Brandon James Scott

"When Harris thinks of children asking questions, he sees them performing a series of complex mental..."

Mon, 28 May 2012 09:59:49 -0400

“

When Harris thinks of children asking questions, he sees them performing a series of complex mental maneuvers. “The child has to first realize that they don’t know something…and that other people are information-bearing agents,” Harris said. “Then the child has to be able to, somehow or other, realize that language is a tool for shifting stuff from that person to them.”

Adults tend to rush through those steps, perhaps because they seem like second nature. But figuring out what makes a good question—or rather, what kind of question will get us the information we want—isn’t such a simple thing, even for grownups. It requires stopping to think about what we’re trying to find out, what the person we’re talking to might know, and what words we should use to coax them into helping us.

”

- Paul Harris in Leon Neyfakh’s article on asking questions.

The Evolution of Fortune Magazine Cover Design

Thu, 24 May 2012 21:07:40 -0400

1953:

2012:

Oh well.

More examples before they lost their way here.

How I Built A Fashion Brand With No Experience, Just Punk Rock Spirit (And The Web)

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:10:00 -0400

How I Built A Fashion Brand With No Experience, Just Punk Rock Spirit (And The Web):

Abe Burmeister of Outlier gives an inspiring talk at PSFK. In short:

Have an idea.
Make it.
Put it online.
Sell it to your customers directly.
Congratulations, you have a business.

And you don’t need to know what the hell you’re doing in order to get started.

On Quora - How can I increase my productivity on my side projects?

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:46:13 -0400

On Quora - How can I increase my productivity on my side projects?:

So maybe you’re like all of us and you come home after your workday or wake up early before it, and you want to start something for yourself. A business, a project, a book, a website, a (whatever). Why not? Making things is addictive.

But how do you do it? How do you find the creative energy to start something else when you already have such a big commitment taking up your day? Well, first, care.

And then you can look at this Quora thread.

From Kah Keng Tay:

Biting off only what can be chewed. Related to above, I make sure I tackle only what seems reasonably possible within the time I have. If I took on too big a task and didn’t manage to finish, and only got back to it a few days later, I would have forgotten by then some of the reasons why I did things in a certain way. This would cost me time that is spent rethinking and refactoring my design unnecessarily.

From Venkatesh Rao:

Regularity on Main Stuff: You have to put your main life on autopilot to the extent possible. This means putting all your energy into just 1-2 projects, minimizing interactions to just the critical few people, and putting all the work there on a very steady routine. This does not mean slacking off. It means reducing meta-thinking at your day job as near to zero as you can. This does not mean you become a dumb cog though. It mostly means picking allies carefully, cutting off time wasters, developing extraordinarily strong noise filters, not picking pointless fights, and going for quick, decisive wins when you do fight.

Eephus League Magazine

Tue, 22 May 2012 12:17:42 -0400

Eephus League Magazine:

What a beautiful website.

drawnblog: Make good art. (via Neil Gaiman commencement address...

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:03:00 -0400

drawnblog:

Make good art.

(via Neil Gaiman commencement address explains the artist’s life - Boing Boing)

On this shortened (Canadian Holiday) week where my Monday is a Tuesday, I don’t think I could have started it any better than with a cup of coffee and this video. If you make anything at all, you’ll enjoy this.

Edit: Maria Popova wrote a nice summary of the content of his speech.

Data Transgression

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:35:37 -0400

Data Transgression:

The Internet will become a religion, in part because everything will happen on it, including all other religions, but mostly because it will be the first platform for true otherness to appear on the planet. Not other as in other variety of human or other variety of animal, but other as in Other, an agent not like us yet bigger than us. A true alien being. Of which we are part.

Although this sounds far-fetched, current discourse about the Internet confirms the general prediction. We may not discuss the Internet as a planetary consciousness from on high, but we increasingly reify it as if it were a singular, invisible agency like God. This discourse heralds not the return to explicit belief that Kelly hoped for; instead, belief in Web divinity appears more subtly, slipping into everyday language in enthusiastic, worshipful comments like “This is why I love the Internet!”

This is why I love the internet.

Get to know a Baker

Sat, 19 May 2012 17:15:00 -0400

Get to know a Baker:

I like to talk about making things - so here’s an interview with someone who makes things everyday: My amazing girlfriend, Jessica.

While I like to think I often struggle to write a good story or make a good picture, I certainly never have to deal with this sort of thing:

What’s the secret to making a good cake?

Premium ingredients and following a really great recipe. Any recipe you find in a book or on the internet is rarely going to be perfect based on your conditions, your altitude, or even what baking powder you’re using because it’s all going to modify what you’re baking.

We spent weeks sourcing the right flour for our cakes because none of the ones that we found were suitable. You have to practice according to your oven’s temperature and the humidity in your shop. Baking elsewhere always poses challenges for those reasons.

seekandspeak.com / Blog: On Minimalism

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:57:53 -0400

seekandspeak.com / Blog: On Minimalism:

seekandspeak:

These days, it feels like the internet has treated minimalism as a trend to be exploited for short term notoriety and profit, and its overexposure has ultimately diluted a perfectly rational means of bringing to life an idea. It’s become a bandwagon to hop on to because the formula, however broad and far reaching that is, has become tired and true.

People cling to what they miss the most in their lives, and for all of our advancements, modern times remain anything but simple. At the end of the day, maybe that means minimalism’s proliferation couldn’t be helped.

Here’s some old stuff. (been digging through the hard...

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:09:00 -0400

Here’s some old stuff. (been digging through the hard drive)

These are character designs I cooked up for a ‘Halloweenie’ series of indents for Family Channel at Guru. They weren’t exactly used but did help to develop the look of the final dude.

(via kottke) Great film about storytelling from Ken Burns. ...

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:58:00 -0400

(via kottke)

Great film about storytelling from Ken Burns.

All story is manipulation. Is there acceptable manipulation? You bet. People say, “Oh boy, I was so moved, to tears in your film.” That’s a good thing. I manipulated that. That’s part of storytelling…. I am moved by that, too. That’s manipulation.

Arts and Crafts and Money

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:20:00 -0400

Arts and Crafts and Money:

Love this take on a visit to a craft show. He hits a point I’ve been thinking about recently:

In fact, all the craft-as-lifework theory really explains is why everyone at the show’s so polite and pleasant-seeming. Notwithstanding the endless things to pick up and touch—toys to manipulate and try, pepper mills to heft, jewelry to finger—no one seems to be doing that, or at least not with the cavalier abandon people in malls or regular stores seem to handle the merchandise. I’m thinking of being in someone’s home—their living room—where it would be obscene to randomly touch things, to start treating someone else’s stuff like it’s mine. What’s missing from the show is any pretense of vendors as courtiers to customer royalty. Aside from in the food court, nobody here’s at anybody else’s service, which realization strikes me as both redemptive and kind of sad.

So, as makers, who do we make stuff for? For ourselves, or for others?

I think this is something that’s messed me up a lot over the years. I have a tendency to zone out and just start making things that are fun for me and end up being decorative stuff. No heart, no meaning behind it, no umph. It’s like painting a tree and worrying about how “correct” the lighting on the trunk looks. But why? Why am I painting the tree in the first place? Who’s it for?

I think the more I make things, the more I realize I should always be thinking of the end game. The audience, the reader, the viewer. When you make something, do you want to people to laugh, cry, think, be inspired, or feel thankful for their life? When you figure this out, it can be incredibly powerful in giving your work direction.

This isn’t selling out.

It’s just creating something for the good of the world. I think we can all make that a priority.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange...

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:48:00 -0400

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

George Bernard Shaw

Meet Mr. Garden Alien Outside the back door, day after day....

Wed, 09 May 2012 20:17:21 -0400

Meet Mr. Garden Alien

Outside the back door, day after day. Helpless to the whims of the sun and the wind and the clouds and the bugs. But he works. Working, working, working.

Plants will grow.

(queue violin)

"I don’t have to impress upon you the need to embrace the new… You have to continue to..."

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:13:00 -0400

“I don’t have to impress upon you the need to embrace the new… You have to continue to challenge yourself as a reader - a serious reader. And as one who learns - a serious student. That you have not calcified. That you do not know what you think you know, least of all who or what or where or especially WHEN is important… Get a library card and wander somewhere dusty. Find something real. And then blog about it - bring it into this world. Scan that creaky wisdom, make it sing. We need many things now, but wisdom most of all.”

- Tim Carmody on Paleoblogging

Go go irony! I was digging through the old stuff of one of my favorite blogs, Snarkmarket, when I came upon this post about digging through old stuff. And so I’m sharing about sharing about sharing old stuff. Yeah.

To be fair, he talks about real stuff. Old books, objects, things - and bringing it to light online for everyone to see. He says:

taking knowledge that took a tremendous amount of energy and expenditure to achieve, and that would otherwise go UNknown, and giving it a new social life, a new audience.

What an awesome way to look at it.

Time to go digging.

drawnblog: RIP Maurice Sendak Watch this interview. The...

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:53:00 -0400

drawnblog:

RIP Maurice Sendak

Watch this interview.

The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood; the uniqueness that makes us see things that other people don’t see.

bobulate: “We are no longer designers or writers or...

Thu, 03 May 2012 10:15:00 -0400

bobulate:

“We are no longer designers or writers or technologists, we’re creators.”

That’s Barbara deWilde in “Can You Teach Someone to Be an Entrepreneur?”, a response to the class carefully crafted and led @svaixd by Gary Chou and Christina Cacioppo. “Internet School,” or the course, challenged students to use the power of the network to complete assignments, and if tacit responses around the studio were any indication, life lessons.

Barbara confirms:

The lessons from Internet school are life lessons. If I can sum them up I would say they are: 1. The Internet and the emergence of networks have disrupted and will continue to disrupt structures that are hierarchical. 2. Learn technologies and use them to build. We are no longer designers or writers or technologists, we’re creators. 3. Know yourself, have an opinion and share it. You’ll find others like you. Networks aren’t lonely, they’re empowering. 4. There is very little reason to work for others. If you have the skills that make you hirable, you have the skills to create something for yourself, and in turn, for others. 5. Don’t spend all your time refining, get your ideas out there and see if people like them.

The lessons from guests, the lessons from failing in public, and reminders of what learning is for in the first place gave way to a wonderful things. I suspect this is only the beginning.

Geez, how many great links are in that reblog above? Talk about inspiring. Spend your lunch reading this.

The Artist as a Reporter

Tue, 01 May 2012 16:54:00 -0400

The Artist as a Reporter:

Leif Peng has (another) awesome series over on Today’s inspiration, this one by Daniel Zalkus. It’s all about drawing on the spot.

I especially like this, because it touches on something that’s been bouncing in my head a lot recently:

Direct drawing changed the illustration field. Sickles noted that prior to the advent of reportage in illustration, art directors and editors used to say, “Yes, fine. This is what we wanted. Now go home and do me a finished one”.

This has been happening all over again now, hasn’t it? Deadlines are are tight, quality and time are crunched. You can’t spend weeks making something amazing, you have an afternoon. Then ship it. And still make it amazing! For some things, anyway. Most things published online, for sure.

It certainly keeps things fresh. And new. And often.

But what about great?

"I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of..."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:28:00 -0400

“I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground, and you just pick them up. Someone once told me that that was me low-balling my own creativity. That might or might not be the case. But still, on the story I am working on now, I do have some unresolved problem. It doesn’t keep me awake at nights. I feel like when it comes down, it will be there…”

- Neil Gaiman interviewing Stephen King? Yes, please.

Last batch of Justin Time season 1 title cards. And those are...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:01:14 -0400

Last batch of Justin Time season 1 title cards.

And those are the first 26 episode titles! (psst… each are followed by 11 minutes of wild animated awesomeness and you should get any kids you know to watch them)

see more title cards