Let’s break away from the smiley, happy, uncreative people. Smiling can only damage reputations. Be miserable, darling – immediately! It’s really cool. Misery is the new black.

Designbridge.com, the source of this quote, is speaking with tongue in cheek. But I used to think this way. I used to believe that depression and demons and distractions and addictions and bad behaviour was the path to creative genius. Now I believe that creative genius happens in spite of this way of thinking. So much energy goes into being unhappy, that if you can free yourself from it there’s an almost unlimited source left over. When I quit smoking and drinking I thought my life would become stale and boring. But that was the residual addiction speaking, not reality. After a few months, a few years, the exact opposite is true. I am more creative than ever: without as many anchors dragging down my ambitions. Don’t buy into the hype that misery is genius. Misery is misery. Genius comes from being different, trusting yourself, and doing what you believe in without compromise. I refuse to be a suffering artist on purpose just for the sake of masochism and martyrdom.

Logorama is a short, animated film that manages to trash just about every brand you can think of in 16 minutes flat. It begs to be watched over and over again, as every single detail of this Oscar-nominated world is made up of familiar logos. There must be an army of lawyers with defamation suits waiting to challenge ‘fair use’ and ‘parody’ laws on this one. And don’t watch it with the kids, as there is cartoon violence and enough cursing in the dialogue to make you wonder if Quentin Tarantino didn’t do a bit of ghostwriting here.

Thank you to @jaygoldman for finding the full video.

After my presentation at FITC Amsterdam, the Dutch Cowboys talked to me for a few minutes about Chaos and Creativity, the subject of my lecture. They have posted it on Vimeo and at InteractionDesign.tv. Thank you to Patrick (interviewer) and Marc (designer/videographer) for cutting through the chaos of the noisy, crowded room to ask me a few questions.

In the interview I mention that not everyone is cut out to be a creative genius, just like we’re not all cut out to be Michael Jordan. I was at a party a few years ago, where I met a man who had just taken up painting. I made the faux pas of asking him if he was any good. This got his full attention, as he turned to me and asked very loudly if I was any good at sex. Point made: you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy doing it. But you get better for trying. That is the purpose of The Creative Method and Systems.

A very short while ago, I was asked to speak about digital marketing in front of about 50 fourth-year Ontario College of Art and Design students. I came up with a quick list of ten things I would tell myself if I were about to start in the industry today:

1. Have an elevator pitch.
2. Don’t get pigeonholed.
3. Collect connections.
4. Train your brain to think faster.
5. Know when to go analog.
6. Research research research research research research research…
7. Creative Commons is your BFF.
8. Use real-time brand focus groups.
9. Learn to stop worrying and love the web.
10. It’s just advertising.

This is my FITC Amsterdam presentation. It is about continued thoughts on creativity and how they relate to 3 different classes of chaos: Universal, External, and Personal. Universal chaos is about finding the energy to create Something out of Nothing. External Chaos examines how life events shape us and connect us. Personal Chaos is about getting past our own doubts and fears and embracing what makes us different. This addendum to The Creative Method and Systems is meant to inspire creative-minded people to pursue what they love, with a little quantum physics thrown in for good measure. Oh, and the 4 little ponies of the apocalypse.

If you want to put your problems into perspective, play the “Scale of the Universe” where you can zoom out to a radius of 93 Billion Light Years (the known size of the Universe) or zoom in to a Planck Length (the size of 1 dimensional Strings or Quantum Foam). The creators of this flash movie have added some humourous commentary, which should be manditory in all high-school science textbooks.

It was an honour to present at FlashinTO tonight to a packed audience of (mostly) students who bravely presented their portfolios and listened to the collective wisdom of a panel of educators.

My material was beta tested on the crowd after they had sated themselves with pizza and had a few beers. This is exactly the kind of audience any presenter wants: relaxed, full, responsive. Thank you to each and every one of you who came out and stayed to the end.

This content will be fuel for more creative application and innovation based talks this year. Please view the slide show and feel free to leave comments or questions below.

I will never forget Steve Jobs selling the Visualizer in iTunes. He said something like, “We all know what music sounds like, but what does music look like.” That was a stretch, even for Steve, and I could feel the reality distortion field strain to its limits. Ever since that moment, I have chosen to dislike the randomized, computer-generated psychedelic oscilloscopes built into music players.

But when you put sound visualization in the hands of an artist, someone who tries to feel the audio and express it with meticulous, purposeful motion graphics or detailed CGI… that’s something I can get excited about. Putting Content on Content, forcing the expression of a medium through a completely different lens or filter, is a great creative method for innovative artistic expression. In this case it is forcing audio through the prism of motion design.

Vanishing Point is an eclectic, designy new animation from Bonsajo. Watching it, I was reminded of an old Autechre video called “Gantz Graf” which was ridiculously cool back in 2002.

I don’t think success is showing up, doing what you’re told and then going home and watching television… I think many people in [advertising] aren’t artists, actually, but people working hard to do a job or please a client. Artists do more than that. They inflame critics and they make change and they do things that makes themselves and others uncomfortable.

I have already pre-ordered Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, which will be electronically delivered to my Kindle tomorrow.