Awaiting the muse!

Well, here it is -- Friday, my blog day.

I have been so busy this week and as usual I have been looking out the corner of my eye waiting for inspiration to strike.

Alas, no muse...

Inspiration, is a weird thing. A doctor doesn't wait for the right mood before he performs an emergency surgery, the race car mechanic doesn't stop the car from leaving the pit until he "feels" that his work is done, hell, I don't think the guy making your Big Mac is going to hold off throwing it in the bun until he finds the PERFECT onion.

For some reason, creative work -- writing, painting, performing -- has always been presented as some magical process. I guess, I just don't buy it. I quit waiting for those pixies to show up as soon as I had my first deadline. Dreaming doesn't fill a page; knowledge, skill and hard work fill a page. Great ideas fill a page.

My buddy Mitch always used to say (and I paraphrase here): "If I practiced operating on the human brain as many hours as I have drawn I would be a hell of a brain surgeon."

In other words, in the daydreams we grasp at ideas and find our voices, but it is in the act of our design, our craft that we produce results. The more we do it the better we get.

An architect, for instance, is likely to wake in the night with a great idea, or be inspired by some great building she saw on vacation -- but it is unlikely that it is the specific design that suits the purpose of a building she is currently designing. Like most professional creators, she is likely to make some sketches, take some notes, do some research, rework it and then put it away in a drawer somewhere always waiting for the perfect fit to come along. And when that chance comes to make the idea into reality -- she will do it for a purpose and likely for a fee.

So when the blank page is too white, the piano is too loud or none of the colours are mixing right, you need to shut off that whimsical right side of your brain for a few minutes and let your reason and experience show you the way.

Of course, I could be wrong -- perhaps writing without a muse you will end up putting out something like this blog. If so, remember the advice was free -- and we usually get what we pay for!

Stiff Your Kids This Christmas

Yeah, I mean it - don't give your kids any toys this Christmas. No new Xbox, Wii, Ipod, Molest-Me-Elmo, or whatever other brand-name doohickey the little darlings have been whining for. They've got too many toys and useless gadgets as it is, and you know it.

It's Christmas, and the last thing they need is more stuff. What they need is a better understanding of what the Christmas holiday actually means. Take this opportunity to teach them. It is your duty, as parents. (Duty, that's an odd word to bring up, an old word, and one that seemingly has less to do with parenthood every day.)

I can imagine your thoughts, even now - "Isn't a parent's primary duty to keep their kids happy? Aren't kids with all the latest gadgets the happiest? If I don't give them new stuff, aren't I a bad parent? If I don't buy them all this stuff, they'll whine and it will ruin the holidays."

Sure, they'll whine. So what? Ask yourself this question: "Am I raising children? Or am I raising adults?". They are already children, your duty as parents is to turn them into adults; responsible, mature, honest, forthright and healthy adults. How is a new Xbox going to help turn a child into an adult?

Simply, it's not. No amount of stuff, no matter how cool, can teach morality and ethics, honour and compassion, integrity and love. If you truly love your children, give them what they need, not what they want.

Take all the money, time and effort you planned to spend on these "gifts", and use it to teach your kids the "real" meaning of Christmas. Spend time with them, not money! Talk to them, let them know what you have in mind, and ask them how to best celebrate the holiday - you might be surprised at the response. Rather than spend $100 on a new stereo, buy $100 worth of blankets and spend the day passing them out to the homeless. Forego the new TV, and spend a weekend volunteering at the local hospital. Spend the day with your child, not in line at the nearest Future Shop.

Whether or not you accept the supernatural origin of the man called Christ, is irrelevant. You don't need to be a Christian to celebrate Christmas. His message still has merit, and there are few who would argue with a call for a little more tolerance, a bit more compassion, and a lot of "looking out for the other guy".

Merry Christmas

Bi-Polar Customer Service

What has happened to customer service? I'm a supporter of big box stores, franchise opportunities, and the rest, but I also carry this candy-coated idea that there is still room for mom & pop businesses to thrive.

But, honestly, I shop according to customer experience THEN price...for most things anyway. I am willing to drive my car an extra 10 kilometers if I know that when I leave that particular business I will have a smile on my face.

What really puts it there though?
Is it free stuff? Nope.
Is it the fancy or hip music playing? Nope.
Is it the dancing mascot outside the door? Definitely not...

It is the CONSISTENT customer service I receive NO MATTER WHO I SPEAK WITH. Have you ever had that? Let's reflect for a moment. Think back on your emotional attachment to the businesses you give your personal or professional funds to. How do they make you feel? Okay, enough Tony Robbins...

What I'm trying to say is smarten up people! If you own a business, the BEST thing you can do for your customers comes completely free. Be pleasant, have fun, and most of all evangelize your employees! As a consumer, do I honestly care if your stocks are down or you shrunk your pants in the dryer this morning? No, I care how you make me feel. A bit selfish you say? Yes, but that is the consumer - deal with it.

The amazing thing with this process? It's reciprocating. If you start your day off faking it, by the end of the day you'll actually feel it and mean it. Your consumers, co-workers, and the rest of the public will be infected by your enthusiasm, love for life, and business ethics that your disease will spread. A disease of awesomeness. Oh, yeah... ;) It's Monday and I haven't filled my corny bucket yet this week.

And here is some free promotion for outstanding businesses I have dealt with and LOVE!

Heritage Meats - They always smile, laugh and educate their customers. I pass many butchers on my way to this place and will continue to purchase from them until I move or they do. Along with their high quality, decent price meats they also offer organic products, specialty grain items and spices.
2-6131 200 Street, Langley, BC V2Y 1A2 Canada Telephone : 604-532-5235

Starbucks - I've been to many Starbucks up and down the West Coast (USA and Canada). No matter where I am, my experience ranges from nice to outstanding. This corporation has a great business model and I am surprised how they've managed to maintain their level of integrity while expanding in mass quantities. Bravo, Starbucks!
www.starbucks.com Worldwide

Royal Caribbean Cruiseline - Wow, best vacation ever! I truly did feel like royalty and didn't worry about anything except my dog back home in daycare. From the cleaning staff all the way to the cruise captain, everyone had a winning attitude and funny personality. I even had a food allergy back then and they flawlessly cared for me without making me feel handicapped. www.royalcaribbean.com Worldwide

Blue Teapot - I'm a tea addict - I'll admit it, but I'm not going to rehab. I have about 20 different kinds of loose leaf teas. There are a few tea dealers in my area and Blue Teapot is 40 minutes away. Their service is so outstanding that I will either drive or order by email. Again, no matter which location or employee that I am speaking to, they mirror the Blue Teapot experience.
www.blueteapot.com Canada

How old am I? 28. Yes, I drink tea and go to the butcher. I'm all growed up.

Recommended Reading!

Hug Your Customers by Jack Mitchell
www.hugyourcustomers.com

Are you a Mac or a PC?

Are you a "PC" or a "Mac"? Chevy or Ford? Canucks or Rangers?

It will tell a person a lot about you.

In this world we are constantly inundated with information from blogs and RSS feeds and regular websites (oh yeah, our TV with the tickers, radio with the news updates and so on). It would be safe to say we are exposed to TOO much information to reasonably sift through it all and determine the priceless from the worthless.

How do you make your decisions, how do you determine what is the right fit for you with technology? There are different platforms and different operating systems, different versions of different software from different vendors -- it can be pretty overwhelming.

We just went to Adobe's CS3 launch event in Vancouver yesterday where this was readily apparent. Mac and PC users all asking platform relevent questions, did they need the Creative Suite Standard or Pro or the Master Collection? Would it be best to move to Leopard? Should they resist upgrading to Vista?

It all comes down to enthusiasm, customer experience and at the end of the day, you make those decisions the same way you did in High School -- just what are your friends doing?

The funny thing about technology (like most things) is that when you find that thing that solves your issues, it is relieving and exciting and you have a tendency to climb to the top of the hill and shout it to anyone who will listen.

As a technical solution provider that specializes in an array of custom services, we have the benefit of working with a number of technologies and that usually allows us to pick the one that we love the most (sometimes the one we hate the least). Occasionally we will choose software that has the most integrated workflow because we are working on a campaign that stretches from 2D & 3D to print to large scale signage to web and media based stills and animation.

The workflow integration tends to be a big part of a persons love of all things Mac, or CAD design through the Autodesk lifecycle of products, or working with Corel or Adobe's suites of products. It is great when the tool doesn't get in the way of your workflow!

So what technology do you love? Is it your Vectorworks? Is it your ipod? Your Blackberry? Your X-Box 360? Whatever you have become a champion of, let your love show and look for converts wherever you can -- because there are people you trust that are looking for the answers you were looking for and your passion may be as important as a technical review.

As an example, Corel Painter is one of my favourite products personally because I can do conventional artwork better and more efficiently that I can with traditional tools -- the finished work is so much better than I can do by hand anymore. I have all the conventional tools that I would have in an extremely well-stocked art studio, I can easily save various iterations, I can import/export digital images and even swap back and forth with Photoshop. Using a pressure sensitive Wacom tablet, the only thing that is missing is the ink stains on my fingers.

So when someone asks (and even if they don't), I am always going to stand up and gush about my love for Corel Painter. I only ever standup and cheer on the things I believe in -- sometimes to excess -- and not always to my financial benefit, because you can't fake the passion of evangelising your favourite technologies.

BTW: the thing I love best about Corel Painter versus inking pages by hand? It has to be "Control-Z" certainly a lot better than crumpling up art pages!

Ooops, I guess that should tell you whether I am a Mac or a PC!

Life is strange and so are we...

I have had a couple of customers and colleagues inquire why High Concept has a blog -- and even the rest of team didn't quite get why I thought it was important for us to have a regular contribution floating out here in the ether.

Each person, company and organization is going to have their own reason -- here is mine.

It used to be in my father's time and more so in his father's time that you gave your business to a person who earned it. The quality of his work would be part of the equation, his knowledge and commitment were equal parts, but it was the person he was, his integrity and friendship that would keep earning that business.

Now, here we are in this "global economy" and maybe Wal-Mart is where you go to get this doo-dad or Amazon for that book you want because the price and selection is right this time around.

We at High Concept are offering custom design services, customized training and workflow solutions designed around your customers -- in other words we need to know you and understand your business intimately to solve your problems. However, that kind of trust is not something you shouldn't just hand out to every idiot who has a copy of Photoshop.

I felt it was important that you got to know us, as a group of individuals and determine if we are kind of people you want to trust with helping you grow your business, if we are the kind of company that can communicate all the things that are important to you as you offer new services and reach new customers.


So here we are, blemishes and all -- a strange bunch, for sure, but through regular visits here you will know whether we are the kind of strange you want run from or a comfortable kind of strange that is exactly what you have been looking for...

Modern art sucks, and I'll tell you why.

I can remember the first painting I ever saw that stopped me dead in my tracks. It grabbed me by the curly short hairs of my visual cortex, gave them a powerful shake, and said Pay attention! There is more here than meets the eye. A small, painfully slim figure lies in at the edge of a great tan field, a country house in the distance, beneath a lowering sky. I was seven, and the painting was Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth.
That painting awoke in me a realization that you could tell an entire life story in one image, a story of courage and pain, hope and loss, determination and struggle. One image, immediately accessible, instantly understood.
I grew up in rural New Brunswick, and I knew fields like that (actually, the farm is a real place, and was only a couple hundred miles away in Maine). The sense of place in the painting was astounding to me. I could smell the dry grass around her, I could feel the roughness of the soil under her hands, I could hear the distant slap of the barn door closing - all from an image created by rubbing colored mud onto a flat surface with small hairy sticks. It was magical. I needed to know how the artist had done it.
Over the next few years, I devoured every art book that was in our local small town library (along with all their dinosaur books and every episode of Danny Dunn). I discovered much more Wyeth, both Andrew and his father, as well as Titian, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Velázquez and many of the Old Masters. Frazetta was still a few years away for me, but I was also drawn to the works of Maxfield Parrish, whose heightened reality and technical perfection still amaze me.
I could see that Wyeth and Parrish were the modern descendants of a great artistic tradition. They had learned all the skills of the Old Masters, combined them with a greater appreciation for the natural world and, (freed from a need to incorporate religious iconography into every image), they set out to depict and exalt the human experience. Painting, which once only depicted flying saints and glowing Christs, could now be used to show the courage and dignity of a simple woman, crippled by polio.

This is what Art should be, I decided. This is how I will learn to paint. There could be no finer goal than to master the ability to create a new reality, to use this media to exalt courage and human dignity, to show the way forward, to lift up the human spirit.

Boy, was I in for a surprise.
It turns out, that Wyeth, Parrish, Rockwell, Erte, Mucha, et al were not considered real artists - they're only illustrators. The real Artists (with a capital A) are above such petty concerns as being technically proficient and easily understandable. The new Modern art world, (which was sadly well established before I was born), would be inherited by the dribblers, those artists who created works whose (alleged) artistic merits were A) - inversely proportionate to the amount of skill needed to create them, and B) - directly proportionate to the amount of explanation they needed in order to be understood. Great technical virtuosity, and an incredible ability to communicate complex ideas to every person with eyes, has given way to the spastic spatterings of paint and the abstruse interpretations of Pollock and his imitators.

A bit harsh, you say? Consider the next image - 1 panel was painted by a man (a recognized Genius of Modern Art), 1 panel was painted by a chimpanzee and 1 was painted by an elephant. See if you can tell the difference. Here's a hint: the elephant's painting is upside down.


Let's see a monkey paint the Mona Lisa, and I'll give Modern Art another chance.

Why life is like a game!

Anyone who knows me knows what a hockey fanatic I am. I love the game even though I only started to completely understand it as an adult.

I try not to do it too often -- use sports analogies in day to day life -- but as I watch my local team (the Canucks) fumbling out of the gate I recognize a series of issues that parallel a new business getting out of the gate. (Now don't worry, I am not going to say you need to give 110% and there is no "i" in team... I have other cliches I can use!)

Last year, the Vancouver Canucks assembled a brand new team (essentially), as a new General Manager in just his second year, Dave Nonis, decided to re-brand the team, removing an exciting but not always effective offense-first style with a new coach, one of the best goalies in the game and a defense-first lunch bucket style of play.

The start of their season was suspect at best. The group of individuals sought to find their role in the new team, to understand their methodologies and to find an identity as an organization. They struggled through the first few months of the season... but you could see that even though the wins weren't coming initially that they weren't far off.

The Canucks went on to play a pair of "must win" games against their divisional opponents the Calgary Flames -- and win is what they did. Something clicked. The vision the coaching staff and management had for the team really could work if each person played their role and trusted in their teammates. The Canucks went on to win at a ridiculous clip for the rest of the season -- they set a new team record for points and ended up winning their division!

Now this year, the Canucks started slow out of the gate once again, even though they were icing essentially the same team as last year. They weren't looking like division leaders - they were looking more like basement dwellers.

So what happened?

I see this everyday with myself, my clients and my colleagues. We can often become a victim of our own success.

I have been a fortunate person, I have had some success as an artist, as a business manager and as a sales professional. I find, you often ride the momentum of these successes by getting into the right mindset, having confidence in your abilities and doing all the right things that come with the habits it takes to get wins. You get to a point where you hardly think about it at all.

The problem is when you think the future successes are going to come because they are "deserved", or simply because of what you have done in the past. In other words, you have to avoid buying your own hype.

A successful sports team, or business or artist or anyone typically follows a formula that is pretty simple to say and harder to do:

1. Have a clear vision of your goals


2. Get everyone on the same page


3. Make sure everyone understands and is committed to THEIR defined role


4. Commit to HARD WORK - from the preparation, to the drop of the puck, to the final whistle (and overtime if that is what it takes to win the game)


5. Assess performances, remember what worked and change what didn't


6. Get ready for the next game

It seems easy enough, but we all (including pro athletes) are subjected to momentary (and longer) let downs in performance, we have to ignore our "off-ice" distractions (tired, sick, family needs) and we have to be prepared to accept accountability for our actions.

When the loss column begins to get larger than the wins, we can't look affectionately to our previous performances and say it is okay -- if we want to live exceptional lives we need to look at what made us successful before and work a little smarter.

Or maybe the Canucks just suck this year? Nah, I think I'm onto something here -- I will just wait by the phone for Dave Nonis to call...

Dan