Notes

It all starts with a story…

If you’re in Belfast on Wednesday, 28 August, Mr Murphy – one half of The Standardistas equation – will be running a masterclass on Storytelling and Social Media, as part of August Craft Month.

A half day, afternoon session, subsidised by Craft NI, the masterclass is absolutely free and is open to all to attend, however, places are limited and we’d advise you to snap up a ticket before they all disappear.

If you’re interested in learning about how social media can be used to help tell the story of your business, you’re very welcome to attend. The masterclass will explore:

How craftspeople – indeed any creatives – can embrace social media (tools like Twitter, Facebook and others) to increase audience engagement and, as a result, increase sales. Introducing social strategies used by a range of creative professionals, we’ll investigate the benefit social media can offer the creative sector through adding value, building networks and ultimately driving a sustainable creative business.

This is not a ‘how to’ masterclass on becoming a ‘social media guru’ (or any of the other terms these ‘specialists’ tend to use). It’s a masterclass about the importance of knowing your own story, the art of telling that story in a captivating manner, and finally an overview of the social media landscape, and a guide to some of the tools you might use within that landscape to tell your story.

Places are limited. If you’re interested, you should pick up a ticket now.

1376679000 · Christopher Murphy · Follow Us on Twitter

Stealing Mr Bingo’s Hair Portraits

You may or may not have heard of the wonderfully named Mr Bingo. An illustrator and animator, living and working in London, he describes himself as having, “a slightly smaller than average,” head and, “girl’s arms,” plus, “the same haircut as his mum.”

As his Twitter bio puts it:

Some say he’s the ‘Master of Pens’. Some call him ‘The Justin Bieber of Drawing’. Some say he fucks about for a living.

Fucking about or not, Mr Bingo – like many a creative – earns his keep through a combination of a witty worldview and delightful draftsmanship. When the two come together the results are striking. One of Mr Bingo’s better know pieces is his series of ‘Hair Portraits’, which includes an instantly recognisable portrait – in hair alone – of Leia, Luke, Han and Chewie from ‘Star Wars’, titled ‘A New Hope’.

The print is available to buy via Nelly Duff, who state:

Mr Bingo didn’t learn a lot at school, but he did discover one valuable thing: he was good at making people laugh. Now a successful illustrator based in East London, he is “drawing stuff” for the likes of The Mighty Boosh, QI, the Guardian, MTV and The New York Times. As well as making pictures, Mr Bingo regularly speaks at events on his favourite topics, such as religion, the internet, dating, animals, art and terrorism.

Imagine Mr Bingo’s shock on discovering his artwork lifted, lock, stock and barrel, imaginatively retitled ‘Hair Cut Star Wars’, and applied to – of all things – tote bags. (Not to mention framed art prints, stretched canvases, T shirts, tank tops and hoodies… in short anything you can apply it to. This truly is ‘design as thin veneer’, applied to base material in an effort to turn it into gold.)

One can only hope that this egregious state of affairs will be speedily remedied by Society6 who represent, “hundreds of thousands of artists from around the world.” One prays they’ll also remove the ‘artist’, appropriately named Thug, behind this creation and another, which looks remarkably like Peter Saville’s iconic work for Joy Division.

1376526960 · Christopher Murphy · Follow Us on Twitter

Prequalifying Clients

Dan Mall, ever on the money, has a little advice on Prequalifying Clients, inspired by a recent Q&A episode of The Businessology Show (which he co-hosts with Jason Blumer).

Amongst the nuggets of wisdom he offers is this, which stood out for us:

If a potential client replies back with one word answers, it’s a big warning sign that they’ll be putting that same kind of minimal effort into a project. We’ll still talk to them, but we approach that kind of client much more cautiously.

Other topics to probe include questions on timelines, scope and compensation. The last point is critical, never skip the million dollar question: “What kind of budget do you have allocated for this project?” (As Mall puts it, hopefully that is – literally – a million dollar question.)

1376507580 · Christopher Murphy · Follow Us on Twitter

United States Blocks

United States Blocks, courtesy of House Industries:

These fifty united timbered tactile territorial tomes feature state specifics graciously presented in a civically civilized color palette. Designed in Delaware, Made in Michigan.

Alliteratively appealing.

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Are you addicted?

Are you addicted to Entrepornography? If you’re suffering from the following symptoms, you probably are:

ODing on GTD? Too many productivity blogs? Constantly reading Paul Graham essays and Seth Godin books? You might be an entrepornography addict.

It’s not too late to seek help. The first step is admitting you have a problem.

1376428200 · Christopher Murphy · Follow Us on Twitter

A New Mixture

Q. What do you get when you cross Base64 SVGs with CSS3 animations and live web text (complete with PNG static fallbacks, included for older browsers)? A. A little something like the new Mixture site.

Team Mixture, working with the fffellas at fffunction, have unveiled a lovely new CMYK site for Mixture, complete with SVG and CSS3 goodness. It’s a real beauty (as is Mixture itself).

Get a feel for the attention to detail that’s been laboured on the new site, by taking a wee look at this Mixture Bolierplates Animation over at Dribbble. Nice.

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Presentate

An HTML5 online presentation tool, Presentate is, as its creators put it, “A new and better way to create, present and share your story.” Presentate works everywhere, as the twin talents behind it - Faruk Ateş and Justin Hileman – explain:

Presentate is online presentation software that works great in almost any resolution, on any desktop computer, tablet or smartphone.

When you share your presentation, you don’t know what browser or device they’ll open it on. With Presentate, you won’t have to worry. See for yourself what happens with the layout and presentation above by opening this page on your phone or tablet (or by resizing your browser).

Interested? Sign up for the beta. It looks very nice indeed.

1376415780 · Christopher Murphy · Follow Us on Twitter

Impostor Syndrome

A handy diagram explaining Impostor Syndrome, a psychological phenomenon in which sufferers are unable to internalise their accomplishments. As 99U put it:

Impostor Syndrome is feeling like you’re not worthy of whatever success you’ve had. You feel that you’ll be ‘found out’ at any second.

If you find yourself relating to this – and you’d be surprised how many do – you might like to hop on over to Cyclone Life and read Crushing the Impostor Syndrome. It not only offers valuable advice on crushing the syndrome, but equally – and interestingly - highlights a few others who are sufferers too, including Meryl Streep, Tina Fey and Maya Angelou.

1376415180 · Christopher Murphy · Follow Us on Twitter

Dropbox + Alfred =

Jonnie Hallman (one of the many designers working in Studiomates) has put together The Perfect GIF Workflow Using Dropbox and Alfred. As he puts it:

Like many internet dwellers, I prefer to use GIFs as a form of response rather than words. Why say you’re angry when you can show it.

On Twitter, I’m quick to respond with a GIF, which catches most people off guard — they wonder how I found an appropriate GIF so fast. Some assume I already have the URL copied to my clipboard, and this is partly true, but how did it get there?

The answer is this carefully considered workflow using Dropbox and Alfred to designed to optimise Hallman’s TTGIF (Time To GIF). Nice.

1376414160 · Christopher Murphy · Follow Us on Twitter

Silent Circle Shutters

Yesterday, Edward Snowden’s reported email service of choice, Lavabit, shuttered abruptly. Barely a day later, Silent Circle – “a provider of secure communications services,” founded by Phil Zimmermann – has followed suit, closing down its Silent Mail service. As the company puts it:

Silent Mail has similar security guarantees to other secure email systems, and with full disclosure, we thought it would be valuable. However, we have reconsidered this position. Today, another secure email provider, Lavabit, shut down their system. We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now.

As Glenn Fleishmann put it:

When Phil Zimmermann folds, it’s a bad bad sign for freedom.

So it goes.

1376036700 · Christopher Murphy · Follow Us on Twitter