A Studio Reimagined
Last Thursday, Frog Design had a studio tour as part of the AIGA Gain conference. In preparation for the event, a dedicated group got together a few weeks ago to redesign the front lobby. Now, the previous lobby looked okay, but homasote didn't exactly reflect the best qualities of Frog. We wanted something that not only showcased the creative talent and projects unique to the New York office, but also made the atmosphere more fun and inviting.
I think the end result turned out even better than planned. We settled on an enormous magnetic wall, which allowed us to throw up a few hundred magnets which represent Frog NYC - sketches, employee bios, photos, inside phrases, and more. This made everything interactive, and flexible for future additions. We bought two massive 25' rolls of self-adhesive magnets, and printed the images or collected the materials ourselves. A 41" screen displays a continuous loop of our projects and snapshots of frog culture...one particularly fun clip we made takes the typography from the frog mission statement and integrates the floating phrases into our New York office environment. The segments all load dynamically through Flash with captions and a frog watermark, so adding in new clips for the future will be simple. It was a great process to be a part of, and the space has really benefitted from the improvements. Environmental design is another creative pursuit that I'm becoming increasingly interested in.
Friday, October 27 at 10:50 PM
Playing is Believing
Have you seen the Wii Experience videos? What a great way to showcase the system - less emphasis on the graphics and technical details, and more about the gameplay experiences and just having fun.
Wednesday, October 25 at 10:34 PM
My Personal Dr. Phil
I have this friend at Frog who loves inspirational stuff. Books, speeches, videos - this guy is committed to making himself a more well-rounded person by constantly seeking out knowledge from others. He passed this speech along to me this week. It's been out for over a year now, and you might have seen it before, but I thought it was worth sharing. (Also, I can't think of anything else to write about.)
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This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Sunday, October 22 at 5:39 AM
Open Your Golden Gate
I spent this weekend in San Francisco, returning for the first time in 20+ years (back then, I've been told I sang SAN FRANCISCO, OPEN YOUR GOLDEN GATE as loud as possible out of our car window). Growing up on the east coast, you would often hear friends mentioning how they dreamed of one day moving out west. And I always thought it was just a temporary, natural phase in life to think you wanted to move somewhere far away and different...but after this weekend, that shared sense of manifest destiny makes a lot more sense. San Francisco is a truly beautiful city.
I was lucky to have the one and only Kate Ranson-Walsh serve as tour guide. KRW is an exceptionally talented and creative friend who I met at UVA - as well as being a fellow Teach for America alum - and we've always kept in touch since graduation. I could not have asked for a better whirlwind tour of the city. We had burritos in the Mission district, weaved through the trolleys on Market Street and Union Square, ate chocolate while exploring the Ferry Building Marketplace, took snapshots of the skyline from the shores of Treasure Island, passed through Oakland and ate chocolate chip cookies in Emeryville. Kate was awesome, telling hilarious stories and pointing out interesting landmarks all the time.
Oh yeah, by the way...did I mention that Kate works for Pixar?
This was a dream come true. Pixar, as anyone who has known me for more than five seconds probably knows, is undoubtedly the single biggest influence on my creative work (followed closely by Nintendo and the Indiana Jones movies). As luck would have it, the movie on the plane ride over was Cars, so I was all Pixar-crazy even before stepping through the front doors. If you've seen the DVD extras in movies like Monsters Inc., then you have an idea of what a cool and innovative facility this is. The pictures above are of the large central atrium - connected to this is a movie theater, cafe, kitchen, game room and mail room. There was much, much more to our little tour that I was fortunate enough to explore sans camera. Needless to say, I don't think my smile broke for the entire duration of the visit.
Thank you so much Kate. This was an inspirational experience that I will never forget.
Saturday, October 14 at 7:30 PM
A Distinct Lack of Potpourri
Last night my friends Kurt and Mary invited me to see a live taping of Celebrity Jeopardy at Radio City Music Hall (I think the episode airs on November 17). Contestants included Miguel Ferrer (Crossing Jordan), Harry Smith (The Early Show) and Steve Schirripa (The Sopranos), who won a combined $100,000 for their individual charities. We actually got to see two shows, because they ran a practice round first so everyone got used to the buzzers while the crew ironed out technical glitches. The instinct to blurt out the answers with each question was magnified by the filled-to-capacity theater - it took the entire practice round for the audience to calm down and stay relatively silent. Alex Trebek was the man - he took audience questions during the breaks and was pretty hilarious in general, even though there was a slight delay at the beginning because he couldn't find his glasses. Overall, it was a fun experience - there's really nothing quite like 6,000 New Yorkers going insane over a daily double.
Sunday, October 8 at 9:38 AM
Okay Media, October 2006
Reading: Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas. The daily subway commute has provided a reason to read again, if only to avoid awkward stares and confrontational panhandlers. I started with Klosterman at the beach this year with Killing Yourself to Live, and have Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs waiting in the wings (if anything, his books have totally sweet names and equally cool covers - CK IV's clear jacket design doesn't disappoint). The latest installment is a collection of individual episodes and celebrity interviews (from Bono to Britney Spears) that reads, much in line with his other work, like a personal journal with the occasional footnote and obscure music reference. So far so good. Also, there was a great NY Times article yesterday about how computer-animated movies have seemingly reached a saturation point (with Pixar being the exception, of course). While Pixar has told fresh but simultaneously timeless stories with cars, monsters, fish, superheroes, bugs and toys, it seems that the majority of the competition can only make a CGI film if it involves a talking animal inappropriately voiced by whoever is popular at the time. Seems on target.
Watching: The Seven Samurai. As embarrassing as it is for me to admit, I had not seen Seven Samurai until this weekend. Now I can safely and retroactively fit Kurosawian origins into the Okay Samurai name. This 3.5 hour Japanese masterpiece must have blown people's minds out when it was released in 1954. The story and cinematography have held up remarkably well 50 years later, and you can see how far its influence has spread (Roger Ebert marked it as the birth of the modern action film). I also recently enjoyed Layer Cake, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Lucky Number Slevin.
Browsing: A new version of the root42 international graphic design forum launched a few weeks ago, and this one was hand-coded from scratch by the wickedly talented Rob Mason. There are so many inspiring creative minds from around the world here - and it's always refreshing to hear their take on political and social issues as well.
Playing: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, in preparation for the Twilight Princess in a little over a month. The black and white sequence with the frozen-in-time underwater castle is a mastery of the medium. There are so many reasons why this game rocks, but the music might be the very best one. Nintendo pulls on my nostalgic heartstrings when I hear familiar themes that used to be bleeps and bloops now realized as fully orchestrated symphonies. Even the in-game fighting is punctuated with dynamic string progressions and percussive blasts upon each hit. Every morning when I step into the elevator, the Zelda "secret passageway" chimes ring in my head. This and Metroid Prime are Nintendo's two near-perfect efforts from the Gamecube generation.
Listening: WQXR 96.3 FM. New York's classical music station is currently my alarm clock, and there is nothing nicer than waking up to a Cello Concerto in A Flat Major (although one day I was late to work because the "alarm" started in the middle of a pianissimo flute trio). Now I know in New York you're supposed to wake up to jackhammers and foreign taxicab obscenities, but sometimes Park Slope feels like a different world altogether. Quite a few of you have probably seen the video for Weird Al's White and Nerdy, but it's worth mentioning solely for the "keep your 40 / I'll just have an Earl Grey tea" line and Donny Osmond cameo. I'm also eager to check out Fascination Streak's recent recommendations...Howard has never steered me wrong (except tasting that leftover apricot salsa in the back of the fridge once).
Visiting: Former roommate / everyone's favorite crazy republican Mike Ferenczy is in NYC this Friday, Celebrity Jeopardy is at Radio City Music Hall this Saturday, and I'll be heading out to San Francisco for the weekend of October 13 (for the first time in like 20+ years). I'm also hoping to squeeze in a samurai reunion back in DC sometime later this month. (See you at the Ram Oasis. Thanks for the hot chocolate, Mrs. Birkhoffer. Coach says if I watch my caloric intake I might play second-string.) And with those inside jokes that only four people will find even remotely funny, good night and namaste.
Tuesday, October 3 at 8:53 PM
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