't. That maybe don't have an immediate source of income or revenue. For me, what started out as a vacation, a creative vacation, from these bigger corporate jobs, has become my life calling."

I'm not a designer. And I'm certainly not young. But I've been on a journey, myself, that started out as a creative vacation. I think in some ways, this blog played a small part in getting me started on this journey. I move on down the road, inspired and energized. I hope this blog helped you feel that way at times, as well.

This will be my last post here.

 

Thank You, Mr. Ogilvy

Start a blog or open a Facebook account and, after choosing passwords and a sceen name, you'll be faced with having to upload a photo to represent you online. This is what happened to me in the first weekend of March, 2007 when I simultaneously started this blog, as well as my @badbanana Twitter account. I had no real intention of keeping my Twitter account, so I just reached for a photo that I already had on my desktop.

That photo was of legendardy ad man David Ogilvy. Today is the 100th anniverary of his birth.

Like most aspiring young copywriters in college, I treasured Ogilvy's books. But he represented far more than old-school wisdom in my mind. Here was a larger-than-life ad god. An industrial titan. A creative mind who respected the housewife reading a magazine ad just as much as the factory worker whose job depended upon a successful new product launch. Years later, when I started my own agency, many of his principles drove the way we did our work for clients.

So, just as some people might choose a favorite sport team's logo for an avatar, I chose a picture of David Ogilvy.

When it became obvious that I would keep my Twitter account for a while, I tried to move on from that avatar. Each change, however, caused a huge outcry from followers. There was just something about that face that made my strange and sometimes humorous observations just a tad bit more interesting. The oddest thoughts just seemed a little more normal coming out of that mouth. Or even odder.

The point is, I'm stuck with David. And I've grown to enjoy telling people about the real man behind the avatar. Even if it is sometimes strange for people to say they're not anxious to meet me in person because they don't want to know what I really look like. They prefer the illusion.

David would certainly understand that. While on a tour of a shirt factory once, he famously refused to go into the room to see how the shirts were actually made. He preferred to think they were lovingly hand-made by little old ladies. The truth would only serve to disappoint, he said.

I'm sure Ogilvy wouldn't mind me using his face on Twitter. And I'm positive he'd be fascinated with all these new technologies transforming the way marketing is done today. He was a research man at heart. The ability to record and analyze views and clicks and real-time conversations would have fascinated him to no end. Although I'm also quite sure he'd have a stern warning to the modern-day ad men who think in terms of avatars. These are people, he'd say.

Today, I'm in Cannes, reporting from and commenting on the largest advertising festival in the world on behalf of Cannes Centrale. To ad professionals, this is the center of the universe. And, quite frankly, I've spent twenty years working on the outer reaches of this universe. I never imagined I'd be here.

So it's only fitting that I'll be right here, on this day. A day when a red carpet will be rolled out along the Promenade de la Croisette in honor of David Ogilvy's birth 100 years ago.

Thank you, Mr. Ogilvy. I wouldn't be here without you.

 

An Interview with "Weird Al" Yankovic

I’ll be heading to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity next week on behalf of Cannes Centrale (where you can follow along, whether you're going or not). To get myself ready to walk into the world’s most creative lion’s den, so to speak, I asked a few of my friends if they’d chat with me about the State of Creativity in 2011.

Next up: “Weird Al” Yankovic, three-time Grammy award winning artist whose 13th studio album, “Alpocalypse,” will be released June 21. Al gets serious with me about his creative process.

You had your first hit in 1982 and have no doubt seen it all in this business in the years since. Loaded question, I know, but what's the state of creativity in the music business in 2011?

Wow, starting with the easy ones, huh? Well, it’s tempting to be flip and say that the industry is creatively bankrupt at this point, but of course that’s not really accurate. Pop music has always been kind of ridiculous. It’s nothing new. Pop music is always changing, always morphing, but much of it seems to be variations on the same stale universal themes—albeit, in some cases, today we’re likely to hear much more graphic or provocative iterations of those themes.

I think a lot of the creativity in the music industry these days is coming from the marketing side—the industry as they knew it collapsed a decade ago, and they’ve been struggling to stay afloat. When your back is against the wall like that, you tend to get very creative very quickly.

Any kid can post a parody song or video on YouTube in a matter of minutes. I guess that's both good and bad. How has technology changed the way you approach what you do?

The Internet has been a double-edged sword for people in the music business. In this post-Napster world, a new generation has grown up thinking that all music is free for the taking, which doesn’t exactly help artists’ sales numbers. But at the same time, the Internet is an incredible promotional tool—with a little marketing skill, you can make millions of people aware of your wonderful new album that they’re most likely just going to download for free anyway.

A couple other Internet pet peeves: There are a lot of “funny” songs floating around the web with my name attached to them, even though—surprise—they’re not really by me. Honestly, it does my reputation no favors when people are tricked into thinking that some vulgar or mediocre song is part of my oeuvre. Also, there are tens of thousands of people on YouTube doing song parodies—that’s great for them, I suppose, but that means that I’ll never again be the only (and certainly not the first) person to parody any given hit song. But, I just put my blinders on and proceed boldly ahead, hoping people won’t notice that I’m the 20,000th person on the planet to do a Miley Cyrus parody.

An Interview with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo

I’ll be heading to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity next week on behalf of Cannes Centrale (where you can follow along, whether you're going or not). To get myself ready to walk into the world’s most creative lion’s den, so to speak, I asked a few of my friends if they’d chat with me about the State of Creativity in 2011.

Next up: Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter.

There’s been some recent discussion about social media making us all a little dumber. I’m not smart enough to know what that means. But I do know there’s a difference between knowing stuff and creating stuff. Is social networking making us more or less creative?

I’ll give the same answer I gave to the Bill Keller (at the time, Executive Editor of the New York Times) tweet, “#Twittermakesusstupid. Discuss.” My response was a paraphrase of the Marshall McLuhan quote: “It is the framework that changes with each new technology, not just the picture in the frame.”

Twitter and other social media make us no less dumb or smart than any other technology or communication platform or service. Twitter allows us all to converse efficiently around the events in our lives and the important thoughts and interests in our lives. These can be deep and meaningful conversations or they can be silly, childish conversations. It’s not the technology that drives us down either path.

I know a lot of wildly creative people who have eagerly embraced Twitter. I have my theories as to why. What are yours?

A few comedians I know have commented that Twitter forces them to be great editors and really keep their material “tight.” They have frequently told me that they will write a tweet that’s longer than 140 characters, and when they get it down to 140 or less, they realize it’s a lot better; that the simpler version is funnier.

Your theories are probably better than mine. It is also probably the case that Twitter makes it easy to be creative in fragments, which is the way in which many creative people work.

An Interview with Roger von Oech

 

I’ll be heading to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity next week on behalf of Cannes Centrale (where you can follow along, whether you're going or not). To get myself ready to walk into the world’s most creative lion’s den, so to speak, I asked a few of my friends if they’d chat with me about the State of Creativity in 2011.

First up: Roger von Oech, creativity expert and author of the seminal how-to book on enhancing personal creativity, “A Whack on the Side of the Head.”

How has the role or importance of creativity in business changed over the past twenty years?

Creativity in business has always been important, but until say 15-20 years ago, top management typically expected it from a narrow segment of the company (R&D, engineering, and parts of marketing and advertising). Today, creativity is encouraged in many more functions that were previously told to do things “by the book” (finance, distribution and fulfillment, inventory management, etc.).

Over the past 25 years or so, more and more responsibility to adapting to change and making improvements has been pushed out from executives to the people doing a specific job. Thus we see companies encouraging many, many small changes. This used to be called “continuous improvement” (or whatever the Japanese equivalent was). Today, it’s called innovation. Creativity has been democratized.

We live in an amazing time where the answer to almost any question is just a few clicks away. Some experts are saying this isn’t necessarily a good thing. We’re not learning as much. Not remembering as much. If an idea is a new combination of existing elements, what happens if our brains aren’t holding as many elements? Will our ideas get smaller?

I agree with your central premise here. In order to be creative, you have to have the basic materials with which to create: facts, information, knowledge, experience, and whatever else you can find. If you don’t have this storehouse of diverse materials, it’s more difficult to make new (and unusual) combinations. Also, if an idea or concept isn’t in your head (as opposed to being at the end of a Google search), it’s very difficult to drag it up into consciousness. I personally am glad that I’ve spent a lifetime trying to acquire knowledge and experiences in a variety of different areas.

I think a good memory is a blessing. I also believe it is a skill that can be practiced and developed. If you get lazy (“let the machines do the work”), it can atrophy. This obviously has negative consequences on one’s creative abilities.

Eccentricity and the Creative Mind

"I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping." -Truman Capote (pictured above)

My friend (and long-time friend of this blog), Mark McGuinness, has written a wonderful piece at 99 Percent about eccentricity and creative work habits. As a creative coach, Mark has closely observed the work habits of creative people from all kinds of disciplines, and has come to view eccentricity as more than just a quaint offshoot of a creative lifestyle. In Mark's opinion, eccentricity is essential. Read the whole piece here.

Creativity, Lateral Thinking, and Humor

 

In this televised course that ran in the early 1980s, Edward de Bono discusses why creative people are oftentimes very rigid, how lateral thinking is vital for progress, and why humor is the most significant characteristic of the human mind. An informative glimpse into the human mind, as well as into a 1980s BBC studio audience. (Plus, check out that intro.)

Overcoming Creative Block

Scott Hansen asked 25 artists and creators the same question: What do you do to inspire your creativity when you find yourself in a rut? Read the answers over on Scott's blog, ISO50. And be sure to read the additional tips left by readers in the comments section. A must read for any creative.

Via Creative Creativity.

Reckon

Time may be running short for holiday gift orders, but at the very least you can head into the new year with your very own creative master t-shirt, tote, or pillow from Reckon. My buddy Chris Weige—poet, blogger, and silkscreen artist of the stars—can set you up with anything from a Joe Strummer onesie to a Frank Zappa pillow. Find your favorite creative master in comedy, music, philosophy, art, film, or television. And if you can't find the creative inspiration you're looking for, Chris takes special orders. Tell him Tim sent you.

Silly Walks and Creative Ruts

Comic genius John Cleese sat down for an interview a few years ago and had a lot to say about creativity and the creative process. I keep coming back to this passage, where he discusses the importance of whim...

I knew a wonderful teacher once—a tutor. He tutored my stepsons and my elder daughter. He said to me, "Always start where the energy is."
    People make an awful mistake by starting where the energy isn't. If you're feeling very world-weary—and sometimes we're all in that boat—you have to sit down with something that's going to engage you. That doesn't mean you just switch on the TV and watch a cartoon, but it does mean asking, What would be fun? Maybe take a piece of paper and a pencil and start drawing silly things. Go for a walk. Just sit very quietly watching your breathing. Anything. Just allow the whim to get you going.   
    Now, you can't do this all of the time; it's too disconnected. But I think in that particular frame of mind, when you run out of energy and motivation, I think you have to go right down to the instinct, right down to a whim.
    I'm coming up on 60, and I'm wondering where my life will begin to go. I need to take a slightly different direction. I talked to a very wise man, and he said, "If you're trying to find a new direction, don't plan it, because this [pointing to his head] has been planning your life up to now. You can't plan something new with the same old apparatus." He said, "Leave a gap. Leave a space, and just do things on auto for a while. Just see where these whims take you."
    It's like creativity. You have to follow it without knowing where you're going. If you try to control where you're going, you're back in the same process. It's like asking a piece of machinery that's broken to mend itself.

Via Creative Creativity. Image via.