It’s good to take pictures of works in progress. Helps to know if you ruined a great black and white piece by coloring. Maybe that’s Frank Miller’s secret.
Click these to enlarge:
Notes:
- I need a naming convention for these. “Composition 10” doesn’t cut it, but I don’t want to get too clever. Maybe I’ll run them through a random password generator.
- Desperately need Copic markers in both warm and cool grays.
- The small 3×5 pieces feel stronger, maybe because it’s easier to be spontaneous at a small scale. If you screw up a 3×5 you’ve lost 10 minutes instead of hours.
- So far the process is: 1) quickly dash out the black outlines 2) agonize for hours over color placement
- It’s fun to flip back and forth between the two versions in a tabbed browser.
Previous work: 3×5 Drawings with links to many others
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It’s embarrassing to be introduced to someone and forget their name 2 seconds later. We’re so busy worrying about what we’re going to say next that we never really hear names in the first place.
The Memory Book offers a simple technique to fix this: You associate a new person’s name, face, and other attributes with something crazy. I tend to imagine something sticking through people’s heads, but you’ll develop your own pattern.
Here are examples for people I’ve met recently:
- Preston = Picture him with a top hat doing magic. “Presto!”
- Charles = A crowned king sitting on “charcoal”. “Charles the Great”
- Tesse = Has taken Ms. “Tessmacher’s” place as Lex Luthor’s squeeze.
- Ben = Imagined him riding a chariot like Judah “Ben” Hur.
- Yasmine = “Jasmine” flowers sticking out of her head at all angles. I actually pictured calla lilies because they’re more striking than jasmine. The association doesn’t have to be accurate, just unusual enough to be memorable.
When you know the person’s job it’s easy to use that as an association. Bartenders and baristas work in distinctive places and tend to wear uniforms. They’re also overworked and under appreciated so if you smile, say hello, and remember their name, they’re likely to remember that you like your scotch neat and your coffee black. Here are some examples:
- Stephanie = Has a 6’ brass “bar” or “staff” though her head.
- Rachel = Has a big “ratchet” on her head while wearing a green apron.
When you’re meeting an entire group of people at once it’s hard to quickly form associations. In those situations do the best you can, and repeat people’s names as they’re said. Get at least one name down solid so you can talk to them first. Ask them “how they know everyone” and they’ll repeat everyone’s names for you.
If you need more help there are lots of other techniques.
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Below is a screenshot of the NBC.com player. Can you spot the problem?
If you guessed “the network boneheads are stuck in 1972” you win a prize.
The only way this is better than normal TV is that it’s already time shifted. Otherwise it’s the same old interruption-driven marketing (I don’t want Gas-Ex right now, thanks) on the same old schedule (it’s still up to me to remember to come back for new shows).
What NBC should have done:
- Put “Subscribe” everywhere. Nobody remembers TV schedules anymore. We want to be notified via RSS, text message, or email.2
- Enable a “permalink” for player minutes and seconds. Permalinks make bookmarking, sending to friends, and embedding video elsewhere much more powerful. Even YouTube doesn’t do permalinks yet, so it’s a real opportunity for NBC to add value.
- TV ads don’t work on TV anymore, and they’re even less effective when I can check Twitter, email, and blog stats with one key press while the ads play. NBC’s ads are particularly bad. Not only do they run horrible T.G.I. Friday’s ads featuring that sweaty guy with bleached hair, their “seconds remaining” timer lies like hell.3
- Why can’t I embed this on my own site? NBC, why not help me promote your products?
- Link to or scrape from Wikipedia. Wikipedia knows more about TV lore than the networks ever will. Why not make use of it?
- Put all their shows and stars on Twitter. If Steve Carell was a Twitterer he’d have 10,000,000 followers.
Why they won’t do it:
- TV networks are in the “deliver millions of eyeballs to car manufacturers” business of the past, not the “show relevant, actionable ads to interested, qualified viewers” business of today.
As promised in a previous post, I’ve summoned all my godlike design powers to mock up the perfect player UI that will save TV forever:
Swish!
- All the networks’ web video work pretty much the same. Sorry to pick on you NBC, we had good times what with Knight Rider and all.
- Collecting email addresses to give users real value is the cornerstone of Permission Marketing.
- Ideas for better “internet TV” ads: 1) Let me buy DVDs and merchandise of this show right now. 2) Let me pick the brands that can advertise to me so the system can learn my preferences. 3) Only show me commercials for movies and shows somehow related to the one I’m watching.
- Update: The mockup image has been moved into the post. Originally it wasn’t. I save you clicks because I love you.
Previous posts in this series:
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Microsoft’s mission was to “put a computer on every office desk and in every home.”
Today Microsoft faces that most terrifying question, “Now what?”
Bill Gates is leaving to avoid that question, and an organization full of people in “guard my fiefdom” mode can’t answer it.
I wonder if a different mission like “Build the most desirable software in the world” would have served them better in the long run. Notice that MSFT’s original mission doesn’t say anything about people being passionate about the products. Putting software in offices means writing software that CIOs like, not software that users love.
Anyway, Google has the right idea with their mission statement: “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” because it’s a goal that can never be reached*. The world is just going to generate more and more information forever. Google will never run out of things to do.
This also works on a personal level. For example, my life’s mission is: “Make a living with creativity and help others do the same.” This can incorporate everything I do like sculpting monsters, drawing, blogging, and helping people build web sites. It gives me a specific direction without being too specific about how I have to arrive. There isn’t some arbitrary dollar amount I have to obsess about. Instead if I just work on my mission every day, I’ll succeed.
* Somewhere I read a quote by someone famous (a scientist I think): “If your goals can be achieved in your lifetime you aren’t thinking big enough” but I can’t find a definitive citation.
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Why does this page, which millions of us see every day, not remember my preference?
I have never selected “Add to Google homepage” and I never ever will. RSS sucks enough without you adding another smidge of friction.
You can do it. You have the technology.
Hugs and kisses,
Nathan
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This is an exquisitely rendered schematic of my desk:
You can see that I had difficulty fitting everything on a 3×5 card. Any system that be can’t comfortably diagrammed on an index card is too complicated to be user friendly, so I’ve taken about 5 minutes out of my busy day to solve the problem for the whole world.
Step1: The entire table surface needs to be a wireless charging pad. We’ll need some magic and/or fairy dust to make monitors, laptops, and external hard drives draw enough juice wirelessly without frying our nether regions.
Step 2: Every device pictured needs to communicate via secure, terabit fast, tiny wireless transponders. Also everything needs to work as easily as today’s USB. The “easy use” part will probably require more fairy dust than the actual wireless technology.
Step 3: Magic happens
Step 4: Profit!
No…more…hanging…wires! Also, no more unplugging a million things just to take my laptop off a desk. Of course any desk at a coffee shop, hotel, or office should have the same technology to complete the circle. What do you say Apple? Can you have this for me by July?
Previous desk schematic: Budget KVM solution
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I used markers instead of paint, but paint would have been better. Markers work better on smooth surfaces (canvas is rough).
You need a blank canvas sketchbook from your local art or craft supply store and markers or paint. You also need years to hone your artistic ability, or if you’re like me and skipped all that pesky training, you can embrace abstract art.
Not super confident working directly with markers? You can do a design in pencil and fill it in with ink. Present for mom? Draw like you did in kindergarten and she’ll probably love it even more.
If all that’s too hard, just drop some paint on the book from about 3 feet up Pollock-style. That’s what’s great about the improvisational arts. There is no “wrong”. There’s just “do”.
This is the front (click to enlarge):
→ Click to see the back, spine, and black and white version →
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“Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.” — ancient Jedi proverb
Back in the mid 1990s (a golden age IMHO), my friend John made a duct tape wallet from instructions featured in the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royale magazine.
In the spirit of that long dead publication I give you this camera case:
My new chocolate colored Canon SD1100 IS came with a paper sleeve to which I added duct tape and spare velcro. It fits the camera better than any case I could have bought.
I put the camera in the sleeve for bulk, then loosely taped the outside. It’s important that you don’t tape everything too tightly or your camera won’t fit well.
A long time ago I did this with my MacBookPro’s paper sleeve* and it worked reasonably well, but I stopped using it because airport security doesn’t like seeing anything wrapped in silvery tape.
* Huh, looking at that old Newshutch blog post I see comments from my new Twitter friend Jeton. Hopefully he approves of this post ;~)
See also: The duct tape DSLR camera bag. Awesome.
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This weekend I dropped about $60 for more Copic markers. The Sharpies just feel wrong now. Here’s my Copic arsenal:
Below are my latest pieces. At the bottom of this post are links to all previous drawings.
So far my favorite of all the 3×5s is the one in the middle below, though I’m really liking the bottom B&W one that was done with the 0.7mm pen.
Any feedback, suggestions, or offers of extravagant patronage? Please share in the comments. I’ve got a thick skin and I’m not afraid to use it :~)
← Click to enlarge all →
Previous drawings:
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…is Copyblogger’s The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma, and the Secret of Life:
It’s all too easy to tell ourselves we can’t really do what we want. That it’s not practical, or it’s too hard, or that our dreams are selfish and not the “right thing” to do.
I got over that really fast. Every delusional and self-defeating system of thought I had carried around with me for years was revealed for what it was… my own mind creating false limitations.
Usually our worldviews, routines, and obligations evolve over a period of years.
But sometimes your world can change instantly, like when you have a baby, or you realize that decades of school can’t teach you how to live, or that hairy mole turns out to be cancer.
Instant clarity. Too bad it’s hard to access that clarity until you’re at the precipice.
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