“Spectacularly creative” people in many fields are often introverted, independent, individualistic AND not joiners by nature, says Cain.  So, they can’t work or learn in groups, can’t collaborate productively, shouldn’t be a part of a team and must work in privacy and without distraction.  Working in offices with shared space, being asked to contribute to discussions or attend meetings, she writes, will lead to their suffering from higher blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion.

Oh, and if they’re interrupted while they work, they make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish!

Ms. Cain, according to the article, has a forthcoming book on “the power of introverts” and much of her article cites research collected for the book and excerpts from biographies to back up her premise.

Of the many comments posted, as well as with the numerous retweets, links and reposts to sites like LinkedIn that crossed my path as the article made the social rounds, the consensus was in overwhelming agreement with Cain.

“Totally agree,” was one that caught my eye immediately, mainly because a former boss and Creative Director posted it.  Others shared stories of pointless meetings, unproductive brainstorms, decisions made by “bean counters,” inept management and the general suffering and soul-sucking terribleness that apparently pervades their workplaces – because they have to work with others.

To the Editor:

Susan Cain makes one valid point in that creative people often prefer to work in solitude.  Being a “creative person” myself, and having worked for many years alongside other designers, writers, programmers, directors, editors, animators and fine artists, I concur that we “creatives” aren’t always the most social lot.

Cain uses quotes like “without great solitude, no serious work is possible,” by Picasso, and takes advice from Apple founder Steve Wozniak to “work alone… not on a committee.  Not on a team.”  She even hauls in loner hall-of-famers like Moses, Jesus and Buddha to show that great thinking is a solitary process.

The problem is that she then makes a giant leap to conclude that teamwork, collaboration, classroom education and brainstorming are essentially useless – even bad for business.   Creative high achievers are not joiners or “group thinkers,” she suggests – they function at a higher level and shouldn’t be held back by the tedium of workplace interaction.

That Cain is charmed by a romantic idea of the quiet genius, working without constrictions like schedules, meetings, budgets… and reality is obvious.  What’s not so obvious is whether she has any insight to offer companies that employ or wish to employ and retain innovative employees.

A good starting point might be for her to recognize that all work environments can be adjusted to improve productivity and nurture innovation – however, focusing solely on the needs of “creative employees” isn’t the way to do it.  Companies are teams, and teams have schedulers and “bean counters,” in addition to creatives.  And, not all “creatives” are created equal, for that matter.

Collaboration is about problem solving together – not creativity-killing groupthink – and being able to see problems from all perspectives is essential to solving them.

Markus Horak, 2012

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Design for the elderly – or, “design for my future self,” to put it in a way that may seem more relevant to some – is a topic that I have been interested in for many years and have written previously about in this blog.  It’s also a topic that doesn’t seem to get nearly the amount of attention that it deserves.

Click here to check out the site, preview the book – and see a completely fresh take on what “retirement living” can mean (provided that the funds are available).  The project has rekindled my interest in this area of design and introduced me to a new term, “aging in place.”  It’s poetic and simple, but says so much about how I, and I’m sure many others, would like to experience their later life… however far that may be down the road.

During the summer season, the parking lots are full, and no-vacancy signs buzz on and off along the strip.

In Maine, however, the beach season is short and traffic is all but gone by late September.  Pools are drained,  plastic furniture is stored away, shuffleboards and bocce courts are covered and knickknack shops and pancake houses close for the winter.

Maybe it’s the extreme contrast between high and low season, but the effect is palpably melancholic, eerily quiet and, in my opinion, the best time to spend a day exploring.  I took these pictures in October – wandering around, peeking into shop windows, imagining histories and completely enjoying the off off… off season-ness of it.

Nothing says summer’s over in quite the same way – and there’s not a more compelling reason to drive along the coast in the fall than the fact that no one else seems to want to be there at that time… except me.

See you next year.

© Markus Horak, 2011

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All businesses evolve.  Trends pass, technology eases some tasks and complicates others, economies shrink and grow, and new markets emerge – while others disappear.

Businesses adapt accordingly, or they fade away.

"video" clothing & holographic projections - future marketing and media design challenges?

Over the past 20 years, I’ve had the right-place, right-time advantage of being at the center of some of the most iconic brand transformations, product introductions and technology shifts in the media and entertainment industry.  Working for a series of innovative branding and design firms put me in a front row seat, then on stage, and eventually in the conductor’s chair for cable channel launches, identity overhauls and high-profile commercial campaigns. I’ve been on board for countless equipment and software “firsts,” and navigated through waves of techniques, methodologies and theories before they were scrapped, replaced and then scrapped again.

Change has been, and will always be, at the heart of this industry.

Media and entertainment design, packaging and promotion are, on a very basic level, window dressing.  A big part of what we do is to take our product (channels, shows, news, events, movies, music, etc.) and display it in ways that catch the attention of passers-by on the busy, worldwide, multi-platform sidewalk.

From a strategic perspective, that dressing is also the visual representation of market insight, research and forward thinking that comes together in one big, dimensional and tangible brand message for the viewer.

The broadcast media industry, of course, is changing again.  Companies are now contemplating the best way to negotiate with consumers whom, thanks to the internet and social networks, refuse to accept their news and entertainment served up in traditional formats or on set schedules.  While the basic structure of movies, television shows and video hasn’t changed substantially, the way they’re watched has.

This latest digital / cultural / behavioral / distribution upheaval is still playing out.  And, as traditional media companies cobble together and solidify their responses to it, a new crop of competitors is free to wade into the mix with tailored-from-scratch solutions that nimbly straddle both old and new.  And, viewers continue to do whatever works best for them.

Before Facebook, Google and YouTube, et al, web-based businesses mostly competed for hits with gimmicky graphics and print & broadcast advertising – acting like traditional media companies, only with online distribution.  It took the “dot com” bubble to burst, and a little ingenuity to happen, before the real potential – the social connectivity – of the web could emerge and take hold.  Now that the web has stepped out of the shadow of its older siblings, traditional media companies are scrambling to evolve their businesses to deal with the competition.

Digital-vs-traditional content and its distribution, packaging, promotion and market share woes are only the beginning of the story.  As much as the internet has morphed into the business, entertainment and communications juggernaut that it is today, it’s still just an awkward teenager with plenty of growing to do.

Further, we’ve barely begun to see what advances new hardware might usher in.  Who says, for example, that developers of consumer products must remain confined to the limits of rectangular film or video aspect ratios just because that’s what works best for television or the printed page?

Which brings us back to change and adaptation.

On a recent episode of The Office, the paper and office supply company Dunder Mifflin introduced its latest offering, the Sabre Pyramid, a tablet to end all tablets.  Weighing in at a substantial three pounds, this triangular titan also comes with sexy accessories, including a battery pack and memory booster to supplement the device’s “50L” capacity.

It’s a wonderfully snarky jab at the keystone cop response by every other non-iPad tablet manufacturer in the market right now (the jury is still out on Kindle’s Fire).  A comparison, though, could be made to much of traditional media’s response to the challenges brought on by digital platforms and an entirely new consumer paradigm.  We’ve watched the music industry flail for years, printed newspapers and magazines near extinction and even highly successful “new” companies bumble ridiculously with their digital strategies – can you say Netflix?

Apple’s iPad and i-everything success comes from being willing to go in completely new directions, then, from lining up great products behind impeccable design and marketing.  Easily enough said – and, based on the examples above alone, not so easily done.

A good starting point, however, for media companies and their marketing teams, would be to embrace the potential of future technologies and focus less on how to control the havoc they may wreak on existing business models and strategies.

Recycling and reacting solely to what the other companies are doing will always be an outdated plan.

© Markus Horak, 2011

You may also be interested in the following posts:

> Designing For An Alternate Reality – All Aboard The Transmedia Train

> Six Tips for Hitting a Design Brainstorm Bull’s-Eye

> The Skinny on Briefs – How to Write Creative Direction for Designers

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Cathedral Woods on Monhegan island, Maine, is a naturally spiritual place.  Densely packed with soaring pines, it covers a lush and wild stretch of the island and remains cool and serenely quiet throughout the day.

For decades, children have built small “houses” out of twigs, bark and fallen leaves that are intended to shelter the forest’s alleged sprite and fairy populations.  The houses are creatively tucked into nooks, woven into low hanging branches, shored up alongside protruding roots and even hidden in stumps and behind rocks.

It’s a swell tradition, but one that also has its detractors – namely those that object to the aspiring architects’ urge to build newer, flashier and more blinged-out abodes.  The fairy housing boom has unfortunately seen its share of unscrupulous contractors who disregard local zoning rules (translation, they leave litter behind, build new rather than renovate, and often kill living plants for their creations… just like in the real world).

While photographing these structures this summer, I thought about how they must reflect the homes and neighborhoods of the kids who built them.  Pine cone paved driveways divide adjoining tracts along the main path, and countless other small details give them all a touch of individuality without ever straying too far from the norm.  It’s a mini-suburb – of a big forest – on a tiny island.

© Markus Horak, 2011

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This brief story is about trust in information.  Trust in what we know and what we think we know.  Trust that we are prepared.  And, trust that what we learn is correct, sound and adequate.

I have always been fascinated and somewhat entertained by instructional drawings – the more dire the situation depicted, the more interested I tend to be.  Despite the potentially lifesaving information they provide, safety guides, like airplane seat cards and “conspicuously posted” Heimlich maneuver posters, primarily catch my attention for a single reason – they’re morbidly humorous.

In an effort to boil intricate details or complex choreography down to a series of easily comprehensible steps, instructional illustrators often unintentionally over-simplify their drawings.  The results are either dreamy or cartoonish, and fail to convey the severity of the situation or task at hand.

From my perspective, this seems especially true of vintage or foreign instructional illustrations for which new wisdom or methodology has replaced outdated techniques – or, where printed instructions in other languages add to, rather than alleviate, any lingering confusion.

A number of years ago, I happened to be at an outdoor antiques market picking through a pile of mostly terrible drawings and watercolors, when I came across a small stack of black and white gouache paintings with markings that suggest they were intended for print.  I was immediately captivated by what seemed to be a very contemporary series of stylized and minimalist depictions of hand-to-hand battle.  Each drawing was titled in pencil with a name like “Stop a Body Kick” or “Disarm Opponent With Gun.”

“Block Attack (Dagger or Club)” stood out in particular for its subject’s surreal lack of emotion and zombie-like movement.  In it, an unenthusiastic Theodore Roosevelt lookalike with dagger in hand, shuffles toward an unarmed man.  Obviously, the quick-thinking would-be-victim has been trained in self-defense as evidenced by his ability to halt the attacker with a single outstretched arm.  We can only imagine the accompanying text, which likely assured trainees that this was a perfectly sound approach to dealing with lumbering knife wielders.

There’s no way to know what manual or guidebook the series was intended for, so I’ll assume it was military training, based on the identical tailored uniforms the two men are wearing.  There’s also no way to know if the men who learned from these illustrations ever had to fend off attackers or if they were adequately prepared when it happened.

Perhaps just feeling confident in their preparedness was preparation enough.

This painting is my inspiration for the seventh in a series of curious anonymous stories.

© Markus Horak, 2011

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Learning to see the full spectrum of color – and understanding how individual shades combine to create new tones and hues – are two of the most basic skills a designer or artist will ever learn.

Beginning with the universally experienced elementary school tempera paint mistake – commonly known as icky brown – we all gradually improve and expand on our mixing skills.  Some of us even master that purple we were going for in the first place.

Being more than a few years beyond those early lessons, I’ve learned a thing or two about color – and continue to do so however and whenever I can.  I’ve written about traveling with an eye for color, even traveling specifically to seek out new colors.  I pay attention to color use from past decades and am much more aware of how they can change from season to season and at different times of day.  I am very interested in how colors affect mood, habit, appetite and even memory – and I’m fascinated by how culture plays into our understanding of, and relationship to them.

A new study, conducted by Columbia University, recently caught my attention.  Researchers concluded that, since the advent of search engines, we have reorganized how we handle memory storage.  Our brains increasingly rely on the internet, much the same way we depend on the memories of friends and family, to hold onto facts and details that are important to us.  We simply choose to forget things we are confident we can dig up again online.

There was a time, not too long ago, when a trip to a public library’s image collection marked the beginning of almost any job requiring a visual reference.  You’d pop in, riffle through hundreds or thousands of printed photos and mounted pages clipped from magazines.  If you were lucky, you’d stumble upon something close to what you had in mind – sometimes even exactly what you wanted.

Now, of course, a simple web search brings up hundreds or even thousands of the exact images you were looking for.  Need a photo showing which way a Thonet chair is bent or how many wrinkles a Shar Pei has?  You’ll find it many times over.

Thinking about this in terms of color reference, it’s safe to assume that most designers now use the web as their primary resource.  Hop online, search for French farmhouse, 1950′s office, or tropical rainforest, for example, and voilà… instant palette.

I would argue, however, that, like flavors, colors need to be experienced in order to be understood.  Seeing a Mediterranean blue actually in the Mediterranean, with the sky, light and surroundings in balance – as opposed to, say, seeing that same garish blue in Milwaukee – is a bit like comparing summer tomatoes to winter tomatoes.  If you’ve never experienced a freshly picked Beefsteak or heirloom in August, you might think a January version is a perfect substitute.

With this in mind, I keep a camera at close reach and take countless shots that I can refer to, or draw from on future projects.  Taking my own photos allows me to remember exactly what the color was about and why it caught my eye in the first place.

I’m happy to not have to remember visual details of design elements or to have to leave my desk to find them – for that, I have Google to thank.  But, until the web can store mood, experience and context, I’ll keep my own color references.

Below is a small sample of shots I’ve taken in various places over the past year, arranged by color – hot pinks, not-so-icky warm earth tones, and cool blues.

© Markus Horak, 2011

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INCORPORATING FOUND TEXTURES AND PATTERNS INTO MOTION GRAPHIC PROJECTS – ADDING DEPTH AND PERSONALITY IN THE PROCESS.

For years now, and probably since I started working as a graphics and motion designer, I have been drawn to unusual textures and patterns.  Specifically, I have become a connoisseur of the types of vintage and antique surfaces that can’t be realistically duplicated by even the most sophisticated software.

It seems to me that the more advanced computer programs become at generating slick, reflective and transparent surfaces, and the easier and more affordable these programs become, the less variety we see in design across television and the web.

Textured and patterned surfaces take time and skill to collect, coordinate and present in pleasing arrangements – and it’s simply far easier to create “hi-tech” and polished looking graphics than it is to work in a more tactile direction.

I’m not suggesting that all designs should incorporate complex found textures and patterns, but it would be refreshing to see them implemented more frequently in network branding, commercials and show titles.

Truly memorable graphics are always those that enhance and reinforce the mood and content of what they promote, and do so in a fresh and novel way.  If impeccably lit, transparent and shiny surfaces, choreographed splashes of liquids, highly polished and flaming parts of mystery machinery, or fly-throughs of glowing letters in deep space accomplish this, then I’m in favor of their use (sort of).  If not, I’d prefer to see something more original – something that shows at least a modicum of creative stretch on the part of the design team.

Recently, a few articles, blog posts and web sites have popped up that are dedicated to the “new” trend of “tactile design.”  Apparently, a group of designers has become so disenchanted with the “soulless” and “cold” look of contemporary digital techniques and graphics, that they have started a rebellion of sorts.

The interesting twist this time around is that the newly invigorated movement toward “tactile design” seems to primarily be coming from young designers that have never known design without software.  They presumably have taken the most current 2D / 3D design and animation software for a spin and discovered its many limitations.  Instead of pushing the software to go further, they’ve stepped away from their desks or out of their studios and are now extolling the virtues of… found design.

Hallelujah.

In this spirit of tactile design, I’ve included frames below from a recently completed project that incorporated a mix of over 100 found textures and patterns.  Plaids, herringbones, denims and faded florals were mixed with tea stained, scribbled and age-vignetted papers to create the final animation.

You can read more about the project and watch the final piece here.

© Markus Horak, 2011

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Cursive handwriting is still widely taught in American public and private elementary schools, but, its use by current students and young adults is in rapid decline (read more here and here).  When handwritten essays were introduced to the SAT in 2006, only 15% of the 1.5 million students who took the test wrote their answers in cursive.  The rest chose to print.

Just as keyboards and recording devices helped make shorthand an unnecessary skill for office staffs and journalists, a range of new devices and modes of communication has gradually eaten away at the relevance of fast and artful penmanship.

And, with more and more testing-oriented, budget-challenged school systems removing cursive from their elementary curriculum, it’s only a matter of time before entire groups of Americans will find some – if not all – of the following logos to be illegible:

What will this mean for companies that have developed logos and other aspects of their branding and advertising with the use of script or cursive fonts?  Will they find it necessary to re-design using block letters, doing away with – in many cases – decades or even centuries-old identities in order to remain accessible to all readers?

At the very least, this latest development represents a potential sea change for graphics professionals who will lose the ability to base their designs on flowing cursive letter forms.

Does it make financial or strategic sense, going forward, for any company to introduce a logo based on a script font?

As a term, “John Hancock” refers generically to a signature – and putting your John Hancock on a document means adding a mark that is as unique as your fingerprint.  Looking at the stylized handwriting of the original John Hancock in the logo above, I’m reminded of the significance of his grandly overstated and flamboyant signature on the Declaration of Independence.

Would we know his name today at all if he had printed it in block letters?

© Markus Horak, 2011

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scene from "L’Arrivé d’un Train" - 1895

One persistent scrap of film “fakelore” is that moviegoers in the 1890s bolted from theaters, terrified by footage of an oncoming locomotive in the Lumière brothers film L’Arrivé d’un Train.  Others are that The Jazz Singer was the first feature “talkie” with sync audio – and that D.W. Griffith invented “film language.”

More examples here.

Historians question the likelihood of spectators running hysterically from a sequence of flickering black and white images of a moving train.  Being pioneers in film simply allowed the Lumières to over-hype the thrill of seeing their movie – and who at the time knew better?

Likewise, Al Jolson wasn’t the first actor to be recorded on a soundtrack, but his movie was a financial triumph and is therefore most often referred to.  And, the D.W. Griffith credit likely grew out of the director’s self-promotion efforts years prior to The Birth of a Nation.

I couldn’t help thinking about these quasi-markers in film history, while attending the Power To The Pixel and Wired Magazine Cross-Media Forum held in New York last week.  As each new speaker introduced his or her contributions to the nascent format of transmedia, the “new” frontier of interactive entertainment, I thought about the story of the Lumières’ audiences.  I wondered which member, if any, of the panel would be able to claim his or her own shockingly real speeding locomotive and, with it, a place in history.

Transmedia is a form of storytelling that involves a traditional element like a film, video or book – and combines it with audience interaction via social media, story-specific merchandise, game elements and events, etc.   This allows the creators to delve much further into details that weren’t, or couldn’t be explored in the original film.

An ideal transmedia experience could be visually represented as a hole smashed into a piece of glass with thousands of cracks emanating from the center point of impact.  The movie, TV or web show is the center, and the cracks moving outward from that point each represent a possible offshoot of the narrative.

Ever wonder what was on a bookshelf or in an adjacent room when watching a scene in a movie?  In transmedia, not only is there probably a way to find out, but there just may be a number of cracks – or tangents, clues and surprises, intended for your discovery in doing so.

Transmedia’s momentum is beginning to pick up as more projects are introduced to finance partners and collaborators from across the entertainment industry.  Major players are also currently using the format to extend their top-earning properties like Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, Microsoft’s Halo and James Cameron’s Avatar.

Valemont University website

Check out MTV’s Valemont series here to see an example of a transmedia “Alternate Reality Game” in use.

Writers and directors who currently create and drive these experiences refer to themselves as “story architects.”  The Producer’s Guild of America has also recently created a new category to recognize transmedia producers.

How and when visual designers will begin taking on more than a peripheral role remains to be seen.

In transmedia, the idea is that stories can – and should – be told across a range of media and in multiple formats, including those that are entirely visual or experiential.  That could easily translate to possibilities for interior and sets designers, animators, packaging & graphics experts, fashion and costume, interface developers and event designers – the people who already work to tell visual stories, bridge cultures and communicate complicated concepts daily.

You can find out more about transmedia here and here .

© Markus Horak, 2011

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