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The Best Things Take Time
The best comebacks come to mind long after you need them. Usually they arrive shortly after you’ve given up waiting for them, while you’re in the shower, or on a long car drive. Same with the best ideas. That’s why, when possible, take Adam Grant’s advice, and procrastinate on purpose. Get the problem into your…
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Consider the Leaves
The sunrise this morning, in our corner of the world, was magical. For a brief moment, the sky turned pink. Taking the queue, the red leaves on our hedge and the neighbour’s maple tree began to shimmer like a million tiny lights. Seriously. They were glowing. Staring wide-eyed out the windows with our kids (because…
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To Feed a Hungry Lion, Water the Grass
Sometimes you can’t get that thing you want by pursuing it directly. You might want C, but instead of going after C directly, you’d be better off pursuing A, which will automatically lead to B, then C. The problem is that the connection between A, B and C isn’t always intuitive, so we waste our…
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10 Things to Remember for Mobile First Design
It’s 2016. More than half of your website users are probably visiting from a mobile device, not a desktop. Unfortunately, because web designers either started the gig before 2006, or because they’re work from their 27″ iMacs plugged into high-speed internet, it’s easy to forget some of the basics of mobile first (or mobile-only) design.…
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Lead With Eyes
In a middle school Media Literacy class I remember learning about how print ads direct your attention. I learned about how the entire page was pointing to the product, to entice you to buy it. How devious, and how clever! I was amazed that by positioning actors and actresses and cigarettes and roasting sticks in…
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Inspiration is Found on Land
Matias Corea, co-founder of Behance, describes the typical search for inspiration for any graphic designer, and many of us in any field these days. Google. When hundreds or thousands of examples of projects similar to our next brief or a click away, why go anywhere else? But Corea has a different approach: For website design,…
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Communication Wants To Be Human
When email first came on the scene, we thought we’d arrived. No more pesky phone calls, just the information you need, when you want to read it! Then texting arrived to the party, eliminating the need to ever call anyone again (and eliminating the need to move to actually walk into a different room to…
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Thank the Shoulders You Stand On
My late friend and mentor Jan was a stellar guitarist, and a student of the craft. I would occasionally mention an amazing guitarist I’d heard with a unique style. After he listened to their music, Jan would rattle off all of their influences, most of them guys I’d never heard of. The guitarists I thought…
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Dive Deeper
Have you ever gone snorkeling? Any time I strap on the goggles and snorkel and dip my head beneath the surface of the water, I’m breathless (even after I get used to breathing through a tiny pipe 😉 ). Water looks fairly ordinary above the surface, but once you look beneath the surface, you discover…
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Your Story Isn’t Out There
When you picture “living the life”, what does that look like? How far is that life from your current location (either in kilometres, or years, whatever)? I recently read Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, where he writes about how living a good life is like writing a good story. As he…
