Via Renaissance Kid.

Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Human resources are like natural resources; they’re often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they’re not just lying around on the surface.

Follow an email along its path to take a journey through Google’s data centers. Lovely way to explain what happens after you hit send.

Porn for book lovers. A photo blog collection of all the best bookshelf photos from around the world for people who *heart* bookshelves.

Bookshelf Porn, created in 2009 by Anthony Dever, is a photoblog showcasing only the best photographs of bookshelves. Well, what can I say? <3

In just a few years, social media has established itself as an intrinsic and increasingly important part of the everyday life of innumerable people all over the planet. Being utterly essential for both brands and users, social media might be indispensable to life. In fact, a recent United Nations report even declared Internet access a human right.

One might use social media or not, but this certainly raises the question whether platforms like Facebook, Twitter and suchlike have transformed beyond a want into something we actually need?

The hierarchy of needs, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation”, is an essential psychological theory, which appeals to the various layers of growth in humans. Generally displayed as a pyramid, the largest and fundamental physiological needs – breathing, food, water, sleeping etc. – are displayed at the bottom, followed by safety, love/belonging, esteem and self-actualisation.

The following info-graphic, found via Alfredo Vila, takes Maslow’s theory as a foundation and then looks at the different social media tools, which fulfil these different needs:

While the different social media platforms certainly do not provide any physiological nourishment, it could be argued that Facebook and Google+ do help us to both develop and maintain a sense of belonging through connections to friends and relatives. Twitter is good for our self-esteem, given that it empowers us to reach out to others and self-promote, and LinkedIn reasonably satisfies our need for safety, providing security for employment.

Now though I do understand those allocations and largely agree with them, I still think one cannot divide the different platforms strictly to one particular phase. Facebook and G+ could be used the same way people use Wordpress or Tumblr, and there are certainly users who brag about their achievements not only on Twitter but also on Facebook or even LinkedIn. That said, I agree with the basic fragmentation, but believe that in reality – as always – frontiers become blurred and indistinct.

To use design to impress, to polish things up, to make them chic, is no design at all. This is packaging. When we concentrate on the essential elements in design, when we omit all superfluous elements, we find forms become: quiet, comfortable, understandable and, most importantly, long lasting.

 

I always loved the work of Dieter Rams and his thoughts and philosophies about design.

Borderless creativity, borderless entrepreneurship, a more democratic field where it’s not only big companies that can do things. Now this doesn’t mean that every idea is a good idea, or that everybody will succeed, or even that it’s more easy to be become successful – it’s not easier today to become Lady Gaga today than it was twenty years ago, even though anybody can try. But just the fact that people can try is a fact that I like a lot.

– Ola Ahlvarsson

Originally created for their Client Ericsson and their Networked Society campaign, On the Brink is a great mini-documentary by the Swedish creative agency House of Radon about the past, present and future of connectivity and the network society, featuring a wide mix of people including David Rowan, chief editor of Wired UK; Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr and Eric Wahlforss, co-founder of Soundcloud.

Following on from the highly-acclaimed 2020 Vision “Future of TV” documentary series, Think TV presents a brand new series which explores “The New TV Landscape” and the opportunities it presents for advertisers. The series features some of the most respected voices in the industry giving their perspective on new opportunities in TV.

This business isn’t about selling stuff. It’s about creating strong, provocative relationships.

Watch Episode 2, featuring Dan Wieden, Co-Founder of Widen+Kennedy, who explores the opportunities a shifting media environment presents for advertisers. Dan talks about why he doesn’t see a rivalry between broadcast and interactive media, the interaction of screens and the everlasting art of storytelling. Highly recommended!

AMC’s award-winning Mad Men is more than just a series. Even today it still has a huge impact on fashion, magazines, interior, photography and style in general. The series inspired Taschen to do a two volume book on advertising from the fifties and sixties. God knows I love that time, its music, fashion and – certainly – it’s advertisements. Read more.