Posts in the Inspiration Category

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July 21st, 2011

SRAM pART PROJECT

Posted in Client News, GS, Inspiration by Andrea Rech

GS is working on an awesome project for SRAM right now. The coolest brand in cycling has asked us to help create and manage a bike art competition.

We’re selecting 50 artists from around the country to participate and sending them a box of 100 SRAM bike parts. The artists are creating free-standing sculptures using at least 25% of the parts.

The completed art will be on display at the Interbike convention in Las Vegas in September, on display at an exhibition in Chicago in October, and finally auctioned off online in November. All proceeds of the sale of the art will benefit the World Bicycle Relief - a charity founded by SRAM Corporation that has distributed over 75,000 bicycles to people need and trained over 700 field mechanics all around the world since opening their doors in 2005.

The artists are working on their pieces now. Stay tuned to the pART PROJECT website for ongoing updates – soon we’ll add artist bios and eventually photos of the art.

Don’t forget to check out the World Bicycle Relief website and make a donation if you can. Bikes really do change lives and donating to World Bicycle Relief is one way you can make a major impact. Giving away one bike only costs $134. C’mon…you can do that!

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June 2nd, 2011

Congratulations! You’re an Expert.

Posted in GS, Inspiration, Social Media by Chris Krasovich

ex·pert/ˈekspərt/

Noun: A person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.

In discussing the social media content-generation process, the subject of expertise frequently arises. It seems that many are uncomfortable with the idea that authoring a post on a topic gives the impression that they’re “experts” in a field or area.

What is it about claiming expertise that gives so many of us pause?

For me, it tracks back to the definition at the top of this post. An expert is a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area. Not an Ivy League graduate, not a Ph.D., not someone who has learned all there is to know on a topic – but someone who has gained the ability to speak to it through deep understanding gained in time and effort spent in research, work, and study of the same. It doesn’t mean they know everything. It means they have an angle that they can support; knowledge others could benefit from. Something worth sharing.

If you’re passionate about a topic, stay abreast of it in your own reading and/or practice, and others stand to learn from your ability to break the topic down and add your own take in opinion, analysis, evaluation, or predictions, then guess what? You, too, are a part of the elite group known vaguely as “experts”! You don’t have to use that term, but in sharing your expertise, it’s how you may come to be viewed by readers, and that’s a good thing. Let’s stop fearing labels and start sharing knowledge.

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April 7th, 2011

Thou Shalt Steal

Posted in Advertising, Design, Inspiration by Paul Bartlett

When I began my career in advertising and design I was obsessed with the idea of being original. I would second-guess any logo or ad I did because it would remind me of something else. “Yeah, but Target has red circles.” “Yeah, but iPod uses silhouettes.” “Yeah, but Miller did a commercial with a Sasquatch.” It happened on every project, and it was paralyzing. But over time I learned a secret that all artists eventually figure out: Nothing is original.

Artists steal all the time. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s what keeps culture moving – revising, reinterpreting, and remixing existing ideas, which is to say all ideas.

Once I realized that, I could move on and get back to work.

Newspaper Blackout author Austin Kleon offers some very good advice about the art of plagiarism, and how to live and create as an artist that I happened upon via Drawn! Here is just a portion of what he had to say in his post:

All advice is autobiographical.

It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past. This list is me talking to a previous version of myself.

Your mileage may vary.

The rest of the post is pretty much amazing. Read it. You’ll be be glad you did.

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February 4th, 2011

Inspiration is Overrated

Posted in Design, Inspiration by Chris Krasovich

I recently found a bit of wisdom on the Drawn blog that I’d like to share because I found it chock full of truthy goodness. In a nutshell, the post asserts that good old-fashioned work trumps inspiration every time. And I have to say I concur. I admit that technically I was “inspired” to write this post after reading the paragraph below, but research is part and parcel of the work involved to keep a blog current and relevant. So that means my work on this blog led to the inspiration for this post. Overall, I feel discipline leads to ideas as much or more than passively waiting for the inspiration fairy to pay a visit. Has your experience been different? Let me know in Comments.

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work and that’s almost never the case.”

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