CreativeMornings Theme: Money

creativemornings money

CreativeMornings is continuing with themes for each month. January was Happiness, and for February our Zurich host Daniel chose Money.

Amsterdam-based artist Tim Boelaars collaborated with us to illustrate the topic. And we are thrilled to have Squarespace as our global partner and help us make this month happen.

Jessica Jackley, the founder of Kiva, will be our speaker in New York on February 15th. RSVP will open on Monday the 11th, at 11am. More info here.

I can’t wait to see all the different interpretations of Money in relation to creativity. This will be interesting.

Did you see last month’s moving New York talk by Ping Fu?

CreativeMornings: Ping Fu

For our first global CreativeMornings theme of 2013 “Happiness,” we had the honor to have Ping Fu share her moving story with us.

Ping Fu knows what it’s like to be a child soldier, a factory worker and a political prisoner. To be beaten and raped for being born into a well educated family. To be deported and having to start over without family or friends.

She also knows what it’s like to be a pioneering software innovator, a CEO and Inc magazine’s entrepreneur of the year. To give speeches that inspire and to advise the president of the United States.

Ping Fu’s story is a story of two worlds. A story of pure human resilience.

A big thank you to Ben Hallman for filming and editing Ping’s talk and to Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, Brooklyn for hosting us.

CreativeMornings introduces Themes

“Happiness” illustration by Jen Mussari

I am truly excited to announce that CreativeMornings will be hosting unified themes across our 40+ chapters in 2013. This month, over 5,000 attendees will meet up at CreativeMornings events on six continents for speakers that relate to our January theme, “Happiness”.

Imagine 40+ local conversations all contributing to a much bigger global conversation. I truly believe that this is what will set CreativeMornings apart from any other organization and that will connect our communities across the globe. I can not wait to see how our host cities interpret the themes. Exciting times!

A big thank you to Mailchimp for sponsoring the themed month!

Stop waiting.

“Stop waiting for something to happen or for someone to give you permission to do things.”
– Kate Kendall

A quote from Kate Kendall’s CreativeMornings/Melbourne talk. Watch it here.

Paula Scher speaking at AGI Open

I enjoyed listening to Paula Scher talking about how she went about designing the new Windows 8 logo.

CreativeMornings Short with George Lois

Design legend George Lois ended his fantastic CreativeMornings talk with powerful advice for us creative types: It’s all about being courageous. Watch it, it’s only 1:40min.

(What do you think of this new format of us sharing CreativeMornings Shorts?)

George Lois’ CreativeMornings talk at the Met

Last month, CreativeMornings/NewYork teamed up with Spectrum and invited advertising legend George Lois to the Met in celebration of the exhibition Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop.

Lois is perhaps best known for the more than ninety-two covers he designed for Esquire magazine between 1962 and 1972, but he is also a prolific art director and author. A fantastic talk, by a design legend, in a humbling venue. A magical morning all around.

The 500 people event took place in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday, November 16, 2012! George’s talk was filmed by Met staff and edited by Ben Hallman. You can see photos of the event over on Flickr thanks to Katherine Miles Jones.

CreativeMornings Video: Maira Kalman

Our speaker at the October 2012 CreativeMornings/NewYork was the incredibly charming, deep and thoughtful Maira Kalman. Maira is an award-winning artist, illustrator, and product designer. She has illustrated numerous covers for The New Yorker magazine and has written and illustrated more than a dozen children’s books. Her articles and illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Interview, and many other publications.

The event was generously hosted by the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

And it’s thanks to the generous filming and editing work of Ben Hallman that you are able to watch this talk online. If you would like photos of the event, please check our Flickr set. All photos by the wonderful Katherine Miles Jones.

Love Letters to Strangers

Hanna Brencher writes love letters to strangers. She strongly believes in the power of pen and paper and started a global initiative that encourages strangers to exchange love letters. Poetic.

TED launches Playlists

TED just launched Playlists. Clustering the most watched talks around specific topics. Neat.

CreativeMornings Video: Jason Santa Maria

Jason Santa Maria was one of our two speakers at the Kickstarter Benefit CreativeMornings here in New York in October of 2012. Please do yourself a favor and watch his incredibly insightful talk on “Saying NO”.

A big thank you to Ben Hallman for taping and editing our CreativeMornings talks.

CreativeMornings Video: Simon Collison

Simon Collison was one of our two speakers at the Kickstarter Benefit CreativeMornings here in New York in October of 2012. Listen to Simon’s thoughts on freedom, creativity and his pursuit of something pure.

A big thank you to Ben Hallman for taping and editing our CreativeMornings talks.

Donald Pettit on taking photos in Space

I was lucky enough to see this fabulous talk by NASA Astronaut Donald Pettit in person a few weeks ago here in New York at the Luminance Conference. Donald Pettit has called the International Space Station home for a total of 370 days. While there, he’s captured some of the most mind-blowing photos of space – and Earth – we’ve ever seen. In his talk Donald gives us an inside look into what it’s like to take photos of space, why bringing 10 DSLRs with him is actually necessary, and the reason why hard drives tend to fail in zero gravity.

Designers & Books Fair 2012

Hey designers, book lovers and design enthusiasts; Don’t miss this weekend’s Designers & Books Fair 2012.

The list of exhibitors and speakers is nothing short of breathtaking. Check out the full program and get your tickets before it’s too late. A few presentations that caught my eye:

– Book Design at Pentagram with Michael Bierut, Abbott Miller, Emily Oberman, Eddie Opara, Paula Scher and DJ Strout (info)

– Karim Rashid in Conversation with Debbie Millman (info)

– Steven Heller and Louise Fili: A Conversation with Debbie Millman (info)

Check the full calendar of this weekend’s Designers & Book Fair. Hat tip to Steve Kroeter for making this happen!

How art, technology and design inform creative leaders

John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design, delivers a funny and charming talk that spans a lifetime of work in art, design and technology, concluding with a picture of creative leadership in the future. Watch for demos of Maeda’s earliest work — and even a computer made of people.

Interested in John’s thinking on leaderhip? Check out his most recent book Redesigning Leadership (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life).

The Brooklyn Beta Song

Jonathan Mann is a songmachine. Why? He writes a song a day and after attending the three days of Brooklyn Beta last week he summarized the conference in this song. Watch out, it’s an earworm, which is the german word for a catchy song.

#BrooklynBeta

The third Brooklyn Beta, organized by my studiomates Cameron and Chris, is currently happening three blocks away from my apartment. This morning, on my way to get coffee, I bumped into several familiar faces that I usually only see virtually on the various social media channels. Quite Surreal! Brooklyn Beta feels as if my Twitter stream has come to life. Look, real people, not pixels!

If you want to follow the #BrooklynBeta Hashtag for the remaining 1.5 days of the conference, you should check out this tagboard page. It aggregates all content hashtagged #BrooklynBeta from Twitter, Instagram, App Net and Facebook. Nifty!

Also, if you’re in NYC but didn’t get tickets to the actual conference, check out the Beyond Beta schedule. So much good stuff happening!

Big Giant Bacon

Today we had our extra special Benefit CreativeMornings with two thoughtful talks by Jason Santa Maria and Simon Collison. The talks were nothing short of fantastic and I can not wait to share them. And how much fun was it to sip Mimosas at 9am and indulge in some photobooth fun! Check the photos here.

#happytuesday

Rain Room

The Rain Room art installation makes me want to book a flight to London, asap. Created by rAndom, it allows visitors to pass through a downpour without getting wet. Cameras map human movement in the 100-square-meter room and send instructions for the rain to move near people, yet not too near, as they traverse the space. Fascinating.

Read more over on Architizer.

Also: rAndom spoke at CreativeMornings/London. Watch their talk.

(via @curiousoctopus)

Designer’s Debate Club

The Designer’s Debate Club is going at it this Thursday, at General Assembly debating whether web designers must learn to code or not. Important question and awesome idea, going debate style. Get your tickets. Only 4 left.

Besquare

If you’re an avid reader of my site you are most probably familar with my passion for making conferences and the talks that come out of it more accessible. Hence me starting CreativeMornings.

I was thrilled to find Besquare, a personal project by Craig Lockwood, featuring lots of insightful talks by leading forces in the industry.

Not everyone has the possibility to fly to conferences around the world. Besquare makes it possible for anyone to watch the talks at home. But if you happen to have the urge and moneys to go and attend a conference in person, check out his growing conference listing.

Read Craig’s post on why he started Besquare. His goal seems to become a dedicated host for all conference videos. Let’s just hope, it will stay accessible. Fingers crossed.

Jason Santa Maria on TGD

So happy to see my studiomate Jason Santa Maria interviewed over on The Great Discontent. Jason is all kinds of wonderful; an amazing designer, layered with serious thoughtfulness and topped off with a huge heart. Oh, and he is a fantastic speaker.

Shhh… You have the opportunity to see Jason speak this coming tuesday, here in Brooklyn, October 9th, during Beyond Beta week.

How the Internet will (one day) transform government

In this TED talk, Clay Shirky shows how democracies can take a lesson from the Internet, to be not just transparent but also to draw on the knowledge of all their citizens.

Clay Shirky argues that the history of the modern world could be rendered as the history of ways of arguing, where changes in media change what sort of arguments are possible — with deep social and political implications.

(via @TEDchris)

Thank You Internet!

In the past 27 days, the internet has “crushed” Team CreativeMornings with a massive amount of kindness and generosity. Consider me humbled.

27 days ago we launched our Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to build a digital archive for all our talks, a digital home for all things CreativeMornings. We reached our goal the first day, in fact, we reached it in the first 3 hours. And we realized, that every additional $ we raise will help make the site better and allow us to add features that will make attendees and hosts happy, all around the globe.

Thank you all for your generosity. And for your belief in us. We promise, we won’t dissapoint.

In case you have pledged for Lisa Congdon’s print or Kate Bingaman Burt’s T-Shirt, I am happy to share the designs:

You can still get your hands on these over on our Kickstarter Page.

Thank you so much for your support!

Waving from Brooklyn,
Tina + Kevin + Carly + Craig + All The Chapter Hosts

PPS: New Yorkers, you might want to know that there are still a few spots available for the secret Kickstarter CreativeMornings on Tuesday October 9th with Jason Santa Maria and Frank Chimero as the speakers. Check for the $50 Pledge.