Finding Wieden+Kennedy's John Jay and Breaking My Own Silos

Another weekend filled with visual feeding.  I realized how much it helps sensitize my mind to absorb the language of images.  I've never been good at interpreting visuals.  I've always been in a hurry to just respond to it and squeeze the words out of my mind to put on a page.  But I've learned from a friend that there is a great deal of respect for those who can restrain their creative flow to find a better wave.  

In my commonplace book for creative places online, I gather and collect information that helps me understand what I am up against.  I realize now how difficult visual arts can be.  Understanding visual arts becomes a totally different thought process.  Meaning can be muddled or watered down.  Some on the other hand can be exaggerated.  All in the language of photographs, color, page spreads and short phrases.  As I writer, I find this really fascinating because it's quite the opposite from my own process of choosing words and writing miles of them to describe a thought or an experience or a memory.  Communicating visually feels like gathering all the thoughts and putting them in one space where those who read or watch  the message feel some kind of endless resonation to what is being said.

My favorite find today is the video of John Jay from Wieden+Kennedy.  This video reminds me of the kind of person I want to become, the principles I want to espouse, the people I want to emulate and work with.  Thanks to Ragnar Frey author of createmake.com who is also a collector of stories about creative people.

His words speak a lot of truth for me.  Work environments are jungles that can eat you alive when you are not careful and prepared to adapt.  Like an ecosystem, every living thing learns to adapt to its surroundings to survive.  The challenge of educated people (like myself) often comes from the fact that we are educated.  It's hard to break out of our silos and it is this that make us less creative.  Those who think they have been taught well and are ready to work and use what they have been taught are in for quite a big surprise.
I've always marveled at the thought of how creative genius begins to form after you have been educated on a specific body of knowledge.  Schooled people do not find their potential as they learn the academic route but they begin to understand their full capabilities when they are out in the field scrambling through an 8 to 5 job aching to survive the day.  My MBA degree only served its purpose in my field for about a few months.  What I learned through frameworks and case studies is not so much the content of study but the discipline of withstanding nerve-wracking business situations filled with imperfect information used to make urgent decisions.  No, it's not the intelligence that got me past the post-graduate school era of my life.  It's the values.  
I'm not a genius.  I can barely thumb through a Finance workbook without sweating.  But values are important.  If I lose these principles that guide my every move, I'd lose it completely.  
So yes, indeed the challenge of creativity is to be comfortable in this discomfort.  In fact, this discomfort is the breeding ground of innovation.  Let's start breaking silos right there.

Understanding the Anatomy of Magazine Pages

The past week I have been learning about the anatomy of a magazine.  How someone who is an avid collector of it would use it, read it, dream with it, get inspired by it, produce it, write for it.  So on an so forth.  I never thought that there is so much happening into producing this publication.  Like I said, I've already accepted the fact that I may not be a writer (an elusive passionate pursuit I find myself going over and over again) yet because I have not fully embraced everything about being a writer.  Let alone remain consistent at it.  But I want to be one.  

Embracing this long pervading dream of being one, I surmise, has led me into working for a company that prints all these publications and understanding the entire process of putting them all together that it becomes a piece of art coveted by many as soon as it gets to the stands.

I learned that a magazine's aesthetic value becomes higher when all its parts are laid out in a visually pleasing way.  To readers, the color and the splash of images sorted in montages occupying carefully thought of corners on the page allow them to feed and delight on the products they want to purchase, the events they want to participate in, the places they want to visit.  It gives off a feeling of being next to an opportunity.  The paper used is important as well because paper has different shades and textures that allow the color and the images to jump out, to fade, to be muted, to call out, to communicate these visual images mixed with carefully chosen typefaces and well-crafted catch phrases.  

Studying a magazine's elements takes as much time as studying a 15 page business case.  But I realized that the approach of studying this product takes on a different style because what needs to be learned are all  hidden in the conceptualization that happens prior to its production.  

The interactions flow to and fro between objectivity and subjectivity.  Approving a cover page may take 45 minutes depending on the project coordinator standing next to the 10 color printing unit in a noisy plant down south.  Approving a layout design takes a day or two depending on the creative vision of the editor and how well developed this vision already is.  I learned that ideas that are not well crafted take a while to visually translate and aesthetically developed.  Preferences in opinion may get in the way of executing the design process and therein arises great frustration between the "customer" and the designer.  

These are things I continue to digest to this very moment.  It's a very different cycle than your usual production process that may appear to be simple and straightforward.  Apparently, it's not.  The human element always becomes what makes everything right or what makes everything wrong.   At this point, I intend to not be the human element that gets in the way of producing quality publications.  I hope to be able to write on one of them at some point in my lifetime.  And hopefully someday soon I get to understand the patterns that guide these creative minds into crafting these messages onto hundreds of pages and what influences their choices of color and design so that I don't have to sit next to a noisy printing unit for 45 minutes next time.

Converting to Apple, Honoring Steve Jobs and Fellow Mad Men

1955 - 2011

I wasn't a Macbook user until 2006.  A friend of mine from graduate school convinced me that it was the best laptop to own.  He said I would have no problems with the battery and loading up the desktop home screen would only take one blink of your eye compared to my then Windows laptop which took around 10 minutes to load.  My first Macbook was the sleek black one.  I bought it in the recently opened PowerMac Store in the mall near my office.  I was given a free hot pink sleeve along with it.  

I drove home as fast as I could because I wanted to see if loading the operating system up with really take just a blink of an eye.  So I unpacked it with my friends who were laughing at my enthusiasm over a new laptop.  The black had a matte finish and I was almost afraid to touch it because it would smear its surface.  But I took it out and looked at it as soon as I turned the power on.  I blinked.  There it was the desktop.

I've been reading some articles on Steve Jobs for the past 30 minutes and find myself tearing up a bit on some of them.  He was one of the people I would immediately idolize because of his courage to stand out and venture into places no one has ever been.  He was one of those people our entrepreneurship professor would call "one who can detach and attach at the same time is the one who can multiply himself and reach many places".  He was one of those people who I would look for leadership advise especially in a place where change is most needed and where culture is most stifled from creative potential.  

And in the middle of all my rantings, he would probably say, "Grow up.  Creative genius isn't handed to you in a silver platter.  It's not given to you for free.  You don't look for opportunities to be creative.  You look for problems that need those opportunities.  You want to be creative?  Be comfortable with this mess."

Everyday I encounter a situation that would inhibit me and demotivate me from a more productive momentum.  Just this morning, conversations with staff remind me how human we get when we are pushed against a wall pressured to deliver something impossible.  Today I honor this man, Steve Jobs, who surpassed limits and whose innovation has given me the places where I can breathe and find my own creative self.

the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles - Jack Kerouac

Some tribute pages I liked:

• Gizmodo's tribute
• Gizmodo's article on reactions to Steve's Death
• Wall Street Journal's tribute  

Preferences Can Hinder Creativity

She struts confidently into the room.  Puts her things down at the table and walks up to me and tells me, "Ma'am we have a problem with delivery.  Production was not able to deliver what they committed."  I looked at her and asked her what she did and she told me, "Me?  What else can I do?  They are the ones who know what goes on in the floor, why should it come from me?"

This mentality is a dangerous one.  It makes you hard to work with.  It makes you limited.  It makes you confined to only one comfortable place: your preferences.

Circumstances are mixed with a lot of preferences coming from different people.  Some people prefer fast paced interactions.  Some are slow and easy.  Some prefer long discussions.  Some prefer short and straight to the point.  Although I cannot judge people because of their preferences, I would say in some situations, preferences get in the way of allowing people to work together and come up with creative solutions.  

"I prefer to be updated as soon as there are changes in the schedule."  She says.  What happens if she is not updated?  How will she navigate the circumstance?  These situations happen everyday and managing people who have this mindset is quite a challenge.  It somehow limits my own creative inclinations as well.  It limits how I can approach the situation.  It limits what I can express in a situation.  It limits how I think about a person and how I can work with them more productively.  It limits what we can create together.

It's disappointing when I see someone struggle with having to stay stuck in their preferences.  They become slave to them.  I've always been someone who allow myself to appreciate others' preferences while also acknowledging that I have some of mine.  

Still, it's a Friday and I look out at an orange sky and thank heaven for the past two days that have been filled with creative conversations despite the limitedness of business situations.

the skyscrapers outside my window 

Desperate Acts of Creative Resuscitation

from adimari's album "quotidie"

I lose all my drive to keep up with the work when I encounter people who suck the life out of the possibility for more improvement.  

It happens.  

It's 7:30am and you eagerly want to take on the new day.  You come in extra early because you want to sensitize your mind to the work ahead of you.  You open your laptop and get a cup of coffee and stare out the window just to catch a glimpse of empty space and be amused at the green vine that climbs up the stonewashed wall.  You're breathing it all in and your mind relaxes and finds its creative rhythm.

You open a spreadsheet filled with numbers and get ready to take on a report that's been a day late.  You list down the people you need to talk to about the information you need to produce.  They shuffle back and forth their desks because they're not ready for the information you're looking for.  They call you impossible.  You call them lazy.  They ignore your comment and pretend they didn't hear you call their name.  They look at you with fake smiles but at the back of their they want to skin you alive as they grit their teeth and say, "Yes Ma'am."  You try to exercise a bit of encouragement and feel positive about the day ahead so you take out your wallet and give them money to order pizza for lunch.  It gets them feeling better and they carry on with their work with half-heartedness.

A colleague comes in breaking your quiet reflection and the cursor pauses in the middle of a sentence you're constructing that's supposed to get you going on a momentum that will make you speed up and finish the report ahead of time.  You wanted to hit your record time of writing 25 pagers in 2 hours gets halted because of a complaint gestating from the rumble in her throat about the new performance appraisal system she cannot finish because she has no time.  

You try to break it down for her.  Understand her situation and talk in a calm tone so she knows you're listening.  You give her a sympathetic gaze for not having slept for days as you size up her unkempt hair and pale skin.  You assign one of your staff to meet up with her so that she can get started up with the work she needs to do in identifying what she wants to appraise her team for.  

You helped her in good faith.  And 6 months later, she tells your boss she is  uncomfortable with you and wonders why she becomes your subordinate now.

I wonder what people get when they do these kinds of things.  Does it make them feel better about themselves?  Does it make them feel more capable about the job they do?  Does it make them finish the work?  

I'm a stickler for principle centered leadership.  And though I fumble with this sometimes I have learned that there is no other way to navigate through a journey of change and transition unless you are anchored to a set of firm beliefs that illuminate how you make decisions.  This is my current struggle and I cope feebly with it by jotting down my random thoughts in a notebook or spending some time on the internet looking for articles that would resonate with my experience.  I'd step out of the office and buy a tall cup of caramel macchiatto and enjoy the walk under the sun for 10 minutes.  I'd buy some books in the bookstore that I'll just stack up in a pile cluttered in my room waiting to get dust and tell myself "I'll read them someday." as a way of pushing myself to finish all the work so that I can get to that finish line where these books become a trophy of success.

Of course, I pray.  I scramble upward that height of spiritual attunement until my mind finds its quiet rhythm under grace.  But this is not often easy.  The saints know how I slide back every now and then. They see how the devotional lying on my desk remains unturned from the last time I opened it.  The angels know how I doze off in the middle of a Hail Mary and they know I ache to finish a Rosary every time I drive to work in the morning.

How do I live with all this you might ask.  I don't.  That's why even in it's messed up state, I keep on pressing towards finding the peace hidden in the cluttered corners of these busy situations by whispering to myself "all things work out for the good..." and calling out to St. Monica the patron of patience that this virtue in me will increase and I can hold on till the day ends.  I do not allow myself to be satisfied with the status quo of disarray but I tell myself to accept that all chaos is a necessary prelude to all creative work and that includes building up my interior mettle to withstand the temporary discomfort of learning how to turn messy business situations into moments of opportunity.

St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine
pray for us.

Hopefully a Stranger no More

from adimari's album "quotidie" 

I sit late into the night and push my creative blocks and breaking my limits of wordlessness.  I push it because I've never felt this flow in such a long time and I revel in its mastery over me.  I succumb to the work and for these past 4 hours I am no longer a stranger to myself.  

Sight seems to have returned and what has been gestating for the past 2 weeks of longing to pour out my thoughts about what's been constricted and paralyzed because of so much work is now slowly coming out.  I have been wanting to articulate so much about this experience that has taken me captive. I feel like a prisoner of busy-ness and I'm trying to overcome.

In ten minutes I will be watching the much awaited TV series second season of Nikita.  Another chance to loosen up what has been coiled so tight.  I've forgotten how to entertain myself.  I shan't forget no more.

Is Creativity only found in Art?

from adi mari's album "quotidie"

I have learned that creativity isn't only recognized in the universe of art forms.  A huge amount of knowledge on this subject has already been explored by so many and I've only begun to touch its surface. Despite having been aware of the wealth and value of the creative mind and how it churns information, I have never attended to how I applied what I knew about it in my everyday life.  

Part of the exploration is observing how I'm growing creatively and how it has helped me cope with various circumstances.  I cannot afford to discount that this is also a matter of spiritual growth because the creative mind in a sense begins, at least for me, when I become attuned to the Creator.  

God therefore called man into existence, committing to him the craftsman's task. Through his “artistic creativity” man appears more than ever “in the image of God”, and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous “material” of his own humanity and then exercising creative dominion over the universe which surrounds him. With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power. (Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists)

This is hard to keep up with because in everyday life, creativity is often an act of will, relying solely on our own prowess.   At least for those who are unaware of its source.

You calculate digits and mark decimal places while feeling the pulse of the deadline press against your temples and giving you that unwanted migraine.  It's 5 minutes before 6:00 pm and you're supposed to pack your bags but then the phone rings and a caller says, "You need to submit the budget template tonight because it will be compiled by tomorrow."  They are oblivious of your need to breathe.  They fault you for lack of commitment when you do not appear for tomorrow's boardroom meeting because you had to speak with an employee who is concerned about the delay in his compensation's increase.

You chug down a bottle of lukewarm water because you don't have time to go down to the canteen and buy a cold one.  You open your lunch box and quickly mouth a fork full of cold spring rolls because there was no time to heat it up in the microwave.  Your eyes start blinking because it aches from the glare of the computer screen and still you type away squeezing all you can out of your mind until the numbers you calculate start to make sense.  You've repeated the payroll budget 5 times because of additional revisions in the org chart.  All this without a proper business plan framework.  All is done in one swing like shooting darts in the air aiming for an invisible target.  

But you choose this job because you don't want to be called a quitter and you want to test the limits of how far you're willing to be uncomfortable for the sake of gaining something more than monetary fulfillment.  It has to start with that.  It cannot be just monetary or you'll lose it.  You'll lose all meaning. You'll lose all purpose.  And you'll lose all sanity.

You are at your brink and you've compromised all that you know to embrace this environment that does not make sense and when you clasp your hands around it you begin to say, "I believe in God."  And then you find your second wind.  And you realize that you didn't die at the end of the day and you overcame the distress that battled with yourself.

Creativity doesn't only manifest in art forms.  It permeates life.  It is life.