June 30, 2010
the more capable
Hugh MacLeod
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
NY NY |
$275 |
Archive for June, 2010
June 28, 2010
time to make the donuts
[“Time To Make The Donuts”. Famous Dunkin’ Donuts campaign from 1984.]
I was talking to a very successful New Yorker friend of mine, a finance guy, about why he never went into the restaurant business, in spite of his family connections with it.
“Uuuugh, No thanks,” he said. “Look, with a restaurant, you have three basic scenarios.”
He went on:
1. Let’s say you open a restaurant and business never takes off. Congratulations! You’ve now lost all your money and have spent the last three years of your life watching your life’s work go down the drain.
2. Let’s say your restaurant is really successful. Congratulations! You’ve now got 7 days-a-week, 18 hours a day of high stress craziness, dealing with all those pushy customers, the neurotic waiters and the psycho kitchen staff.
3. Let’s say your business is just so-so. Neither a hit, nor a disaster. Congratulations! You’ve now got the worst of both worlds. All the stress and the hours, none of the money or glory. Woo-hoo!
Hmmm.… Listening to my friend, it kinda sounds like all the businesses of pretty much every self-employed person I know these days.
See “Fred The Baker” in the video above? That’s pretty much all their lives, right now. And mine. “Time to make the donuts”. No wonder I find it the ad so funny.
Would my friends have it any other way? Of course not. But if you want to be successful, that’s the life you must choose, for better or worse. So it goes.
daily bizcard 045: adam ostrow
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, goes to Adam Ostrow, the Editor-In-Chief of Mashable, the world’s third largest blog.
I remember (and it wasn’t that long ago) when Masahble was just a small blog, run by Pete Cashmore out of his bedroom in Aberdeen, Scotland, while he was still living with parents. Now Mashable’s “bigger than Elvis”- the rise was meteroic– faster than Huffington Post’s or Techcrunch’s, even.
I hung out with Pete at a conference in Amsterdam a year and a half ago. Nice guy. Polite, unpretentious, driven and sharp as a tack.
Mashable, as you probably know, covers everything to do with new media and Web 2.0. Nobody owns that space as firmly as they do. And when I think of new media and Web 2.0, I think of “Small Pieces, Loosely Joined”, as David Weinberger would say. Hmmm.… that’s pretty much how I draw my “all-over” abstracts. A cloud of tiny elements, all fitting together cohesively. So this gave me an opportunity to do something with the Daily Bizcards that I haven’t done before– design a totally abstract, non-representational one. Fun!
[Commission a drawing from Hugh]
[Adam, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
June 24, 2010
daily bizcard 044: dr. donald m. berwick
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Pick Two”, goes to President Obama’s nomination to run Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Donald M. Berwick.
[Commission a “Cube Grenade” from Hugh]
[Dr. Berwick, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
June 22, 2010
daily bizcard 043: rick webb
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, goes to Rick Webb, COO and co-founder of The Barbarian Group.
I love creative hot shops like Barbarian. To me, they’re the future of advertising… which I see less as creators of “messages”, but more more about being essential in helping their clients think and act more creatively… which I believe will be the one of the 21st Century’s most valuable tradeskills to have.
The cartoon above is an old mantra of mine, from my advertising days. It always served me well. Rock on.
[Commission a “Cube Grenade” from Hugh]
[Rick, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
June 21, 2010
daily bizcard 042: robert scoble
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, goes to my old blogging buddy, Robert Scoble.
Scoble was the pretty much the first celebrity blogger to be working at Microsoft. I thought what he did for the company then was tremendous– he really tried to shake the company culture up for the better, and he often succeeded. He now works for Rackspace, the big hosting company. There he pretty much does the same thing that he always has– talk to geeks and entrepreneurs, and try to be the first one on the block to get his hands on the latest bright & shiny object. Oh, and try to shake the company culture up while he’s at it.
I don’t think this cartoon really applies to Robert, but he has a sense of humor and I think he’ll get the joke. I can certainly see him handing it out at tech conferences, just for a giggle…
[Commission a “Cube Grenade” from Hugh]
[Robert, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
June 18, 2010
daily bizcard 041: macon phillips
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Obama”, goes to the White House’s Director of New Media, Macon Phillips.
Phillips’ new media efforts during the 2008 United States presidential election helped raise vast sums of money for the Obama presidential campaign, while his text messaging, online videos and social networking skills led the campaign in many organizational and informational ways.
i.e. Philips was instrumental in making Obama the first truly “wired” President. He did a splendid job. Even if you didn’t vote Democrat, it was amazing to watch.
[Macon, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
June 17, 2010
“anticipated content”: do people ‘look forward’ to you?
[“Last Words”, which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can buy the print here etc.]
A nice little exchange I had with Beth on Twitter this morning got me thinking…
It was simple enough. Beth just said that she liked this morning’s newsletter cartoon.
I thanked her for her kind words, and said that the daily cartoon these days was my favorite part of the job; it’s the thing I would give up doing last [That’s true, by the way].
She replied, “Good to know, because I look forward to them and just bought [the print,] ‘Last Words’ 
”
I thanked her again for supporting my business, as one should…
But then afterwards, I was thinking about what Beth said: “I look forward to them”…
I read a lot of blogs, I follow a lot of people on Twitter and Facebook, as a lot of y’all do as well.
So we know a lot people online, we like a lot of people, we think they’re cool enough– cool enough to follow, anyway [N.B. I’m not really talking about friends and family here. I’m talking more about people that create “content” about stuff we have an intellectual or professional interest in.].
But ask yourself, of all these people that occupy your “content cloud”, how many are actually creating content that you actually look forward to receiving? Content that is ANTICIPATED?
Sure, I have a lot of people in my bookmarks that I read regularly– I like them, I like what they say and I think they’re interesting.
But how many of them are actually writing content that I consciously look forward to receiving, in advance? How many people do I actually follow religiously?
A tiny, TINY fraction of them.
Does your content create that same feeling of anticipation for other people? “I look forward to it.” Do people look forward to your stuff the same way I look forward to reading say, Clay Shirky or Mark Earls?
If not, don’t you think it should? Don’t you think you’d be far more successful if it did?
“I look forward to it.” That is the money shot. And you’re either doing it, or you’re not.
Something to think about…
[P.S. Ken Peters sums it up nicely: “If your content isn’t anticipated, it just becomes noise.”]
[P.S. Thanks to Beth once again, this time for getting me to put my thinking cap on…]
daily bizcard 40: alison lewis
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “It Was Either”, goes to Blogger, Author, Inventor, Designer, TV Host and Techno-Fashionista, Alison Lewis.
OK, so what HASN’T this woman done? Exactly. Named one of Fast Company’s most influential women of 2010, she’s got a new book out, “Switch Craft: Battery-Powered Crafts to Make and Sew”.
She’s got all the geek-hacker, inventive DIY mindset of say, Mark Frauenfelder or Phil Torrone, but with a chic, playful style that doesn’t undermine her own femininity. Great to see…
The cartoon came from this idea I had that, in order to operate at Alison’s level, I’m sorry, you don’t get to hate your job. You don’t get to feel ambivalent. You don’t get to daydream about one day doing something less schleppy. No, you’ve got to totally be into it from Day One. No slackers allowed. And in order to do that, decisions have to be made.
[Alison, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
June 15, 2010
dailybizcard 039: a.v. flox
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “This Is Not A Bed”, goes to my favorite saucy vixen/sex blogger, AV Flox.
AV and I met at the Techcrunch Party in Paolo Alto last year, and have been good friends ever since.
I’ve never been much of a sex blog reader, but AV’s writing is so sharp, so funny and SO DAMN GOOD, I’m a huge fan.
AV likes to let people know that sex is a VERY spiritual act for her, so I thought this cartoon would work well. Rock on.
[AV, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
daily bizcard 038: arianna huffington
“Content Is King”, so the saying goes. Unless of course, you’re the recipient of today’s “Daily Bizcard”, the legendary blog media magnate, Arianna Huffington, of Huffington Post fame.
Well done, Arianna. A lot of people tried to do what you did, most of them failed. “Content Is Queen”, indeed. Kudos.
[Arianna, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
“it’s the simplicity, stupid”
I’m a cartoonist. This is my tenth year blogging. My work has been mentioned in big media including Wall St. Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, and The Guardian. It’s been mentioned in bestselling books like Groundswell and Tribes. And it’s been mentioned on thousands of blogs, including many of the big, A-Lister ones.
That’s all well and good, I suppose. We artist types can use all the PR we can get.
But looking back, it occurs to me that none of that “hot PR media action” has moved my business forward nearly as quickly or effectively as this one simple thing:
why most artists’ blogs fail
By “artist’s blog” I mean, a personal blog by an artist, not a blog about “Art” per se.
I read a couple of artists’ blogs. I like Austin Kleon and Hazel Dooney, for example… John T Unger doesn’t like writing much, but he has a great podcast, Art Heroes Radio.
But sadly, most artists’ blogs don’t do it for me. And if you check out the stats of your typical artist’s blog, they’re not doing a lot for many other people, either.
Why not? Why aren’t more artists’ blogs more successful?
Most artists’ blogs fail because they fail to understand the basic truth about artists’ blogs:
Nobody’s reading your blog because of your art.
Your typical artist’s blog usually consists of little more than a photograph of the latest art piece, with a brief description like, “I painted this yesterday. I like how the purple dog clashes with the green sofa.” Or whatever.
But the reality is, most people are not reading your blog because they have an inherent love for purple dogs and green sofas. They’re reading your blog because THE PERSON YOU ARE inspires them. They’re not reading your blog because they’re thinking of buying your paintings, they’re reading your blog because the way you approach your work inspires them. It sets an example for them. It stands for something that resonates with them. IT LEADS THEM TO SOMEWHERE THAT THEY ALSO WANT TO GO.
And if your blog can do that, suddenly your readers are associating purple dogs and green sofas with something that ACTUALLY matters to them. And then, and only then, do they pull their credit cards out. Ker-chiing.
That’s the REAL job of the artist: To be a leader, not to fill the space with pretty “stuff”.
That’s also the REAL job of any blogger: To be a leader, not fill the space with pretty “content”.
Why? Because whatever your blog is about– art, tech, politics, culture, entrepreneurship, sex, it doesn’t matter– it’s either leading people somewhere worthwhile in a meaningful, positive way, or…
Nobody’s frickin’ reading it, end of story.
the four big moments of writing a book
[“Successful”, which I sent out in the newsletter a few weeks ago. You can buy the print here etc.]
This weekend I sent the final, edited draft of “Evil Plans” off to my publisher. It comes out in April.
A few hours later, a couple of people were asking me, “Why aren’t you celebrating? I’d be hitting the bars right now…”
Heh. Finishing the book is really not that big a deal. All it marks is the end of a massive, fairly tedious, weeks-long editing and “polishing” session, LONG AFTER you’re done with the meaty, creative, fun part.
To me, there are four really big moments in getting a book out. Finishing the book isn’t one of them:
1. Coming up with an idea for the book. That’s big. A big EUREKA moment that cuts through all the clutter like a sharp blade. The big initial flash of inspiration that gets the ball rolling. That’s all very exciting, but you never know how long you can keep the momentum going. It all might die out after a couple of days, it might last until you get the thing published and it hits The New York Times Bestseller list. You never know.
2. Landing the publishing deal. That’s what every aspiring writer dreams of. It’s a HUGE moment, especially the first time, though the euphoria doesn’t last long. Once you’ve signed the contract and cashed the advance check, within nanoseconds all that excitement is suddenly replaced with the heavy weight of “Damn, now I have write the bloody thing.” And the better job you’ve done convincing the publisher what a rockstar you are, the heavier the weight is.
3. Releasing the book. Seeing it hit the bookshelves. All those months and months of work, put to the test. That’s quite thrilling, especially the first time, though if your book bombs (and if it bombs, it bombs quickly), that can be devastating.
But the biggest moment for me, happens about halfway between Numbers 2 and 3:
4. The moment you realize that your book isn’t going to be shit, after all. That moment when you realize that, “Hey, this is actually going to work, after all”. That moment when you realize that the publisher didn’t waste his money giving you an advance, after all. That moment when you first realize that all the work you’ve done up to that point, wasn’t in vain. The moment you realize that all the people who had put their faith in you in getting this book of the ground, also didn’t do it in vain.
That’s the best time to hit the bars, if you ask me.
And don’t worry, I did…
June 11, 2010
daily bizcard 037: ashton kutcher
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “I’m Not Getting”, goes to movie-celeb-turned-Twitter-celeb, Ashton Kutcher.
This is a colorized version of a cartoon I once gave to my old friend, Lee Thomas, the guy who pretty much single-handedly brought Web 2.0 geekery to the British film industry. He works for Simon “Shaun Of The Dead” Pegg’s production company these days…
The film business is a funny old thing. Imagine a large pyramid scheme with a few rock stars like Ashton or Quentin Tarantino on the top, with HUGE LEGIONS of slave labor/waiters on the bottom, with a thin layer of weird-ass, paranoid “Neither/Nor’s” separating the two.This is just as true in London as it is in Hollywood.
Even at his level, well… Ashton wasn’t always famous, he too was a member of the “HUGE LEGIONS” at one point, so he should be able to relate to the cartoon. Rock on.
[Ashton, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
June 10, 2010
how to get a $10,000 cube grenade for free
[The Cube Grenade for Shit Creek Consulting ]
gapingvoid is giving away a free commissioned Cube Grenade to the business or organization with the most interesting idea.
I draw Cube Grenades for a living.
They’re quite expensive. Several thousand dollars a pop, sometimes ten grand or more.
Not everybody can afford one. Cash is tight. That being said, every month I get dozens of requests from start-ups, small businesses, and non-profits for commissions, asking for free or nearly free work.
Occasionally I’ll do a pro-bono one for the right cause, or a good friend, or because I just love what a business is doing, but 99% of the time, I just have to say no.
The truth is, there are a huge number of really cool start ups, small businesses and charities doing worthwhile work and fabulous people whose cause could be transformed by a CG, but just don’t have the cash it costs to have one.
What’s so special about these Cube Grenades?
Sure, they’re great social objects, but they have another purpose: They’re amazingly powerful tools for a company trying to engage in what many call “Cultural Transformation”.
[The one that started it all: “The Blue Monster”. Backstory here etc.]
You change markets in your favor by changing the culture– either your own company culture, or the culture of the industry you’re in. In my world, that’s where the REAL opportunity lies.
That’s the change I want to help affect. That’s where I think my cartoons can be the most useful and valuable.
So I decided, what the hell, I’ll do one for free for somebody, a small business, a worthy cause. Spread the love etc.
Who for?
I haven’t decided yet.
Tell you what. If you want me to draw a cube grenade for your business, write a blog post about it, leave a link to it below in the comments, and/or submit it to Tumblr at the same time. Then let us put your idea up on the Tumblr page we created specifically for this [Please keep it under 500 words, Thanks].
I’ll draw a free cube grenade for the person who has the most compelling cause.
I don’t care, it can be for your kid’s 6th grade class, your business or charity. Just as long as the idea is interesting,
This offer will expire Auguest 1st, and I’ll be talking about some of cooler posts here and/or our Tumblr page, so please get cracking.
This should be fun!
Thanks.
June 9, 2010
big, oily slick
Well, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg didn’t want my first business card design, how about this one? Just askin’…
daily bizcard 036: sally singer
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Disposable”, goes to Sally Singer, the new editor of The New York Times’ T Magazine, who was until recently the fashion and features editor of Vogue Magazine. Backstory from the NYT:
Ms. Singer, 45, will take over in July, according to a note Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, sent to staff members on Tuesday.
The move essentially completes a swap of editors between The Times and Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue. The T job opened up after its first editor, Stefano Tonchi, moved to another Condé Nast fashion magazine, W, in April.
Ms. Singer worked in a variety of roles for different publications before joining Vogue in 1999. Her stops have included a stint as fashion director at New York magazine and as an editor at the London Review of Books, and she has written for The Economist and The Atlantic Monthly. She studied at the University of California at Berkeley and Yale.
Basically, one very tough, smart, talented lady etc.
“Disposable” is a color version of one of the cartoons that appear in “Ignore Everybody”. I drew it soon after a brief stint in LA in early 2000, where I was helping a friend with his indie magazine start-up. An interesting experience, but man, is that ONE TOUGH little business. Totally brutal and totally underpaid. To rise to Sally’s level is quite an impressive achievement, to say the least, so good luck to her with her new gig.
[Sally, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
“watercooler wednesday”
From this morning’s “Daily Cartoon Newsletter”:
“WATERCOOLER WEDNESDAY!”
Every Wednesday from now on, we’ll be sending you a high-res, work-related image for you to download, send to your boss and/or colleagues, to print out, hang up on the office wall, the bulletin board, around the watercooler etc [The usual CC licensing terms apply]. Y’know, a social object to start a conversation with.
All we ask in return is that you share the following link with as many people as you see fit, Thanks!: “Hello From Hugh”.
This week’s high-res download is called “Snake Oil”. Enjoy!
People have been asking me for a while, when am I going to start offering free high-res downloads again, like I did in the old days.
Well, as you can see from the note above, I just did. But you’ll need to subscribe to the list first. Easy.
300 words
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I try to stick to a writing quota of about 300 words a day.
Eric Proulx liked that idea. 300 words is not too much, not too little etc. It’s a manageable size, if you’ve got other things going on… but still enough to build up a decent body of work over time.
So what did he do? He set up a little writing club called “300 Words”.
As if I needed another project in my life.But this one is designed to make me — and you — better at other projects. It’s called “300 Words,” and the idea is to put a little peer pressure on writers to be accountable for doing what they should be doing every day. Which is write.
I get a little bit of credit for it (I drew the cartoon, woo hoo!), but really, it’s his baby.
If you’re a writer who could use a little bit of motivation and/or peer pressure to kick your output up a notch or two, I hope you will check it out, Thanks.
June 8, 2010
daily bizcard 035: clay shirky
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “The Trick To New York”, goes to one of the world’s foremost thinkers about how the Internet ACTUALLY works, Clay Shirky.
I know quite a few world-class Internet ‘gurus’. Seriously, without exception, they ALL borrow heavily from him, sometimes shamelessly. And the ones who say they don’t are liars.
Clay has a new book, “Cognitive Surplus”, which comes out in two days. Anybody who cares about the Internet will be reading it in the next few weeks, trust me. Actually, anybody who really cares about the Internet (and actually knows what they’re talking about) makes it their business to read every single word Clay ever writes. Again, trust me… [UPDATE: Good interview of Clay on NPR].
This is a re-working of a very old cartoon of mine, drawn back in my New York days, which also borrows heavily from another New York-era cartoon. Clay lives in New York City, where he has a part-time professor job at NYU. He’s always liked this cartoon, so why not? I can think of no finer recipient. Rock on.
[Clay, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
beef jerky time!
[This is my semi-monthly shameless pimpage of LightsJerky.com, for which I have no stake in, nor do I receive any compensation for it. I just do it “Because I can” etc…]
I’m happy to report that The Lights Jerky Company, based in my hometown of Alpine, Texas, has finally gotten their new website up.
What can I say? It’s the best store-bought jerky I’ve ever had. Locally, it’s really popular. Glenn Short, the owner, sells it in all the bars, convenience stores and supermarkets in the Far West Texas area. He’s a great guy and he really puts his heart and soul into it. And people can tell…
Glenn and I meet up about once a week or so for beers…
All you jerkyheads can order it here in one, three and five pound boxes.
Seriously, Guys, this stuff is the bomb. A global microbrand in the making? I hope so.
June 7, 2010
daily bizcard 034: tony hsieh
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Green Purpose”, goes to CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh.
Zappos is the online retailer– which first made its name selling shoes– that was recently sold to Amazon for over a billion dollars in stock. Tony has just written a book, “Delivering Happiness”, which comes out today.
One of the publisher’s charming marketing gals gave me an advance copy back in March at SXSW, which I happily read. Inc. Magazine has a nice extract here: ‘Why I Sold Zappos”.
Two things that stood out for me in the book were, 1. Tony’s firm and well-articulated belief in making the improvement of the company culture their top priority, ahead of profits. 2. That none of it was easy. Zappos didn’t just become big and rich overnight, it was a real slog– long hours and lots of stress, over many years. He really captures that well.
The cartoon is a re-working of a print I made recently, “Business Is…” I like the way how Tony explains in the book how he always had a very strong sense of purpose for is company, and how having that at the very epicenter was what made his company ultimately so successful. So I wanted to articulate that.
Congrats on the new book, Tony. Thanks for the inspiration!
[Tony, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
gapingvoid’s 100th email cartoon
This morning marks the 100th gapingvoid cartoon we’ve sent out on the newsletter.
To celebrate, we offered a special deal to all our subscribers: Buy one print (framed or unframed), get another print free. Easy.
My list seemed to like the offer, So far this morning we’ve sold quite a few. Hurrah!
[“Hello From Hugh”: Please share this link with your friends, Thanks.]
June 6, 2010
private commission: tara and remi
Recently I completed one of my most ambitious pieces in a while– a private commission from Tara, for her boyfriend, Remi’s birthday.
Go here to check out all the photos and the complete backstory.
Though I haven’t talked about it too much on the blog, yes, I do private commissions. Feel free to contact me at gapingvoid@gmail.com if you want to discuss further, Thanks.
June 4, 2010
daily bizcard 033: scott belsky
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, “Making Ideas Happen”, goes to author and entrepreneur, Scott Belsky.
Mark’s personal catchphrase is “Making Ideas Happen”, which is what I used for the base of the cartoon.
And as it turns out, it’s also the title of his new book, which came out in April. [Disclosure: The book is also published by the same publishers I have i.e. Portfolio Imprint, Penguin Books.]
Besides writing books, Scott has two other businesses up his sleeve, The Behance Network and Action Method, so he’s a busy guy. Another one of those very bright people, like Tom Peters or Seth Godin, where the job titles “Author” and “Entrepreneur” get increasingly blurry. A quality that makes their books far more interesting in the long run, I would say.
[Scott, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
June 3, 2010
daily bizcard 032: john battelle
I was thinking this gapingvoid print would also make a PERFECT “Daily Bizcard” for today’s recipient, John Battelle.
Besides being the founder of Federated Media (a service I’ve happily been using for a while now), John is a bit of a Renaissance man: College prof, journalist, co-founder of Wired Magazine, founder of The Industry Standard magazine, co-moderator of the Web 2.0 Summit with Tim O’Reilly.… Not bad for one lifetime, not bad at all.
[The Daily Bizcard archive is here etc.]
[Commission your own ‘Cube Grenade’.]
[John, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
why social media is not just good for business, but essential for long-term survival
In this morning’s daily newsletter, I sent out the cartoon above with the following commentary:
WE KNOW our future is tied into our creativity, that without it, we’re dead. Yet we resist it, anyway, with every fiber of our being.
To survive in the future, we’re ALL going to have to get more creative– not just the boys in the black polo sweaters, but every last one of us, regardless of job title.
Ergo, businesses are going to have to get more creative.
Which means businesses are going to have to get more personal.
Creativity, as you know, is a very personal matter. So for sake of argument, let’s assume that, like I implied, there’s a direct link here between “Creative” and “Personal”.
Ergo: Long term survival = More creative = More personal.
I don’t care who you are, social media makes business more personal… at least, it does if you know what you’re doing.
Ergo, “More personal” leads to “More creative” leads to “Long term survival”.
So what more justification to apply social media to your business do you ACTUALLY need? What MORE do you need to tell your boss? We’re talking long term survival here, folks.
Something to think about…
June 2, 2010
dailybizcard 031: umair haque
Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “It’s Not Enough”, goes to the writer, intellectual and Harvard Business Review contributor, Umair Haque.
I got turned onto Umair by something he wrote back in February, “The Great To Good Manifesto”:
Umair makes a simple point: You may be great at making, distributing and selling sugar-water (he uses Pepsi as an example), but unless what you’re doing has some sort of ethical backbone i.e. a sense of moral good, then why bother? How much REAL value are you actually creating?
A culture of meaning. Discipline, hardwired into culture, is necessary to go from Good to Great. But being more disciplined than rivals at making sugar water only yields sugarier (and perhaps waterier) water. It cannot help you go from great to good. Going from great to good requires a culture of meaning. Production and consumption are meaningful when they actually yield durable, tangible benefits to people, communities, and society. When meaningful work — not just meaningless (yet disciplined) drudgery — is hardwired into a company’s culture, it becomes nearly unstoppable. That’s what’s special about Apple’s products — their focus on making the beige boxes of yesterday’s computerverse meaningful to people has upended industry after industry. Pepsi’s great failing with Refresh is this: merely investing marketing dollars in worthwhile causes can never make up for something as economically meaningless as merely selling sugar-water. A culture of meaning means that Pepsi needs to refresh the idea of Pepsi — not just how it’s marketed.
The cartoon is a play on the well-worn, aspiring artist cliche: “It’s not enough to be good, when you know you can be great.” And right next to the line, is one of my trademark existentialist characters, as usual, stewing in his own boiling vat of unrealized potential.
I made the drawing using a VERY thin line– to somehow express the fragility of the human condition, especially when it comes to confronting said unrealized potential etc.
I’m an optimist. I believe the majority of us actually do want to be “a good person”. But it’s a hard thing to pull off sometimes, for all of us. Doesn’t matter if we work for Pepsi or not…
[The Daily Bizcard archive is here etc.]
[Commission your own ‘Cube Grenade’.]
[Umair, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
June 1, 2010
“entrepreneurial agitprop”
[This is a “Cube Grenade” I designed for myself earlier today, as a little thought experiment etc.]
My friend, Robert Scoble wrote an interesting blog post recently, about why he was working for Rackspace, the big San Antonio web hosting service.
“To Help Entrepreneurs”. Apparently Rackspace allows him a lot of leeway to do just that,
And I also remember Michael Arrington saying something similar on The Gillmor Gang about his business. Helping the entrepreneurial community is a big driving force behind Techcrunch.
Then I was thinking to myself, “To Help Entrepreneurs” is ALSO a big part why I like designing Cube Grenades, why the idea can function as a proper business.
How? Because they work as “Entrepreneurial Agitprop” (That’s a phrase I just coined earlier today).
“To Help Entrepreneurs”. “Entrepreneurial Agitprop” . Both those ideas are resonating with me right now. Expect to see more from me on them both in the near future. Thanks.
cube grenade: zealeap
Tim Porthouse over at Zealeap.com commissioned this ‘Cube Grenade’ for his company. The copy at the bottom reads:
“when a business stops creating, it dies. when a business stops creating culture, it dies.
business cultures are not created, they are re-created. business cultures are not created, they are co-created. without collaboration, there is no creation.
a business that does not understand its own culture. does not understand its own business.
culture matters. the world has gotten too interesting and too competitive to think otherwise.
reality is scary. reality is wonderful.”
Cultural Transformation, Baby. That’s where it’s at these days. Exactly.
cube grenade: the escape pod
My old advertising buddy, Vinny Warren, commissioned me to draw him a ‘Cube Grenade’ for his Chicago-based ad agency, The Escape Pod.
“We are not in the advertising business, we are in the decommodification business” is a line of mine that Vinny has been borrowing for a while now. So it seemed appropriate to design something around that.
daily bizcard 030: jeff paiva
Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “Wake Up”, goes to one of my favorite old clients, Jeff Paiva.
It was Jeff who got me to go down to Sao Paulo early last year, who got me my cube grenade commission with his then employer, the Brazilian ad agency, agenciaclick.com.
Jeff has since moved on, and after a brief spell in London, is now head of social media at Young and Rubicom, Brazil.
I had a splendid time down in Brazil. A really amazing country– I REALLY liked the people I met down there. I CAN’T WAIT to go down there again, maybe one day…
[The Daily Bizcard archive is here etc.]
[Commission your own ‘Cube Grenade’.]
[Jeff, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free box of 100 to you. Thanks!]
