Passions and linchpins.

What are my passions? Well ... that’s a moving target these days as I’m discovering so many new creative worlds in my MFA studies. Art, design, and communication has been a huge passion in my life for more than 30 years and remains at the top of my list even today. And that passion culminated into a small, creative design group for the past 18 years. But it wasn’t just my passion for creative and distinctive design and communication that led me to the successes I’ve had in the business world. I was able to pick the right talent ... energetic young designers ... to work with me to collaborate on client projects. Most of the design staff at my business were young, either straight out of art school or within the first five years of their careers. They brought their passion to the group and became instrumental in helping me achieve my goals. And as the question has been put to me as to whether or not I am a linchpin, I don’t want to come off as arrogant, but would have to say ... yes ... I am a linchpin.

As an owner and Creative Director of a small business, my responsibilities go well beyond daily design duties. The inner workings of a small design group include not only managing the staff, but also managing the clients and vendors. While I enjoy the interactive qualities of those tasks, I found that it can create a drain on creativity. The day-to-day task of managing the different agendas and personalities of people has the potential to divert attention and focus away from what a person really wants to accomplish when it comes to creative development. While I believe the management of client needs, creative direction, and vendor management would qualify me as a linchpin, I feel my biggest success as a linchpin was recruiting the right creative talent to enable our group to produce distinctive, engaging, and successful communication materials for our clients.

But linchpins can break. The biggest obstacle I faced, and what got in my way, was a dysfunctional relationship with my former business partner. I won’t go into details on that subject as it’s very complicated, but after reading Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, my partner and I exhibited many of the negative traits outlined in that story.

As I’ve gotten older and have expanded my life beyond the studio walls, I’ve discovered a second passion. Through a 4 1/2 year position as an Adjunct Professor at Kansas City Art Institute, developing young designers at my design group, coaching youth sports for 10 years, and now mentoring undergraduates in the Champlain College design program, I’ve discovered that I have a passion for working with young people.

So, putting my passions for design and communication together with my love of working with young people, I’ve come up with the following positioning statement based on Kawasaki’s ten word limit:

Helping businesses ... and our youth ... create a beautiful world.

I look forward to continuing the mission.

Inspiration just ... happens.

I never know where I’m going to find inspiration. And it usually comes when I’m not looking for it. I saw a weathered piece of typography on a mailbox as I was driving in the country a couple of days ago. It was beautiful. I watched my son’s varsity baseball game last week. The determination they showed was exhilarating. The lilacs lining my property are blooming right now. The color and smell is amazing. I met a talented undergraduate design student in the Mac lab several months ago. His story was triumphant. All of these events inspired me. I find that inspiration happens to me mostly when I’m not searching for it. It just happens. That’s not to say that I don’t search for inspiration, it just seems to be all around me in the different aspects of my life waiting to be discovered at the right moment.

When it comes to my creative work, I read all the design magazines and annuals that I can get my hands on looking for inspiration. That’s great for following trends, but after I put them down, I don’t always feel inspired. In fact, I’m not too inspired by very many new aesthetic trends happening right now. When I look at the magazines and annuals, I’m more inspired by the exciting new ideas and thought processes that creatives are applying to their world using unusual methods.

I came across an article in Communication Arts several months ago about an ad agency in Toronto that implemented an idea to separate themselves from their competitors. It is an online documentary of a day-long event titled “Think.” The site includes the documentary film, images, and text from the project and explores everything that happened that day. Their contention is that the hundreds of ad agencies in Canada tout themselves as unconventional, but don’t follow through on that promise. The project consisted of eight interdisciplinary thinkers from Zulu Alpha Kilo crammed into a box in downtown Toronto where they asked passersby for creative challenges and then proceeded to solve them on the spot while “thinking inside the box.” This Web site is an online extension of the live event:

www.thinkinginsidethebox.ca

The “box” was equipped with all the technical requirements of an agency (fast internet, printer, etc.) and fed live animations to all the video billboards surrounding the square to inform pedestrians of what was happening inside the box. No question or problem to solve was off limits. This collaborative project is fascinating because there was no way to predict what types of problems people would bring to them, it allowed them to show their creative problem solving capabilities, and showed potential clients that they truly are willing to take risks to prove what they are capable of producing. This project is truly inspirational to me.

I believe that finding inspiration can be elusive. Therefore, I keep my radar up for that opportunity where it presents itself to me. For me, it comes from people, nature, groups, objects, books ... essentially everything and everywhere. I just have to recognize it. Earlier today I was inspired by my dog Scot. He loves to play ... and playing inside our environment is a great way to discover inspiration.