2007 Creatives Roundtable

Here are some interviews from Creativity's roundtable with '11 highly talented and highly opinionated creative honchos'. It has an American bias but it's still relevant and quite interesting.

To brainstorm or not to brainstorm?

An interesting debate about brainstorms going on over here

Tony and Morph

Hopefully everyone who wanted to meet Tony today will get the chance. If you didn't, hopefully this will make up for it

Something for the more mature fans


Something for the younger ones

Communication Preferences

Thanks to everyone who attended my session in the bar. It would be great to get some feedback. Did you agree with your self assessment? Have you figured anyone else out yet? Is it helping? Do share!

Should your strategy be showing?

Over at Adliterate Richard Huntingdon discusses whether or not your strategy should be showing in your work. A bit of a creative versus strategy argument.

Web 2.0 'neglecting good design'

Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design, according to web usability guru and pin up Jakob Nielsen. Read the full article here.

Thanks to Mark Grady for today's post

Helvetica is 50 years old!

This is an interview from a documentary on Helvetica with designer and typographer Will Crouwel


Another interview from the same doc with Erik Spiekerman


Today's post is courtesy of Martin Flavin. Thanks for the find!

Five principles to design by

Bokardo is the blog of Joshua Porter, a web designer/developer, researcher, and writer. He's recently posted this on five principles to design by

The Tyranny of Consumer Insights

David Nottoli of the Open Intelligence Agency discusses the tyranny of consumer insights over at his blog here.

We're all individuals

Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker discusses why he doesn't get fashion:

"If Grazia magazine printed an article declaring it fashionable to smack yourself in the forehead with a limited-edition ball-pein hammer designed exclusively by Coleen McLoughlin, a mob would form outside your local B&Q before the ink had dried on the page.
It's a mystery to me. If the whole point of fashion is to distinguish yourself from the herd, why queue up to be part of it? Am I missing something here?"

You can read the full article here.

The Life of Brian - We're all individuals

This is England

Shane Meadows' latest film, This is England, was released last weekend. If you are unfamiliar with the writer and director's previous work he's responsible for Dead Man's Shoes and 24/7. This is England is a movie about the British skinhead movement in the 80s.

The movie tackles a number of issues such as social marginalisation, identity, racism and politics. The clips below include an interview with Shane Meadows and a debate about the film on Newsnight. Listen out for the comment by Mark Kermode on Newsnight which interestingly picks up on yesterday's post about 'liking your audience'. Kermode states that people look at cultures from the outside and as a result do not fully understand them. I was personally surprised with how my perception of the Skinhead movement differed from his depiction.

The Culture Show


Newsnight

Liking your audience

Stereotyping and generalising a target audience, ring any bells? Admit it, we have all done it in briefings from time to time. This post discusses the importance of treating you audience with respect.