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A few years ago Bob Flynn created this entertaining exercise: see if you can guess who these comic characters are based solely on their silhouettes. As a cartoonist, he saw it as an important demonstration of form.

I see it as an important demonstration of Deviation. These characters are outliers. They are originals. Most characters are not this iconic, or memorable. Most comic and cartoon characters (and there are thousands of them) cannot be recognized in full colour, never mind as a silhouette.

What sets these characters apart is the fact that they have character. Pink Panther looks cool, Daffy looks cocky. Spongebob looks kooky. Taz looks crazy. They are infused with personality. They are not trying to be the same as everyone else. They have distinct and exaggerated personalities and the shape to match.

The next time you are worried about being original, about creating distinctive art, think about your own personality. Amplify it. Exaggerate it. Become a caricature. What would a cartoon version of you create? This forces you to distill your personality into an essence, and it is this essence, however distorted, that makes you an original.

So stop trying to fit in and start trying harder to stand out. These characters couldn’t change themselves if they tried. And if you did change them, they wouldn’t be special anymore. The same goes for you.

Robert Scoble, an ubergeek living in San Francisco, lists 38 personal questions about technology. If you answer yes to the majority of these questions (I did), than supposedly you are from the Future. I think this is just a nicer way of saying that you are a complete nerd. Take the test yourself (reblogged below) and leave your score in the comments (if you dare expose how ‘futurey’ you are).

1. Have you copied some Javascript code for your blog? IE, do you know what it’s like to embed YouTube videos into something else, like I did with this post? If you have, you are from the future.
2. Have you written some filters on Gmail to filter your emails? Then you are from the future. (That is the single most productive thing I’ve done this year, by the way, I’ve written hundreds of filters to clean my inbox of noise which has made my email usable again).
3. Have you shared something that used to be private, like your health information, your credit card information, your drunken college photos, your baby’s birth, your sexual orientation, or something else that used to be taboo? Then you are from the future. Extra points if something like that has gotten redistributed in Techcrunch and you kept your job.
4. Have you gotten your cable upgraded or fixed just by Tweeting @comcastcares ? Then you are from the future. Extra points if your company is using tools like UserVoice, Spigit, GetSatisfaction, or Zendesk.
5. Have you started up a new Linux or Windows server from an iPad or iPhone or Android phone using a cloud service on Rackspace Cloud or other cloud hosting provider? Then you are from the future.
6. If a streaming news system like SkyGrid, My6Sense, Genieo, etc to get your news instead of looking at a news brand like the New York Times, then you are from the future.
7. If you have a Sprint 4G modem in your pocket, then you are from the future.
8. If you use a VNC app to call into your home computer from your iPhone or iPad or, even, your old-school Windows 7 netbook (I use LogMeIn on my iPad), then you are from the future.
9. If you watch TV online, then you are from the future. Extra points if you are using Boxee.
10. If you discover music on Spotify or Pandora from your Facebook friends, then you are from the future.
11. If you check in on Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, Whrrl, Fiddme, or use Google Latitude with your friends then you are from the future.
12. If you use Salesforce Chatter, SocialText, Jive, SocialCast, Box.net, or Yammer at work with your coworkers, then you are from the future.
13. If you use Skype more than you use standard old cell phone service for your voice calls, then you are from the future.
14. If you no longer are bothered by the penises on Chatroulette, then you are from the future. Extra points if you already have come up with a way to do business on it.
15. If you sign up for conferences but only go for the lunch-time networking (I’m watching the SmashSummit on Ustream right now) then you are from the future.
16. If you read Techcrunch in at least three different places (I read it on Techcruch, TechMeme, Washington Post, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz) then you are from the future.
17. If you know how Techmeme selects news, then you are from the future. Extra points if you can pick founder Gabe Rivera out of a crowd.
18. If you have deleted your Facebook account, then you are from the future. Or, if you, like me, have gotten over Mark Zuckerberg’s throwing privacy under the bus and have just marked all your accounts as totally public because that way you know you’ll never be disappointed by something leaking into public view that you weren’t expecting to, then you are also from the future.
19. If you have hosted a live video stream on Ustream, Qik, or Justin.tv then you are from the future.
20. If you can tell at least three reasons why the New York Times iPad app sucks then you are from the future (or Steve Jobs, and we all know he’s from the future). BTW: it sucks because it’s not streaming, not complete, not easy to share, not easy to participate in.
21. If you share your vehicle’s location on Waze instead of using Google Maps, then you are from the future.
22. If you have more than five Twitter lists then you are from the future. You are even more from the future if you have listed yourself on both Listorious and Tlists.
23. If you have a Google Profile that’s filled out then you are from the future. Extra points if you have more links to more things than my Google Profile has.
24. If you have augmented your Gmail with something like Gist, Rapportive, or eTacts, then you are from the future.
25. If you feel dirty when you save a file to your local file system, then you are from the future. You are even more from the future if you are using a device, like the iPad, that makes it hard to, if not impossible, to save to the local file system. Extra points if you already think DropBox is your file system and JungleDisk is your new hard drive.
26. If you know that the number of followers on @Twitter really doesn’t mean anything, then you are from the future. Extra points if you already have implemented Twitter’s @anywhere feature on your blog.
27. If you know the difference between uploading a photo to Flickr, SmugMug, Picasa, or Facebook, and why you would use one vs. another, then you are from the future. Extra points if you pay for an account on at least two of these services.
28. If you are having discussions with your friends about how Facebook will take away Google’s air supply then you are from the future.
29. If you are already planning to buy Xbox Natal for your Christmas gift to yourself, then you are from the future. Extra points if you are going to stand in line for new Halo Reach coming too. Master Chief is definitely from the future.
30. If you think WordPress is old school and Tumblr or Posterous is the way to blog now, then you are from the future. Extra points if you can articulate what the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com are.
31. If you manage your conference schedule in Plancast, then you are from the future.
32. If you have hooked your Plancast up to Tungle.me which is managing your Google Calendar, then you really are from the future.
33. If someone has gotten mad at you because you take three minutes at the beginning of a meal to Foursquare, Gowalla, Fiddme, Tweet, or do something else on your iPhone or Android phone, then you are from the future.
34. If you know two things that are best on iPhone, RIM, Android, Palm, or Nokia, and two things that suck on each of those systems, then you are from the future. Extra points if you have one of each in your pocket.
35. If you manage multiple Twitter accounts, then you are from the future. Extra points if you can explain the differences between Hootsuite and CoTweet.
36. If you have a monitor that only displays Tweetdeck or Seesmic, then you are from the future. Extra points if you have an iPad that only displays social media apps.
37. If you use iPads to DJ your parties, then you are from the future.
38. If you already have Facebook like buttons on everything you build online, you are from the future. Extra points if you don’t, but can articulate why.

The best ideas come out of the corner of our eye, the edge of our consciousness, in a flash. They are the result of misdirection and random collisions, not a grinding corporate onslaught. And yet we waste billions of dollars in time looking for them where they’re not.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

In the ad agency world we often pretend that we have tamed and trained Creativity. We have efficiently commoditized the magic of imagination. We have It all tied down and caged in timelines and budgets. We trot It out in meetings and force It to jump through burning hoops to great claps (or gasps). Everyone is amazed (or terrified) by It’s beauty and relevance.

But where do we catch this mythical beast? Where does Creativity come from? It comes from a serendipitous collection of connections, a combination of fate and physics that touch our consciousness (or unconsciousness). It comes from looking and doing and discovering seemingly random elements. It comes from filtering the projected ‘media’ of the Universe through our own unique perspectives and experience. It is a distillation of our most interesting selves. It is practiced magic.

No matter how much we try to capture Creativity in our work, It originates in play. And play, by it’s very nature, is undefined. Creating timelines and budgets around play is like asking how much your ideas weigh. So how do agencies do it?

Ad agencies charge admission to an improvised Circus of the Imagination: sometimes Creativity is a reduced to a tent full of opportunistic freaks, and other times it is a once-in-a-lifetime three ring circus of awe and wonder. Presentations of Creativity are always filled with suspense. You never know if someone is going to get mauled or a miracle is going to occur. Either way, it is wild and unpredictable— which is precisely why it stays interesting.

Posted via web from Jason Theodor’s Creative Method and Systems Channel

Patrick Glinski (@glinskiii on Twitter) of Idea Couture, breaks down the repercussions of changing vs not changing a client brief. I love this simple matrix, showing the results as binary.

If you always do exactly what is asked of a client, even if it is wrong, you are destined to fail. A bad client will get angry and blame you for the dismal results. A good client will still pay you, but ask you to do it all over again, eventually drifting into the ‘bad’ column.

If you question the client, tell them they may be wrong, a bad client will fire you. But a good client will respect you. A good client will begin to think of you as a partner instead of a lowly vendor.

As much as we all like money, I think it is important for the creative and strategic integrity of all agencies to push for the upper left quadrant, the strategic partnership. It is the more difficult, long term path, but it will lead to industry respect and longer term revenue. It also may lead to better, more effective advertising.

Thanks Patrick.

You can rant and rail and gnash your teeth all you want about the missing camera, the closed environment, the lack of Flash support, the limited memory, no USB, etc. But when you see a 4 year old interact with an iPad, you know this is the future of computing. It’s the very first baby step into a new threshold that leaves clunky peripherals behind and replaces them with fast, intuitive gestures. Every kid I’ve seen so far loves to watch videos, play board games, read books, draw, write, and just about anything else on this… pad. And they can do it independently without reading a 200 page manual.

So us adults can argue about specs while the children play with the gear.

Here are a few other examples of kids playing with the iPad:

This is the first ad to really get my attention in a long time. It came via a re-tweet by Cory Doctorow, an author and frequent contributor to BoingBoing.net.

RT @_gower: @doctorow The Digital Economy Act takes its first victims! http://bit.ly/bRt7

It completely disrupted my attention (and my tangental web flow), and got me to ask a lot of questions. What might happen to the future of the internet if we don’t keep it open and protect it? Is it a real possibility that some of my favourite sites might get blocked by my government? The Pirate Party UK, the purveyors of this creative ‘interstitial’, believe that England’s Digital Economy Act might try to put the proverbial genie back in the bottle to control it again. They are staunch proponents for copyright reform, and launched this viral campaign to spread their message. Anyone can “block” a website and send the link to a friend, jarring them out of their complacent clickery. For instance, if you want to access JasonTheodor.com, you might just butt heads with the Canadian government. This is a great example of how interruptive advertising is effective when used to suit the media AND the audience.