1. Say “no” to projects that take you further from rather than closer to your own creative goals, however flattering or lucrative. (Hugh MacLeod put it beautifully: “The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.”)
Source : The Atlantic
In one year, Philip Morris spent $60 million on charitable programs and then another $108 million advertising the fact that they had done so.
– Life Inc : Douglas Rushkoff
The presence of Spitalfields and other farms not only demonstrates ways in which Londoners are attempting to remain connected to how food is sourced and produced (as evidenced by the rise of boutique markets such as Borough and Brixton), but also serves as a means to maintain a multicultural identity and re-establish communal urbanism in a city that increasingly isolates its citizens.
Source : Polis
“My local group of 80 members signed up to Fairtrade at an important time. It was at the point when farmers here were thinking of stopping producing bananas; we just couldn’t compete. Farmers here get almost double the rate for a box of bananas under Fairtrade and also a $1 premium per box. This has given me some stability to borrow from the bank and I set up a preschool for 34 children in my area.
Source : Independent
And yet the tax argument is remarkably simple. Start with the Constitution’s text. Congress’s enumerated powers in Article I, section 8 begin with the General Welfare Clause, which gives the federal government the power “[t]o lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States.”
Source : The Atlantic
As I go through this process, I try not to use email to give someone negative feedback, and I rarely respond to negative feedback over email. Email is a great tool for transactional conversations (Where should we have lunch?), sharing information (Here’s that file, there’s someone I want you to meet), or showing appreciation (You spoke powerfully in that meeting, I’m touched by your support — thank you). For anything else, you’re better off calling or talking to someone face to face. I also do my best never to go back and forth with someone on email about something more than two or three times. If it’s gone that far, it’s usually a better idea to pick up the phone.
Source : HBR
If you ask me why I am willing to give away the valuable formula of this discovery I will confide to you that experience has taught me two things about it: First, the formula is so simple to state that few who hear it really believe in it.
Second, while simple to state, it actually requires the hardest kind of intellectual work to follow, so that not all who accept it use it.
– A Technique for Producing Ideas by by James Young
This theory implies that all objects communicate a message to people through five possible codes: paternal, maternal, childish, erotic, and birth/death.3 We can recognize many of these codes in the Alessi product family. Indeed, according to Alberto Alessi, Thanks to this epistemological
Design Driven Innovation by Roberto Verganti
Source : Design Driven Innovation
“Designers shouldn’t accept false suggestions from the market. The market never suggests anything good.” So says Michele De Lucchi
That is Benedikt’s call, cited above: take advantage of the machines, they are made for this! And that means: also creative professionals, mind workers, editors, journalists, should think like hackers. Hacker for me is a neutral to positive term. Hacker make use of technology as completely as possible. Like the famous investigative journalists, they don’t let themselves hold up by arbitrary rules which are supposed to tell us, how we should use information.
Source : Slow media
Collected Reading 