10 Bright Ideas to Shape the Culture: Embrace Cities, Compete with Giants, and More
Image by Ross Findon via Unsplash
During the course of a successful project, there’s often a moment where “the creative factor” of an individual takes the work from good to great. Our stories sit in the intersection of craft, career, and culture, highlighting smart solutions and innovative thinking that help remind us all: Creativity is a skill we can hone, and it is not only reserved for artists.
We believe you can cultivate more creativity through practice and exposure. But any creator knows we also need to constantly learn—new skills, ways of working, and career steps we never considered taking, such as the entrepreneurial path. Come to The Creative Factor to read and learn. Then go and do. On that note, here are 10 of our brightest ideas to help you shape the culture (yours and that of society).
1. We Should All Have Our Own Typefaces
Pressing question for our times: If we as individuals can be viewed as individual brands, should we all have our own typefaces? “Yes, absolutely,” says Ksenya Samarskaya, the managing director of the Type Directors Club. “We have more personal fashion choices than ever before, more cuisine, and yet somehow with our writing we’re even more limited. That just seems like a glitch. We should all have our own typographic arrangements, set to match our mood and stage in life. Think of how much is communicated via voice—and, at the same time, how many miscommunications we have when texting or writing emails. Because the recipient doesn’t get very many hints at tone. How many unnecessary arguments come out of the fact that we’re limited to monotone? Typefaces could shift all that.”
Full interview here: How to Move Typography Into the Bigger Cultural Conversation
2. Embrace the Richness of City Life
Vera Winthagen, Design Policy Analyst at the European Commission, oversees the New European Bauhaus, an initiative to connect the ambitious climate measures of Europe to the county’s living spaces. It makes sense then, that she live in the places where the New European Bauhaus can make the biggest impact–cities. “I have lived and worked in many cities – Amsterdam, Hanoi, Nairobi – and realize I am attracted to the liveliness of the normal city routine,” she says. “There is always an experience, something to see, and encounter to discover that makes you feel alive and part of the action, part of the world and with that creating a sense of belonging.”
Full interview here: Why Design Leads the New European Bauhaus
3. Our Creative Workspaces Must Evolve As We Do
Author Elizabeth Gilbert shares some great creative truths, such as to measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures. One of her best focuses on a key trait and reinforces Wright Thompson’s’ view. “The creators who most inspire me are not necessarily the most passionate, but the most curious,” he says. “Curiosity is what keeps you working steadily, while hotter emotions come and go.”
Full interview here: A Creative Life is an Amplified Life.
4. Everything Can Be Redesigned, Including the Bra Cup into the N95 Facemask
While you might not know designer Sara Little Turnbull’s name, you’ve likely recently used a product she is responsible for–the N95 facemask. In the 1950’s, Turnbull consulted for 3M on designing the molded bra cup when she happened upon another potential use—a medical face mask. She had spent a considerable amount of time in the hospital with the death of her sister, then father, and mother. The hospital experience showed her the need for a face mask that could filter particles and sit comfortably over the face and mouth with a stretchy band to avoid tying. In 1961, Turnbull designed the bubble shape version we’re familiar with today.. “She figured out that she could take this bra cup, turn it around, and make it be the mask,” says Paula Rees, a board member of the Sara Little Turnbull Center for Design Institute. (Turnbull passed away in 2017 at age 17.) The only thing it couldn’t do was filter pathogens. It wasn’t for lack of trying. “They went through a decade trying to figure out how they could get it to be a medical tool,” says Rees. “Sara’s first intent was a medical mask.” Still, Sara’s bubble mask design certainly influenced the first single-use N95 “dust” respirator that was developed by 3M and approved in 1972.
Full interview here: How Sara Little Turnbull Reimagined the Bra Cup as the N95
5. Everything Can Be Redesigned, Including Marble Floors in Private Jets
Peek inside the world of private jets? Sure, why not. Bronx-based Edése Doret designs interiors for the largest planes in the world, such as 747s, A340s, and the A380. Clients are well-heeled patrons, including heads of state. “They want whatever they have in their homes, in their planes,” he says. A hot tub, heated marble floors, and a “living wall” of plants are just a few of the requests. How exactly does one add marble to an aircraft? “We came up with the idea to shave the marble down to three millimeters, so we could have the marble surface that everyone sees while adhering to the weight requirements of a jet,” says Doret. “We’ve been able to use that on both floors and cabinets.” Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Full interview here: Inside the Wild World of Private Jet Design
6. Consider a Four-Day Workweek
Too often full calendars are associated with busy schedules. It’s almost become a badge of honor to have every block full from Monday to Friday. But is this really the most effective way to work? As the pandemic has shown, there are alternative to the 9-to5, in particular the four-day workweek. SuperHi, an online creative course platform with students in 90 countries has been an early adoped of the Monday-to-Thursday schedule. What impact has it had on their team? “We’ve found that our employees feel much healthier and focused,” says founder Rik Lomas. “The work we do is particularly intensive and requires creative problem-solving, rather than a continuous, repetitive output. People assume that doing the four-day work week would mean that it’s an easy working life, but similar to an athlete, it lets us work harder without burning out.”
Full interview here: The Future of Creative Work
7. Don’t Forget We Are All Just Stardust
Bruce Mau doesn’t do small. He writes manifestos, titles his books Massive Change, and believes design can solve the world’s biggest problems. You might wake up and think, What’s for breakfast? Mau wakes up and wonders, How do we design a social movement to imagine a better future? Naturally, his thoughts on life run deep. “You have a life for a certain amount of time, and it’s the time when that matter is animated with electricity,” he says. “When the electricity stops, you go back to the Earth and that’s dust, and you will eventually become rock. You have this incredible cycle of life. And you realize that we're all in this together and there is no exterior. There’s no place to dump something that we can't solve.”
Full interview here: We Change By Slowly Changing Everything
8. Rethink (Reject?) Personas
Airbnb Lear Researcher Sara Sodine Parr’s job is to ask the right questions. To find out what users think and need, and use that intel to inform how products are designed, built, and improved. If this sounds easy, it’s not. In fact, you’re probably asking the wrong questions or using a “best practice” that has no correlation to how people operate in real life. “My least favorite is customer profiles or buyer personas or whatever you want to call them,” says Sodine Parr. “We should focus on people's problems and real customers. I don't like the idea of having fake profiles of customers who don't exist. There’s probably no single customer that fits all the weird descriptions we put in buyer personas.” Good personas do include information about real people's behaviors and attitudes, but, when it's packaged as a persona, people focus too much on the demographics. “You could have a 50-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman use your product in the same way, so focusing on demographics is something that I almost never do,” says Sodine Parr.
Full interview here: How to Ask The Right Questions
9. Yes, You Can Compete With Giants
When you’re the underdog competing with a bigger organization it can feel like you’re outmatched from the beginning. But you’re in a better position than you might think. No matter how big any team is–yours, potential clients, and potential competitors–you can staff only so many people to each project. “When you're a smaller team, the team you're using is the team that the client gets,” says ShopTalk co-founder Paul Ferry. “We found we were able to work with bigger brands because we’d staff the project with as many people as the bigger agencies did–the difference was that that was our entire team versus a small percentage of theirs.” That’s your advantage–lean into it.
Full interview here: Yes You Can Compete With Giants
10. Hydrate, Wisely
“Don’t drink more water than Pappy,” says Momofuku chef David Chang.
Full interview here: 10 Creative Truths from David Chang
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