Let your passions move you. Don’t be defined by what you aren’t; be defined by what your vision of the future will be. Don’t be afraid to think big. Think. There’s a bigger ocean. Your only limitation is your confidence in your compass.

In the last few years I’ve been listening to a debate about what the future of advertising isn’t. I sometime find it ironic that an industry that should be creative has such a difficult time articulating a vision.

As I look back and I consider what inspired me. What stands out to me is that the people I recall first are the ones that were the smartest, kindest, and the most thoughtful about their profession. They never stopped studying, teaching, exploring. Their lives were defined by their passion and they shared their passion every hour of every day with those that were willing to learn.

Inspired by a life of work,

Saul Bass www.designmuseum.org/design/saul-bass
Burne Hogarth www.bpib.com/hogarth.htm
Jack Unruh www.jackunruh.com/real.html
Stan Richards www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1999
Milton Glaser http://hillmancurtis.com/hc_web/film_video/source/milton.php
Woody Pirtile http://www.pirtledesign.com/index.htm
Eric Madsen http://emadsen.com
Matt Mahurin http://www.tlchicken.com/view_story.php?ARTid=3345
and http://www.about-tracy-chapman.net/videos.htm

People I love to watch:

Joe Duffy www.duffy.com/duffy/index.aspx
Alan Colvin http://designcue.com
Woody Pirtle http://www.designerid.com/video.php
Pentagram http://hillmancurtis.com/hc_web/film_video/source/pent.php
Russel Davis http://youtube.com/watch?v=6F1T9RDBY3I
IDEO http://ideo.com

Miscellaneous thoughts;

Stanford Design www.fastcompany.com/fast50_08/index.html
Ted www.ted.com
Art Center www.artcenter.edu
One Club www.oneclub.org
Cannes www.canneslions.com
Second Story http://secondstory.com
Communication Arts http://commarts.com

Creative Director Chris Cortilet was admitted yesterday to Methodist Hospital after loosing his fingers in a vise grip. Chris and his team were out scouting possible imagery to illustrate a story they were doing on safety, when all of a sudden Chris was being tortured by a vise grip. “I didn’t even see it coming,” said Chris, “One minute I’m walking through the plant looking for a story to tell and the next minute I’m in the throws of a life struggle with a vise grip. It just wouldn’t let go, and I could hear the bones breaking and blood was everywhere. Eventually someone released the grip and I fell to the ground. The next thing I know I’m in the hospital. They brought the fingers back to the hospital, but there wasn’t anything that they could do at that point. They put them in a jar for me and I have them in my room.”

After Chris was removed from the facility around 2 pm OSHA sent a team in to examine the scene and to access the vise grip. It’s likely that they will have a report by the end of the week. One of the experts on the scene said, “We can’t understand what happened, vises just don’t do these things. We’ve never seen anything like it. It’s likely that we won’t have a complete picture until we finish the interviews with witnesses, clean up the scene and have a forensics expert review the fingers. At this time everything is a mess.”

As I continue to look at the creative landscape — advertising agencies, design firms and technology companies — I continue to ask myself, how is it that a hardware company is teaching the creative industry how to be innovative? Ten years ago we were doing some pretty cool things with online tools. Creating sites with innovative tools like Flash. Building multifaceted pages that provided layers of content that served up text, multimedia tools, personal user interfaces, and video that was not only compelling, but also useful in its teaching.

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