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CreativeMornings/Findings

CreativeMornings is a free, monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types.
For the latest on upcoming events, head over to creativemornings.com or follow us @creativemorning.

future

“If you are a person who is smart, and you are a person who can roll with the punches, then the future doesn’t hold anything that you can’t handle.” — Jessi Arrington. Watch the talk.
“If you are a person who is smart, and you are a person who can roll with the punches, then the future doesn’t hold anything that you can’t handle.”

— Jessi Arrington. Watch the talk.

Shorts Saturday!
We’ve pulled some of our favorite takeaways from popular talks to give you 2-5 minute videos packed with inspiration and motivation. The perfect length for a quick break between projects, or a preview before seeing if you’d like to watch the full 20 minute talk. Check them out.

Watch more shorts here.

As part of our Backwards theme month this May, Ward Andrews of Draw Backwards spoke at our Phoenix chapter.Ward couldn’t have been a more perfect fit for the month’s theme. Aside from founding a company with ‘backwards’ in the title, Ward thinks backwards—a concept that permeates his work and the ethos of his business.


Starting from the end, as any good backwards talk should, Ward speaks on why working backwards is the best. Here are a few of his reasons:

The end is often an opportunity for us to present other ideas, new ideas. Designing the end is an important part of the process—as it dictates what happens next and what feeling your audience leaves with.

Have you ever solved a maze by beginning at the end? It tends to make things bit easier. Backwards is just a different way to solve a problem, look at it from a different angle.

Worst first. The art of the brainstorm session isn’t in the amount of people in the room, but the facilitation. Ward has everyone in the room start by contributing their worst idea, versus the best. This allowed for better ideas to emerge without the pressure of being the worst.

Don’t tell people your dreams. Show them. It’s more powerful than sitting back and letting the ideas envelop you. You get more self-worth and happiness from doing and showing.

If it looks too hard, look again. While it might seem instinctive to run from what scares you, oftentimes it is an opportunity to do something great.

Watch his talk. →

At April’s CreativeMornings/Ottawa, Shopify Chief Platform Officer (CPO) Harley Finkelstein spoke on the future of retail. Hitting upon several trends and changes he has observed, Harley breaks down the ‘Pillars of Retail’ to talk about how...
At April’s CreativeMornings/Ottawa, Shopify Chief Platform Officer (CPO) Harley Finkelstein spoke on the future of retail. Hitting upon several trends and changes he has observed, Harley breaks down the ‘Pillars of Retail’ to talk about how technology is democratizing the retail economy.

1. Fundraising
Any retail endeavor requires some amount of seed funding or capital—not a lot—but definitely some amount. Through crowd-funding platforms like Kickstarter, raising that funding has become easier than ever and that barrier to entry has been lowered.

2. Prototyping
After raising your funding, you need a sample or prototype to share with others. Having something tangible allows others to both envision your idea, as well as give feedback. With desktop 3D printers, prototyping is much cheaper, easier, and attainable.

3. Selling
Selling your product is easier too! You don’t have to sell something to a storefront or large company to get your product in stores. Shopify is a wonderful platform for doing just that—making a direct relationship from producer to consumer.

4. Shipping
There are no more minimums when it comes to shipping and fulfilling your orders. Multiple companies exist that will process and send out your product to people around the world.

5. Customer Service
Customer Service is being democratized, too! And not just abroad. Small business exist, locally, that will take your calls and answer your emails—covering all of your customer bases.

With these lower barriers to entry and democratized retail pillars, however, Harvey says it also brings on new challenges. “Because it’s easier for anyone to do it, everyone does it,” he said.

This, he predicts, brings the rise of the small business. “It doesn’t matter how much money you have, it matters how creative you are.”

Watch the talk.

William Colgrove spoke at our April CreativeMornings/Washington, DC event, giving some potentially life-saving advice on how to survive a zombie apocalypse (or what the living dead can teach you about a future career in creative services). Here it is:

Team + Problem = Solution
This is a pervasive theme both in the workplace as well as in zombie attacks. You have a team of people, there’s a problem to be solved, and you must arrive at a solution. The success (and life) of your team depends on it.

You must have a plan.
In zombie movies, the man without a plan is always the first one to go. Zombies can’t plan. It’s the one edge we have on them.

A plan should be scalable.
It should work for any size crisis. Same goes for your career. It doesn’t have to last forever; it can be a short term plan, but it needs to scale. A good three to four year plan is best, with short and long term goals for yourself.

Always leave an escape route.
The cellar is a death trap. You need to keep an open mind, open doors. Don’t keep too many doors open, it makes it hard to make decisions—but also to defend. Make sure your flexible with your exits, allowing more than one point of egress.

Do not lose your sh*t.
The guy or girl who loses it, screaming and wallowing in self-pity, is invariably eaten. Be cool. Your job is to solve problems and move on to the next one. It’s how you survive.

Develop new skills.
In an apocalypse, the only fast food is you. You must quickly learn new skills—like hunting and gathering—or become the meal of the undead. Same goes for your job, too. Whatever it is that you’re doing or working on, should not be your primary skill. Always be expanding what you know, what you do, and take the time to teach yourself something new.

Avoid open conflict.
In almost every zombie movie, the louder someone is, the easier it is for millions of zombies to find and devour them. And they descend quickly.

Stay positive.
In zombie movies, there is rarely any hope—society has collapsed. Your one hope is small glimmers of humor and happiness, so you need to stay positive.


For more tips on what to do in a zombie apocalypse or in your career path, watch the talk.

That is an inordinate amount of fortune cookies at April’s CreativeMornings/Atlanta with Perry Fair. Could it have something to do with the themed month around The Future? Photos by Nick Burchell.

Check out the rest in their Flickr Album.

Woohoo! The moment you have all been waiting for.. the very first CreativeMornings/Austin talk is now live online!

The speaker is none other than Austin Kleon, the force behind Steal Like an Artist and Newspaper Blackout. Austin speaks on April’s theme of the future, by attempting to set the ground rules for future discussions between artists and designers—in terms of how we discuss our work and process.

“I think we’re living in this mass fetishization of creativity,” he says. “And you can tell that from the way we use ‘creative’ as a noun.” He goes on to breakdown some of his previous advice: Do Good Work and Share It With People, on what is good, what is work, and how we should share.

Excellent talk. Watch it here.

The super awesome Josh Fassbind was at it again. For April’s Geneva event, Josh and the Geneva chapter staff asked attendees to travel to the future and come back with an object. Josh photographed them presenting that object.

You can check out his process, including the lighting and set up used along with some more items from the future on Josh’s website!

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