Milton Glaser's 10 things…

5
LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.

Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realise that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.’

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

What do you like in your serial drama?

Nea Polis 003: The Darkness — Episode 13
A serial drama by Vittorio Adinolfi


Find more videos like this on Sabet TV


SOURCE: Sabet.tv

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

4
PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT.

Early in my career I wanted to be professional, that was my complete aspiration in my early life because professionals seemed to know everything - not to mention they got paid for it. Later I discovered after working for a while that professionalism itself was a limitation. After all, what professionalism means in most cases is diminishing risks. So if you want to get your car fixed you go to a mechanic who knows how to deal with transmission problems in the same way each time. I suppose if you needed brain surgery you wouldn’t want the doctor to fool around and invent a new way of connecting your nerve endings. Please do it in the way that has worked in the past.
Unfortunately in our field, in the so-called creative – I hate that word because it is misused so often. I also hate the fact that it is used as a noun. Can you imagine calling someone a creative? Anyhow, when you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

3
SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.

This is a subtext of number one. There was in the sixties a man named Fritz Perls who was a gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy derives from art history, it proposes you must understand the ‘whole’ before you can understand the details. What you have to look at is the entire culture, the entire family and community and so on. Perls proposed that in all relationships people could be either toxic or nourishing towards one another. It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences. And the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

2
IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.

One night I was sitting in my car outside Columbia University where my wife Shirley was studying Anthropology. While I was waiting I was listening to the radio and heard an interviewer ask ‘Now that you have reached 75 have you any advice for our audience about how to prepare for your old age?’ An irritated voice said ‘Why is everyone asking me about old age these days?’ I recognised the voice as John Cage. I am sure that many of you know who he was – the composer and philosopher who influenced people like Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham as well as the music world in general. I knew him slightly and admired his contribution to our times. ‘You know, I do know how to prepare for old age’ he said. ‘Never have a job, because if you have a job someday someone will take it away from you and then you will be unprepared for your old age. For me, it has always been the same every since the age of 12. I wake up in the morning and I try to figure out how am I going to put bread on the table today? It is the same at 75, I wake up every morning and I think how am I going to put bread on the table today? I am exceedingly well prepared for my old age’ he said.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

"BoonEx is not a company. BoonEx is a community."

SOURCE: Boonex via SpringNet

Milton Glaser's 10 things…

1
YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.

This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realised that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.

— Milton Glaser,
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001

"Buying handmade helps us reconnect"

The ascendancy of chain store culture and global manufacturing has left us dressing, furnishing, and decorating alike. We are encouraged to be consumers, not producers, of our own culture. Our ties to the local and human sources of our goods have been lost. Buying handmade helps us reconnect.

SOURCE: BuyHandmade

Documentally speaking…

SOURCE: Documentally

Future Buzz needs a makeover…

…but has some interesting content:

Lists:

• Are scan-able
• Provide easy to read and consume content
• Have the novelty factor
• Are many times “must-share” content
• Engage people
• Are at times humorous, entertaining or incredible
• Are a strong social web meme
• Get strong traffic

There are 58+ pages of top 10 lists that have made page one of Digg. And that’s just for “top 10” lists!

SOURCE: TheFutureBuzz

Buy a t-shirt, save the world

Africa Aid provides the foundation for innovative partnerships and intimate community-based relationships between developing African communities and their more established American counterparts. To create a sustainable and mutually beneficial community partnership, Africa Aid characterizes the problems of an African community and then integrates foreign aid projects into American university curriculum, allowing university students and faculty experts to design solutions to extreme poverty. Africa Aid implements the resulting university designed solutions in Africa, working alongside African communities to establish basic levels of Education, Health, Water, and Economic Empowerment.

SOURCE: AfricaAid

You remind me of something…

In times of need, brothers and sisters, it becomes the right time to sit down and ponder the true meaning of it all. Navigating a nadir, there's nothing that stirs the soul more than a good dose of the brother Bonnie "Prince" Billy. His latest release, 'Lie Down In The Light' (Drag City/2008) is the quintessential elixir that brightens the blessed day. Give a listen.

SOURCES: Drag City, Daytrotter

Playing the Building

Creative Time presents Playing the building, a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

Playing the Building, Battery Maritime Building, New York, NY, 2008
SOURCE: CreativeTime

Twyla Tharp and creativity

“…it doesn’t necessarily fit neatly into the “self-help” box, which is already overstuffed with cookie-cutter books on making yourself a happy, healthy, sexually-satisfied, skilled overachiever. Tharp speaks to her reader in a language that any person, whether they are already creative or only desire to be, can understand and use for their own lives.”

SOURCE: Bookslut

A Brief History of JKrishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti lived from 1895 to 1986, and is regarded as one of the greatest philosophical and spiritual figures of the twentieth century. Krishnamurti claimed no allegiance to any caste, nationality or religion and was bound by no tradition. His purpose was to set humankind unconditionally free from the destructive limitations of conditioned mind. For nearly sixty years he traveled the world and spoke spontaneously to large audiences until the end of his life in 1986 at the age of ninety. He had no permanent home, but when not traveling, he often stayed in Ojai, California, Brockwood Park, England, and in Cennai, India. In his talks, he pointed out to people the need to transform themselves through self knowledge, by being aware of the subtleties of their thoughts and feelings in daily life, and how this movement can be observed through the mirror of relationship.

SOURCE: Krishnamurti Foundation

Ghost Rock

Ghost Rock is the new album from the Michigan-based collective NOMO. The album, produced by Warn Defever, sheds light on the way forward for a band that has been forging its own vital sound. This is not the Afrobeat of Fela, nor the revivalist funk of a forgotten decade. This record owes as much to Can, Eno, and MIA as it does Kuti, Francis Bebey, and Funkadelic. On Ghost Rock, NOMO arrives in a new place. There’s no loss of steam as they incorporate new influences, instead NOMO breaks through with a matured and developed sound that is fully its own.

SOURCE: Ubiquity Records

Ice Cream Spiritual, indeed

Listening to Ponytail's second effort, Ice Cream Spiritual (We*Are*Free; 2008), John Cage's quote about poetry taken to its logical extreme comes to mind. Molly Siegel, Ken Seeno, Dustin Wong and Jeremy Hyman have nothing to say and they're saying it, loudly and with a sense of joy that's nothing short of infectious.

SOURCE: Pitchforkmedia

My Bloody Valentine: Live in London

My Bloody Valentine's show finale, at The Roundhouse in London on June 20, the white noise coda to "You Made Me Realise", has become as central to their legend as the bankrupt record label and the endlessly scrapped new material. Everyone in the Roundhouse was waiting for it, many had probably wondered how they might react, how extreme things could possibly get.

Photo of Kevin Shields by Shannon McClean

SOURCE: Pitchforkmedia

Etsy Watch

Three words: Eco Dog Toy

This dog toy will be hours of fun for your pet. It is made of upcycled items. The fabric was disgarded upholstery samples that were going to be thrown away. Inside is a plastic water bottle that makes a crunchy sound. There is a little poli-fil used for stuffing. It is machine sewn for extra durability.

SOURCE: LumpyStrawberry

David Lewis is Bang & Olufsen

The 69-year-old Mr. Lewis, a U.K. native, graduated from London's Central School of Art and Design in 1960. He had aspired to be a furniture designer, but when the class was full he turned to industrial design instead. Three of his B&O creations are part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection in New York.

SOURCE: WallStreetJournal, Beoworld.org