Biophilia

Creative leadership

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 21:33:00 -0500

“Most people think that when you take on a big, impossible goal with a team, that you immediately set yourself up for failure. That history will show that every time such a goal is marked in the sky, and a team is assembled, that failure is the common outcome. I, for one, have seen the contrary. That the more aspirational goal you set as a leader, the more likely that it gets done. Because the quality of the goal, determines who will join your team. And it is often the best people in the world that want to take on the most difficult challenges of our times.”

http://creativeleadership.com/2013/02/02/screen-shot-2013-02-02-at-10-50-09-am-png/

feel the thoughts

Fri, 11 May 2012 01:39:07 -0400

What a person imagines he hears, and what the speaker has really implied, may be poles apart. Try to feel the thoughts behind the confusion of men’s verbiage.

"A process fed by design thinking will feel chaotic to those experiencing it for the first time. But..."

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:23:50 -0400

“A process fed by design thinking will feel chaotic to those experiencing it for the first time. But over the life of a project, it invariably comes to make sense and achieves results that differ markedly from the linear, milestone-based processes that define traditional business practices. In any case, predictability leads to boredom and boredom leads to the loss of talented people.”

- Tim Brown | Change By Design (via amotion)

Meditation

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:57:24 -0400

“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline, you have to practice it.”

Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson)

Drewbot: On Facebook Timeline: Teaching Data to Speak Humanely

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:11:25 -0400

Drewbot: On Facebook Timeline: Teaching Data to Speak Humanely:

dbreunig:

Yesterday, Facebook unveiled their new “Timeline” design. Largely imagined by Sam Lessin and Nicholas Feltron, the design coaxes personal actions recorded by Facebook into a humane, emotional, interface for a given history¹. Users can delve into their content not as images, notes, and…

ellyjonez: “If you went outside at exactly the same time every...

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:46:06 -0400

ellyjonez:

“If you went outside at exactly the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun appear to move? With great planning and effort, such a series of images can be taken. The figure-8 path the Sun follows over the course of a year is called an analemma. ”

知人者智，自知者明。勝人者有力，自勝者強。知足者富。強行者有志。不失其所者久。死而不亡者壽 To understand others is to be intelligent, To...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:50:01 -0400

知人者智，自知者明。勝人者有力，自勝者強。知足者富。強行者有志。不失其所者久。死而不亡者壽

To understand others is to be intelligent,
To understand yourself is to be enlightened.
To conquer others is to be forceful,
To conquer yourself is to be strong.
To know how to have enough is to be rich.
To powerfully enact is to have your will.
To not lose your place is to last long.
To die but not perish is to have longevity.

The amazing bower bird uses art and architecture to attract...

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 02:59:24 -0400

The amazing bower bird uses art and architecture to attract mates.

SOLICITING CRITICISM by Daniel Burka

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:41:59 -0400

During the past year, I’ve figured out a few decent techniques to encourage people to give you a critique. This is something I still struggle with so I’d appreciate your ideas as well. A few things that seem to work for me:

ASK FOR JUST ONE THING

If you ask people to tell you ‘anything’ or ‘everything’ that you could improve upon, they’ll usually stumble about and not give you anything useful. But, ask them for the ‘one thing’ you could improve on and they’ll at least wrack their brain to come up with a single criticism. This is much better than getting nothing.

ASK PEOPLE WHO KNOW YOU WELL

The best post-presentation critiques I’ve received have come from a long-time coworker and my father. People who’ve been on the other end of your own stinging criticisms are much more comfortable throwing some back at you. This is great! My dad’s a really nice guy, but he’s both heard me carp at him more than a few times and he’s a seasoned university lecturer. He was kind but blunt with several pieces of good advice.

ASK DRUNK PEOPLE

Seriously. After a workshop at Future of Web Apps in Miami last year, I asked the attendees to give me some honest feedback and got a tepid response. But… that night, a couple of the guys were pretty drunk and (standing a little too close for comfort and with potent whiskey breath) gave me a healthy dose of totally unvarnished advice. That advice, which was to show more examples and to cover less material but in more depth, was fantastic.

ASK GROUPS OF PEOPLE

This seemed counterintuitive to me. I assumed that if you cornered an individual that you could get good one-on-one advice. But, if you can coax just one person in a small group to give you a single piece of advice, the rest sometimes sense blood in the water and will join in too — yay! Once the ice is broken and people see that you actually didn’t rip the critiquer’s head off, it’s much easier for the other people to add their own comments.

BE PERSISTENT

People are eager to please. Heck, that’s why they’re being too nice to you in the first place. If you seem genuinely disappointed that no one is offering you criticism, people sometimes throw you a bone to please you. Like in the previous point, once you’ve broken the ice…

http://www.deltatangobravo.com/page1

“The Universe is Speaking to Us Incessantly. And everything that...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:56:21 -0500

“The Universe is Speaking to Us Incessantly. And everything that comes to us is part of its message directed to our soul. So we should also therefore express ourselves from the part of us that is universal, essential and inter-connected to all other beings.” - Pi Villaraza

"Content shifting …I am certain people want to shift content from discovery oriented devices..."

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:24:23 -0500

“

Content shifting

…I am certain people want to shift content from discovery oriented devices (laptop, satellite radio, etc.) to consumption oriented devices (tablet, sonos, etc.), and I am certain that we will see this get easier and easier in the coming years.

—Fred Wilson

”

- http://www.alistapart.com/articles/orbital-content/

Frontiers through the Ages

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:23:18 -0500

dbreunig:

Water, 1400
Land, 1840
Gold, 1850
Wire, 1880
Air, 1900
Celluloid, 1920
Plastic, 1950
Space, 1960
Silicon, 1980
Networks, 1990
Data, 2000

Paradise Parking by Photographer Peter Lippmann via EightHourDay

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:00:06 -0500

Paradise Parking by Photographer Peter Lippmann

via EightHourDay

From the incredibly talented Mike Matas:In November 2011 my...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:17:00 -0500

From the incredibly talented Mike Matas:

In November 2011 my girlfriend and I traveled to Japan, taking the train from Kyoto-Nara-Hakone-then to Tokyo. This film is made up of nearly 4,000 photos taken over one week in Japan.

Design to delight

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:29:02 -0500

Design to delight

To really think about design, you need to learn and think about ...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:26:00 -0500

To really think about design, you need to learn and think about everything other than it. Design is a vessel: the most important part is what it holds. As makers of things, the work gets better from outside influences, and gives us clarity about the purpose of the work: to inform, to persuade, and to delight. We’ll spend some time ruminating on what it means to delight our audiences, think of different ways to do so through mechanisms like storytelling, and realize that the real benefit of making anything is to nourish lives.

You can’t measure design. Why? Design is for people. People are illogical and emotional.

The opposite of a true statement is a false statement. the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth niels bohr

Cynicism isn’t the appropriate answer to profound truths

creative work is about embracing paradox

If you’re doing your job right as a designer, people will make stories about what you make.

Design is about gift-giving.

Tim Hawkinson - Möbius Ship “California-based artist Tim...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 02:12:44 -0500

Tim Hawkinson - Möbius Ship

“California-based artist Tim Hawkinson is known for taking everyday materials and altering them in imaginative ways, creating works that address broad issues about the intersection of human consciousness, nature and technology. Here, he employed a mix of found objects and common household materials—including twist ties, craft wood, staples, and packing material—which he transformed almost alchemically into a complex and awe-inspiring sculpture.”

feltron: (via partspermillion, zneeem) (via...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 02:06:46 -0500

feltron:

(via partspermillion, zneeem)

(via zneeem-deactivated20120203)

Amazing nature art of Jim Denevan

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:43:40 -0500

Amazing nature art of Jim Denevan

Inspirational Illustrations

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:13:00 -0500

Inspirational Illustrations