Hugh MacLeod Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
Hugh MacLeod
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books.
gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
In this episode of the Gape Into The Void podcast, Hugh and Jason have a discussion with bestselling author, speaker, and marketer, Seth Godin. Seth has been an inspiration to many, including Hugh, and over the years gapingvoid has produced many popular images that were based upon, or included the words of Seth Godin. We even have a dedicated Seth Godin Store! Most recently, Hugh illustrated one of Seth’s three new books, “V Is For Vulnerable.
We hope you enjoy listening to the talk with Seth. If you like the show, please tell your friends about the “Gape Into The Void” podcast and leave us a review on iTunes.
The most enjoyable part of what we to do is getting to work with great companies. They range from multinationals, to newly minted billion dollar businesses and many startups.
When we were approached by a young startup, Tilt 365, last year we were intrigued by their service. Founder, Pam Boney, has the following Carl Jung quote on the bottom of her emails, “The world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.”, and in a simplistic way, this also sums up their service: The idea that we can cultivate our talents through constant feedback from our colleagues and the people around us.
We all know that once a year annual reviews & 360’s that become dated within a month, kinda suck. What is their true purpose? Can a person really be expected to make behavioral changes just from a meeting every year, or quarter, for that matter?
The folks at Tilt have created this nifty little web app that allows colleagues to assess personality patterns that are affecting others. The truth is that HR usually does a good job at hiring competent people, but what makes them effective, is all about personality and people skills - a person’s negative or positive influence on the climate around them. Pam’s tool shows us how we Tilt in and out of certain behaviors and how it impacts the people around us.
It’s all done real time and in what looks like a pretty darn perfect feedback loop. It reminded me of this piece in Wired a couple of years ago.
We’ve done quite a bit of creative for Tilt, helping them to visually communicate the behavioral changes and movement through the process– and we’ll be talking more about how this service can help affect change in businesses, especially enterprise.
It’s time for another episode of Gape Into The Void! Join us as Hugh, Jason and Jeff talk about gapingvoid’s evil plan to disrupt the “office art” industry. We also are reminded about some big events in Hugh’s world and we give you a peek behind the scenes of some of our current client projects.
Thanks again for listening. If you are enjoying Gape Into The Void, please tell your friends and leave us a review on iTunes. If you have any questions or topics you want us to cover on the show email us at podcast at gapingvoid.com.
Like I said on Twitter earlier today, the people who REALLY taught me “How To” do anything worthwhile, didn’t write a big ol’ list of instructions, didn’t hold my hand, they just led by example.
The great British advertising man, Dave Trott once did that for me, back in the day…
THIS is what REAL leadership means. THIS is what REAL inspiration means.
And you’d better get used to it. Because in the world we now live in, there are no more jobs. There are no more bosses. There are only clients and customers from now on.
The employees who don’t get that, are dead in the water. And so are the “bosses” who still like to be treated as “bosses”. Good riddance to them all.
So… go read Dave Trott’s stuff. Find out who he is. Go learn from a MASTER. Do it. Rock on.
Art, not as pretty decoration, nor as an existential howl from Tortured Artist Genius Dude, nor the smart-ass, sychophantic, postmodern shit from New York and London.
But Art to articulate real meaning. Art that helps move businesses forward. And hopefully helps move REAL people forward along with it. Right here. Right now.
Not advertising. Not telling people to buy.
That’s what the Cube Grenade idea is all about. Creating work that articulates the stuff that ACTUALLY MATTERS to people. Work that articulates Purpose-Idea. Right here. Right now.
But hey, most people reading this are also trying to do the exact same thing with their stuff, so at least I’m good company. Heh.
Thanks to the Internet, you can quite easily talk to thousands of people a day.
But as anyone who has spent far too much time on the Internet will know, there’s no substitution for face-to-face.
So I sent word out on the newsletter, Hey, there’s a party at gapingvoid Central on Friday. Downtown Miami, near the Miami Heat Arena. Why don’t y’all come along?
And so people came along. Some I knew well, some I hadn’t met before. We had wine, we had food, it was good times all round.
And people just talked and hung out. I gave a little two-minute speech (the photo is people watching me give it), but mostly is was just abut people meeting up.
Like-minded people.
All looking for the same things as me. Ideas. Purpose. Conversation. That kinda thing.
Thanks to blogging, I know a lot of people. A TON. So why not get them to meet each other? Why not hang out all together?
And so that is what we did. Exactly.
We’ll be having another one soon. I hope y’all can make it this time…
The kid just liked it, Rackspace or no Rackspace.
“I want life to be amazing,” he told his father.
Yes, even nine-year-old kids want their life to be amazing. Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they?
This is much bigger than Rackspace. This is much bigger than the Internet or web hosting or cloud computing or whatever it is that Rackspace does.
And it’s ESPECIALLY much bigger than gapingvoid or cartooning.
I may not be the most talented or famous or disruptive artist since Picasso. That’s fine; you’re not either.
But I’ve always believed, even before I started doing my work seriously, that art– that cartooning– can change lives for the better. Either individually or at a corporate level. Right here. Right now.
And you don’t have to be as big as Peanuts or The Simpsons or Dilbert in order to do so. Especially now that we have the Internet.
And what’s true for cartoonists is also true for your job.
You don’t have to be a rock star or a billionaire. We can all change the world, one small meaningful intervention at time.
Which is what the t-shirt was. A small meaningful intervention. No more, no less.
The power is within us. Now all we have to do is teach ourselves how to believe it.
“Come and join Hugh & the gang for our gapingvoid salon in Miami on Friday April 15th Email us at director@gapingvoidgallery.com for an invitation (space is limited!)”
Yep, we’re having another Salon on Friday evening. Downtown Miami at the gapingvoid world headquarters, Friday at 7.30. Hope to see you there!
Hélène from Paris sent me this picture: A hand-knitted chair covering she did for her husband, Richard’s birthday. Based on my “Goldfish” cartoon. Awesome! Thanks, Hélène!.
The idea comes from a core value taken right off the latter’s homepage. They use a lot of blue and green in their graphic design, so I went with something blue-greeny.
The little “Love from Rackspace” symbol is right there in the bottom left-hand corner. A little secret hallmark, as it were…
Basically, I took the old “George” idea and re-jigged it, adding the trademark Rackspace red & black.
And hey, it worked.
I see this cartoon going in the slide deck of Rackspace’s recruiters.
We’re not a ‘normal’ company etc. It’s OK not to be ‘normal’ etc. ‘Normal’ is boring etc.
It’s easy for a small company to have a distinct personality. Much harder when the company has grown a lot, like Rackspace has done in the last few years.
One thing that Rackspace is very proud of is their customer base. Both in terms of quality and quantity. Not only do they have some really wicked customers, they have lots of them.
And no, I’m not just being nice because they’re my client. Some of them ARE awesome. A lot of amazing companies that you’ve heard of and admire.
So… what’s wrong with wanting more where that came from?
What is wrong with wanting THE BEST customer base in the world, and adjusting your business plan accordingly?
And what is wrong with declaring that to the frickin’ world?
To be honest, I don’t just see this cartoon as an internal motivational poster whatsit. I also see it as a full blown advertisement– one that could easily go into magazines like Wired or Inc.
What’s wrong with declaring to the world, “Here’s what we’re going after with a vengeance”, rather than the usual “Here’s why should buy our wonderful product” drivel?
And the cartoon character: why not make him stressed out and antsy– like real entrepreneurs are– rather than the usual happy-happy-joy-joy that most advertisements run with?
Why not talk to people about the ACTUAL world we live in, rather than the irritating fantasy world that Madison Ave created?
Why the hell not?
We’re all going to be dead in 100 years. In the meantime, why not try to rip the face off the dragon?
I love the backstory to the “Hug” cartoon above:
My mother, in her day, was a very successful education software consultant. “Have you hugged your client today?” was her line, not mine.
She always had about 6 – 10 Blue Chip clients on board at one time. Companies like Shell, Exxon, Coco-Cola etc.
And no matter what kind of day she was having, EVERY DAY she would make some kind of effort to demonstrate to each and every client that… she cared, that this stuff mattered, that she was willing to go the extra mile.
And it worked. It certainly paid for me and my sister’s education.
“Hugging clients” is really a no-brainer.
Unless you don’t really like your clients. Unless you’re just in it it for the money.
Then it just feels sleazy and wrong.
There’s nothing wrong with insisting on good chemistry, before you commit fully to working with someone.
Sure, we all need money. But I think we need chemistry more.
Art that you hang in your cubicle, in order to affect change, in order to start a conversation. Art that you “toss” into the work/corporate environment, that hopefully causes a small “explosion”. Hence the term, Cube Grenade.
“Art with purpose. Work with purpose”.
Exactly.
Thanks to the Internet, the nature of work is changing in so many amazing ways, and we’re all so damn lucky to be caught right in the middle of it.
As a cartoonist, my work is totally inspired and informed by this– this is exactly why the work took the direction it did.
And your work, whatever it may be, should also be affected in the same way. I can’t think of a better time to be alive; I really can’t.
So besides friends and family, what better reason is there to celebrate Thanksgiving? Seriously…
Maybe love does have a place in business after all. Maybe more and more of us will start to have the courage to begin to talk about what really matters to us about work and our relationships with each other and to push back the sterile language of business that we have been trained to accept. Maybe we will realise that accepting love into the workplace reminds us of the original purpose of work – not to maximise shareholder value but to come together to do good things, to help each other and hopefully to make the world a better place.
Maybe …. Oh and by the way if the above is too new age and namby pamby for you I reckon social computing is capable of talking 25% out of the running costs of most businesses – so there!
A couple of days ago my buddy, Robert Scoble (himself a Rackspace employee) twittered the question, “How do do you amplify a start-up culture inside a big company?”
A damn good question, Robert. I thought it would make a good piece of art, hence the cartoon above. More specifically, I thought it would make a good image to go on the back of a Rackspace business card.
Rackspace is a big company (3,000 employees), but not big enough where they can no longer remember when they were a small company. So maybe it’s better to start a conversation (which is what handing out a business card does, ideally) with a pertinent question, rather than the usual “Here’s why you should buy our stuff” shpeel…
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.
I meet young, creative people all the time, just out of college. They’re tending bar, waiting tables, stacking shelves in bookstores, folding jeans at The Gap, working in an office. All trying to get by, all trying to figure out what to do next, where they fit in this big ol’ world of ours. And it’s tough for most of them. Of course it is.
My advice to them is always the same: “Make Art Every Day”.
When I say “Art”, I don’t necessarily mean paintings or literature or music or whatever. I mean, whatever it is that’s meaningful and powerful to them. Like the old song said, “T’ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It).
Only they can know what that is, of course. For me, it was always drawing cartoons. But for others, it could be about business or cooking or carpentry or screenprinting tee-shirts or raising money for charity.
That was my M.O. for years. I remember in my early mid-twenties, working my ass off all day long at the ad agency in Chicago. Then after work, instead of going home to watch TV and hang out with roommates or whatever, I’d head for my local coffee shop, pull a seat up at the bar, and sit there for hours on end, drawing cartoons. Even if my cartoons weren’t very good, even if they weren’t commercial. Even if some of the waiters and fellow customers used to made subtle and frequent quips about me “needing to get a life”.
It paid off eventually. Eventually the cartoons got good, eventually they got commercial. Eventually I didn’t need a day job anymore, eventually I got a life. Happy Ending.
I didn’t wait for the money, I didn’t wait to “be discovered”, I didn’t wait for the approval from others. I just got on with it, every day.
Like a very talented pianist friend once told me when I was a boy; it’s better to practice a musical instrument for five minutes a day, than to practice for two hours, once a week. It’s something I never forgot.
Which is why regardless of what the rest of the world needed from me on any given day, I found the time, somehow. Simply because I made the decision to do so, somehow.
Whatever your EVIL PLAN might be, “Make Art Every Day”.
I have a feeling that I’m going to be asked the following question a lot in the next couple of years:
“How do I execute my EVIL PLAN within the limits of my current job at a big company?”
I’m probably the wrong person to ask– I’ve never fitted into corporate culture very well. But I did write few initial thoughts below, just to get the gears turning. Feel free to add your own in the comments. I’m going to be thinking about this for a while, Thanks.
1. An EVIL PLAN’S success is 90% the people around you. This so true whether we’re talking small business or large, salaried or freelance, boss or employee. So if you have smart, nice, dynamic, successful people around you– both colleagues and customers– I don’t see why you can’t execute it from anywhere. It all depends how aligned your EVIL PLAN with the people you work with and sell to.
2. If your EVIL PLAN is not aligned with what your company is doing, you have two choices. Quit and go do something else, or give up your EVIL PLAN.
3. Patience is a virtue. Things tend to happen more slowly at big companies, especially the more edgy stuff. A lot more time and effort is needed to corral your allies into critical mass. That’s just reality.
4. Risk. I always liked Robert Scoble’s line, “If what you’re doing doesn’t risk getting you fired, it probably isn’t that interesting.” People who are very risk averse don’t get to play in the EVIL PLANS sandbox. That, too is just reality, and no crazy-ass cartoonist’s blog post will change that.
5. Create your own luck. Create your own job description. None of the best jobs in large corporation are ever created by your boss. They’re created by you taking the initiative. And there’s a definite art to that.
6. Practice. Fail. Practice some more. Fail some more. Keep practicing and failing. Eventually you’ll get there.
[UPDATE:] Ian Wallace left a comment below. Samuel Beckett’s advice to anyone who dares to follow their own EVIL PLAN:
11“x14”, Rives-Arches French made paper, hand-printed, limited-edition serigraphs, hand-signed and numbered by me, i.e. the exact same format as before.
This portfolio will be smaller versions of prints we have already published on the gallery. People like the bigger prints (“Purple Cow”, for example, is 39“x28”), but small ones have their place, too (especially if you like hanging art in downstairs bathrooms etc.).
Also, with the Holiday Season coming up, these wee “Cube Grenades” will make a lovely gift for people. Because of their relatively small size, you don’t have to worry so much about where the person receiving it is going to find room to hang it etc.
You can buy the entire portfolio of four prints, framed, for $495 plus Shipping & Handling. Or you can buy them individually, framed, for $150 each, plus Shipping & Handling.
I’ll announce when the Portfolio is up on the gallery site and ready to go, or you can reserve yours now by clicking on one of the two PayPal Deposit buttons below (one for the portfolio of four, one for buying a print individually etc.), and we’ll put you first on the list. The other advantage of using the PayPal button instead of waiting for the offering to go live on the gallery website is, the earlier you place the deposit, the easier it is to reserve a certain number of an edition you may care to have.
The plan is to have these printed, signed and shipped out within the month, so plenty of time before Christmas and Hannuka.
I hope you like what you see, this going to be a great little series. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below. Thank You.
[TO PURCHASE PORTFOLIO #3 — $75.00 DEPOSIT]
[TO PURCHASE AN INDIVIDUAL “PORTFOLIO # 3″ PRINT — $50.00 DEPOSIT: Once the prints are up on the gallery site, we’ll e-mail you to confirm which one of the four you want specifically etc.]
I’m in The Big Apple, running around like a tormented lunatic, getting all the last-minute-stuff done for the Purple Cow print party on Thursday [Tomorrow night!]. So far it hasn’t been too stressful, he lied…
I’ve been playing around with this line a lot recently: “Art For The Real World”.
I’m interested in how art affects what some people call “The Real World”- the workplace, the world of work, the world of business. That’s what the Cube Grenade idea is all about.
My advertising buddy, Vinny Warren, grew up in a Roman Catholic household in Ireland. He was telling me that his parents would always have a few religious icons hanging on the wall somewhere. Pictures of Saints, Mary & Baby Jesus, that kind of thing.
Why? Says Vinny, “To remind us who we were.”
Art that reminds you who you are. Exactly. What applies in Catholic households also applies in places of business. Shared Meaning. Exactly. Social Objects. Exactly.
I think surrounding ourselves with icons, art, books and such to remind ourselves of who we are, where we have been and where we hope to go is essential to keeping our hearts alive. It is too easy to lose our way. My office is full of these things.
Like I said back in April, it’s what the art DOES that’s interesting to me, more than what it IS per se.
We’ve always seen the Kinetic Quality working in marketing, working with brands. “By buying Brand X, I feel hipper, cooler, sexier, more secure, more in control” etc etc. But what I’m finding out is, this also works with art. To me, the interesting thing about art is not the usual “Heroic, absinthe-soaked, vision quest lone individual archetypal artist crap”, but how the art is USED by the person who has it hanging on the wall. What’s it actually there for? Decoration? Showing off? A conversation starter? An ice breaker? A way of telling a story? Something to brighten up the room? A symbol of social status? An expression of individual worldview? An expression of emotion? A totem to remind oneself of something inspirational and/or important? Perhaps a bit of all these?
So I’m seeing two worlds collide here: The internal, solitary part of making the art, and the external social part of how the piece of art is actually used. Art? Used? Is art actually allowed to be “used”? Would the Art Police allow that? Instead of calling them “Patrons”, can we call art buyers “Users” instead? Would you be offended if I called you that? There’s no wrong answer…
Anyway, as always, I love it when y’all send in photos. Keep ‘em coming, Thanks! Rock on.
Above is a photo that one of my friends on Twitter sent me. He basically downloaded one of my cartoons off my blog, printed it out, and stuck it outside his cube at work, for other people to see, hopefully to comment on, and hopefully, to start a conversation. This, I believe, is where my cartoons work the best– “Cube Grenades”- small objects that you “throw” in there in order to cause some damage– to start a conversation, to spread an idea etc. [The Blue Monster] The Microsoft Blue Monster is probably my best-known Cube Grenade, which is why I made it into a limited edition print eventually. Seth Godin first put his Purple Cow book into a purple milk carton for the same reason– he guessed [quite rightly, as it turned out] that people would see the carton on somebody’s desk, inquire about it, and a conversation about the marketing ideas contained in the book would be started. [The Purple Cow print]
And the Purple Cow print was designed the same way. OK, it might be a bit big to display in a cube– you need a lot of wall space for this one– but the idea is the same– Conversations that happen around the object are more interesting than the actual object itself.
“Cube Grenades”. Exactly. Cartoons designed to affect change as “Social Objects”. Exactly. [Check out some of my limited edition prints over at gapingvoidgallery.com.]
[Update:]
Since I posted this “Cube Grenades” idea yesterday, I’ve been giving it A LOT of thought. Here are some notes: [More “Cube Grenades” in action. Click on image to enlarge etc.] 1. Like I said, my cartoons work best when they’re used as “Cube Grenades” i.e. small objects that you “throw” in there in order to cause some damage– to start a conversation, to spread an idea etc. But other social objects can be used as well– purple milk cartons, homemade cookies, funky mousepads, rubber toys, newspaper clippings etc. It’s the people that matter, not the object they socialize around. I don’t claim to have a monopoly. 2. Repeat After Me: Cube Grenades are Social Objects. Cube Grenades are Social Objects. Cube Grenades are Social Objects… 3. All big change in companies come from the people in the trenches, who do the actual day-to-day work. To change their behavior, you have to change the way they interact. People interact around social objects. Change the social objects, and you change the company. 4. My friend, Mark Earls once told me a story about a friend of his. The friend played a key role in the massively successful corporate turnaround recently undertaken by McDonald’s.
His friend told him, “We knew we were screwed, NOT when the nutrition and green issues started hitting the newspapers, but by the simple fact that our staff on the floor just weren’t cleaning the tables and the bathrooms like they used to. We knew THEN that our people had lost faith in our company.“
What social objects were people using, both during the company’s decline and during its turnaround? What cube grenades were being thrown about, both before and after? I bet you they weren’t the same. 5. Yes, I am fully aware that your customers are paying for the quality of the products and services your business provides, not for the quality of the cube grenades flying around your corporate headquarters. But they are all related. Everything of value that your business creates is the product of a already-existing social dynamic. Businesses are people, not machines. And people socialize around objects. 6. An Open Letter to Ad Agencies: Guys, you are NOT selling messages anymore. You are selling social objects. The work that you create will affect the cube grenades and social objects, that your clients and their customers use to interact with each other. [More Cube Grenades. “I use them as covers for my binders strewn about my desk, to start conversations”, says the person who e-mailed me the photo. Click on image to enlarge etc.] 7. You see a guy walking out of an Apple store, looking all excited about his new Apple computer he’s carrying under his arm? Why is he so excited? Sure, he just got himself a nice-looking piece of kit, but what REALLY excites him is all of the COOL, DISRUPTIVE STUFF he’s going to MAKE with his new machine. Videos, music mixes, whatever. For his FRIENDS and his PEERS. Again, it’s the SOCIAL that makes it interesting. Apple makes cube grenades, just like the ad agencies. Just like you do. 8. People download my cartoons and stuck them on their walls by the THOUSANDS. A much smaller number spend money to buy the more expensive versions i.e. my prints. But the idea is the same i.e. a way for people to interact. As I’m fond of saying: The conversations AROUND the object are FAR more interesting than the object itself. And what is true for me is true of your product, as well. “People Matter. Objects don’t.” Exactly. 9. So when do I start charging? You can download my stuff for free, so why should you buy a print? Who says you should? I’m guessing that if one of my cartoons is meaningful enough to you, you’ll get tired of seeing it printed on the office laserprinter paper in low-resolution, getting all worn and torn, with the Scotch tape getting all yellow and crinkly. If you like the drawing enough, eventually you’ll want to upgrade. The same way, back in college, that I would upgrade to vinyl or CDs, once the cheap and nasty cassette tape of my favorite band started getting all fuzzy and worn out. The same way I gladly paid $20 to hear the band play live, rather than hear the same songs on the cassette. “Meaning Scales”. The more cube grenades I throw out there, the more meaningful interaction I create for other people, the more people will want to pay for it eventually. If I locked it all down as a cash-only transaction, it would all die a horrible death overnight. [Privately-commissioned “Cube Grenades” i.e. limited edition, fine art prints that I did for my Brazilian client, agenciaclick. Click on image to enlarge etc.] 10. Probably the job I’m most proud of recently, is when I was hired by a Brazilian ad agency, agenciaclick to create a privately commissioned edition of cube grenades i.e. fine art prints. See photo above.
They didn’t want these prints for themselves; they wanted to give these out to their clients, as conversation starters. “All brands are open brands? Huh? What does that mean? Do you agree with it? Why? What does “open” actually mean? What does “brand” actually mean…?” You get the picture. The same idea that made The Blue Monster so successful. Again, it wasn’t about the message, the object. It was all about the social.
11. My long-term goal is to make more privately-commissioned “Cube Grenades” for more clients like agenciaclick. It was a wonderful working experience for me, and I want to spend more time in that business. If you find this idea interesting, please feel free to e-mail me at gapingvoid@gmail.com. Thanks.
We’ve always seen the Kinetic Quality working in marketing, working with brands. “By buying Brand X, I feel hipper, cooler, sexier, more secure, more in control” etc etc. But what I’m finding out is, this also works with art. To me, the interesting thing about art is not the usual “Heroic, absinthe-soaked, vision quest lone individual archetypal artist crap”, but how the art is USED by the person who has it hanging on the wall. What’s it actually there for? Decoration? Showing off? A conversation starter? An ice breaker? A way of telling a story? Something to brighten up the room? A symbol of social status? An expression of individual worldview? An expression of emotion? A totem to remind oneself of something inspirational and/or important? Perhaps a bit of all these?
So I’m seeing two worlds collide here: The internal, solitary part of making the art, and the external social part of how the piece of art is actually used.
Art? Used? Is art actually allowed to be “used”? Would the Art Police allow that? Instead of calling them “Patrons”, can we call art buyers “Users” instead? Would you be offended if I called you that? There’s no wrong answer…
Potential Energy turning into Kinetic Energy. I guess one of the reasons I’ve always had such liberal licensing terms [“Want to use my stuff on your PowerPoint Slides for free? Sure, go right ahead!!!.…”] is that I like seeing my work being USED. If people like my work, that’s great. But if they can actually find it tangibly useful, even better.
Soon after, Tony Kirton of The Experience Stuido sent me the photograph above, with the following note:
We positioned the your cartoons at the entrance of the studio, to kick-start a relevant conversation. Never failed!
It’s little mental trick that Kathy Sierra taught me– Don’t think of them as “Customers” or “Patrons”, think of them as “Users”. Whatever thing you’re selling, it’s not what it does that’s interesting; it’s how people use it that’s interesting. “People Matter. Objects Don’t.” Exactly.
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I meet young, creative people all the time, just out of college. They’re tending bar, waiting tables, stacking shelves in bookstores, folding jeans at The Gap, working in an office. All trying to get by, all trying to figure out what to do next, where they fit in this big ol’ world of ours. And it’s tough for most of them. Of course it is.
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