How to live before you die.
The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. The only way to do great work is to love what you do.
Steve Jobs
In the wake of Steve Jobs’ death, I (like millions of others) paid tribute watching videos and reading articles. Back in 2005, he gave a commencement speech at Stanford entitled “How to live before you die” that paints a (15 minute) picture of his life and the lessons he’s learned.
He talks about getting fired from Apple and how it felt like the focus of his adult life was gone. Despite the public failure of it all, he says in his speech: “Something slowly began to dawn on me, I still loved what I did… I’d been rejected, but I was still in love.” He took ownership of his mistakes, apologized for his failures, and started over. As fate would have it, he ended up back at Apple.
Everyday, people launch into careers they hate for big paychecks, or launch start-ups with the goal of an “exit”, not the goal of an awesome product or company. A career becomes a means to an end, not a source fun and fulfillment (despite the hundreds of thousands of hours we spend at work over the course of our lives). But that’s not how great companies and people come to be.
In ”Delivery Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose”, (which is an amazing book) Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh talks about similar concepts. His passion for LinkExchange and Zappos, and his belief in what they could be led the companies to success (and him to greater riches at the end of the day). When he lost the passion for LinkExchange, it was time for him to move on — even though it meant sacrificing a substantial amount of money.
Jobs is an incredible case study in great people — and the creation of great companies and products. Hsieh too. Jobs ends the video with words of advice: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” So, if you read or watch anything in memory of Jobs, watch the video.
12 Essential News Media Tumblrs You Should Follow
Good examples of media companies using Tumblr well. Thanks Mashable!
Who’s Important Now: Glamour, Glitz and Authority in Media
Condé Nast is notorious for treating its higher-ups quite well. Take Anna Wintour, a supposedly overpaid mega-bitch with infinite job perks. While Vogue is probably the biggest culprit, glossy print magazines are still providing enticing perks, and an uber glamorous lifestyle.
While new media might bring a bigger following (more readers), it lacks the glamour and glitz. As digital publications and new media houses gain authority, will this ever change?
Upturning Social Ranking at Fashion Week
The New York Times published an article entitled At Fashion Week, It’s Where You Sit That Counts, talking about how new media was bringing about changes in seating charts. With a finite quantity of seats, previous Fashion Show front-row’ers were displaced to make room for popular bloggers.
“There has been a stunning upheaval amid the ranks of traditional glossy magazines this season that is making it hard to figure out just where to place the most important.” NYTimes writer Eric Wilson explained, ”…the planning for this year’s event also serves as a reminder that the days when magazine editors were kings and queens at Fashion Week are long over.”
Ex-Condé Nast’ers can’t Hack it Online
Brandon Holley moved from Condé Nast to Yahoo (upon the collapse of Jane Mag)…and back to Condé Nast (when she was offered a position as Editor of Lucky). At Yahoo, she was “the editrix of the company’s women’s site, Shine, which grew to average 25-million unique monthly visitors under her leadership, according to comScore.” via Business Insider. Conversely, according to Lucky’s Media Kit, the magazine has a total average paid circulation of ~ 1.1 million.
In Holley’s interview with The New York Times, aptly titled “The Beat Goes Online, Minus the Glitz”, she explained that Yahoo was way less glamourous. There was no stylist, chauffeur, or mega expense account.
I’m guessing Holley returned to Condé Nast because they offered her more money and more perks. But given that her job at Yahoo had her reaching approximately 25x more people, one’s got to wonder when things will change.
Fashion and Journalism Today
Considering that Vogue is now competing with numerous fashion blogs with far fewer overhead costs, (think about everything from The Sartorialist - to a 13-year old girl’s blog, The Style Rookie, that receives ~ 30K unique visitors a month) - change seems inevitable.
How long can Condé Nast afford to employ the likes of Anna Wintour? Will new media gurus / bloggers begin getting more glamorous treatment? What’s the future of traditional media versus new media in terms of glamour, glitz and pay-scale?
Why Design Now? and The Expectation of Innovation
The medium is the message is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. Wikipedia
This past weekend I went to Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum for Why Design Now? - the fourth installation in the National Design Triennial exhibition series launched by Cooper-Hewitt in 2000. 
From improving access to safe drinking water for underserved people, generating renewable energy through sun and ocean waves, and offering low-cost corrective eyewear to underserved patients to proposing a post-petroleum urban utopia—Why Design Now? is chalk-full of big ideas that address big problems. These products, prototypes, buildings, landscapes, messages, and more address social and environmental challenges in contemporary society.
So why am I disappointed? The medium and the message don’t mesh. These innovative ideas are presented in outdated formats that can’t properly convey the importance of the work. The way a Monet is displayed at the Met isn’t appropriate for any of the work in this exhibition.
New media needs new media. An object that’s important for dynamic and adaptive nature isn’t going to be well-received in a static format. The power of a communication tool (such as twitter) won’t be ‘communicated’ on a small (non-interactive) screen. I’ll spare you the infinite examples of how I believe Cooper Hewitt failed in terms of presentation and just say that for an exhibition on innovation and contemporary culture, I expected a presentation format that conveyed this mentality.
When it comes to showing noteworthy design: show why it’s awesome; show how it works. If standard museum layouts don’t do the trick, try something new. It’s the most sustainable exhibition in the museum’s history, according to the website. But it’s not teaching and inspiring in the way that it should.
** originally posted on the Designer Pages blog
