schwartzkatze @blackcatart99-blog - Tumblr Blog

#graphic design #designer #color #communication

The arts play vital roles in helping us find our authentic voice, and remembering who we are as human beings. I believe when we are in touch with our humanity, we envision better futures, make wiser decisions, and create sustainable enterprises.

#graphic design #art #logotype

It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

#abilities #lifestyle

#art #artist #challenge #better future

#creativity #business

Creativity at Work

Creativity is the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality. Creativity is characterised by the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns, to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions. Creativity involves two processes: thinking, then producing.

If you have ideas but don’t act on them, you are imaginative but not creative.

Creativity requires passion and commitment. You have to be willing to take risks and progress through discomfort to get to the finish line. Creativity is also a discipline and a crucial part of the innovation equation. There is no innovation without creativity. Creativity gives you a competitive advantage by adding value to your service or product and differentiating your business from the competition. Without creativity, you are doomed to compete in commodity hell!

Can creativity be learned?

The short answer is yes. A study by George Land reveals that we are naturally creative and as we grow up we learn to be uncreative. Creativity is a skill that can be developed and a process that can be managed.

Creativity begins with a foundation of knowledge, learning a discipline, and mastering a way of thinking. You can learn to be creative by experimenting, exploring, questioning assumptions, using imagination and synthesing information. Learning to be creative is akin to learning a sport. It requires practice to develop the right muscles and a supportive environment in which to flourish.

Make a habit of these seven practices, and you will be highly creative in your field:

1. Prepare the ground

“In creating, the only hard thing’s to begin; A grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.”—James Russell Lowell Creativity requires an absorbed mind, a relaxed state of focus and attention. Give yourself the time and space you need to get completely absorbed in the zone of creativity and inspiration. Let the desire to create come from the pure pleasure of creative expression. If you worry about being perfect, you may never begin.

2.Plant seeds for creativity

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we create the world.” —The Buddha

3. Live in the question

“Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s been said that at the age of 5, children ask 120 questions a day, at age 6 they ask only 60 questions a day, and at the age of 40, adults ask 4 questions a day. We adults need to embrace “beginner’s mind,” and ask questions, instead of trying to find immediate answers. Pay attention to questions other people ask, especially those from artists, scientists, and thought leaders. Collect questions you find compelling.

4. Feed your brain Be curious and follow your nose. Get interested in something and it will later provide you with a goldmine of ideas if you learn to make connections between people, places and things that would not ordinarily be connected. Combining ideas, and making connections are key practices of creativity employed by artists, designers, and scientists.

5. Experiment & explore

“I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.”—Thomas Edison

Edison was a both a prolific inventor and innovator, producing over 1,093 patents. He was also a master at learning from failed experiments. When he died in 1931 he left behind 3,500 notebooks containing details of his ideas and thoughts. If you follow your curiosity, experiment with ideas, and learn from your mistakes, the quality of your creativity will vastly improve.

6. Replenish your creative stock

“As artists, we must learn to be self nourishing.” —Julia Cameron

7. The secret to liberating your creativity

While there is no magic bullet that will liberate your creativity, it can be helpful to remember how you played as a child. What absorbed you to the extent that you lost track of time? Your child’s play provides the clue to your creativity, your talents and your passion. Creativity takes on many forms in business, art, design, education and science. When we express our creativity in these domains, we have the ability to make life and work a work of art.

#creativity #develop #inovation #business #art #design

Just keep going forward, never stop

People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you're doing and it's totally true.

So, if you don't love it, if you're not having fun doing it and you don't really love it, you're gonna give up. And that's what happens to most people, actually.

#passion #business #success

New business

if you are a new business owner, it is important for you to answer these questions before you go out on your own. if you don't address your marketing needs early enough, you'll end up running out of time and money.

what are some potential ways your new business could fail? how can you address these issues through your marketing plan? what kind of opening would work best for your business What features and benefits can youfocus on in lieu of years in business and customers served what is the maxmum amount of money you can put toward an advertising program remember to build a marketing strategy before you build your business

#new business #marketing #advertising

Creative Advertising

#graphic design #design #advertising #be creative

iPhone X

Face ID. A revolution in recognition..

What could be more natural than a touch? A look. That was the insight behind Face ID, a powerful and secure authentication system that’s even more convenient than Touch ID. It makes unlocking and paying fast, easy, and intuitive. The incredible technology behind incredible simplicity.

With Face ID, iPhone X unlocks only when you’re looking at it. It’s designed to resist spoofing by photos or masks. Your facial map is encrypted and protected by the Secure Enclave. And authentication happens instantly on the device, not in the cloud. The A11 Bionic chip uses machine learning to recognize changes in your appearance. Put on glasses. Wear a hat. Grow a beard. Your friends might not recognize you. But iPhone X will.

Face ID is enabled by the TrueDepth camera. It projects and analyzes more than 30,000 invisible dots to create a precise depth map of your face.

Portrait mode gets even better, with sharper detail, more natural background blurring, improved performance in low light, and access to the flash when you need it.

Dual OIS. For images that shine in low light. One of the hardest things in photography is getting great photos and videos in low light. Optical image stabilization in both rear cameras makes it effortless. So when the day ends, your creativity is just beginning.

The TrueDepth camera analyzes more than 50 different muscle movements to mirror your expressions in 12 Animoji. Reveal your inner panda or robot.

All-New Design The most durable glass ever in a smartphone, front and back. Surgical‑grade stainless steel. Wireless charging. Water and dust resistance. Wireless charging for a wireless world.

Say hello to the future.

#iPhone #future #design #new design

#art #history of art

Never read, I just look at pictures

The father of American minimalism is perhaps Andy Warhol, who was one of the most successful commercial graphic designers of his time during 1950s, wining quite a few awards such as the Art Directors Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Among his clients were The New York Times, Columbia Records,Vogue, NBC, and many others. In 1952, he had his first one-man show at the Hugo Gallery in New York. He made his first Pop paintings, based on comics and ads, in 1961, and then a series of Campbell’s Soup Cans in 1962. As a pop artist who illustrated brand name products, he also wanted to mass produce his own works in his art studio called The Factory , where he began a large series of celebrity portraits, including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor, in 1962.

#design #andy warhol #minimalism

Minimalist Design

Minimalism can be described as the stripping away of all unnecessary elements and focusing on what needs to be there. In this sense, minimalism encourages purpose.

While minimalism often appears simple on the outside, a lot of thought, practice and time goes into the production and development of a minimalistic piece. Embracing minimalism in no way means that your design has to be any less creative. In fact, when you’re not bogged down in complex visuals, you often get a chance to explore and play with clever relationships hidden within your design. Minimalism can allow you to consider the spatial relationship of your design in a way you might not have before. Minimalism isn’t about the complete lack of illustrative elements, but rather the careful choice of when and where to use them. Minimalism is often about stripping away all the unnecessary things and focusing on the communication. White space, also known as ‘negative space’, can sometimes be looked at as just empty or blank space, but this is not entirely accurate! When used well, white space can help balance out your design, declutter it and help it breathe. When there are less elements fighting to be seen, you are able to be a lot more direct with your message and overall communication. Minimalism can be a vital component to your design as it has the potential to be timeless. The fewer elements your design includes, the less chance they are to go out of style or lose their trendiness. A common and perfect example of this is Google. Take a look at the screenshots below of the Google homepage 10 years ago and today. Despite small changes, the white space, the focus on the content and the ultimate minimalism of the website has kept the design relatively timeless. Clarity doesn’t mean boring design; rather a strong design will speak for itself rather grabbing for the audience’s attention. Consider Apple’s branding and advertising. It utilizes large areas of white space to communicate a sense of simplicity and to reflect the user-friendliness of its products. Overall, minimalism isn’t necessarily an aesthetic objective or an exact style you can recreate, but rather, it’s a way of thinking about your design. In general, try to consider what can be removed, whether that is a colour from your palette, or an image from your composition. Consider what can be condensed, what can replaced by something more concise. Simply, reduce it as much as you can until all that remains is what is necessary. Less is often more when it comes to graphic design because less clutter means it’s easier to convey your message.

#minimalism #design #graphic design

Online image-sharing

Current developments in digital image-related technologies are changing the publicness, temporality and volume of personal photographic images. With digital technology we see shifts in the assemblages of objects, practices and meanings that we call personal photography, some of which may be more welcome than others. In particular, personal photographs may be becoming more public and transitory, less private and durable and more effective as objects of communication than of memory.

#digital photographic technologies #online image

Online advertising

Today it’s impossible to avoid social media when trying to represent your brand, they have almost taken over the communication with the client.

Facebook advertising is a big and growing business: companies spent more than $9 billion on Facebook ads in the second quarter of 2017 alone. That’s an increase of 47 percent (Nearly $3 billion) from the same period in 2016. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that close to two-thirds of advertisers worldwide plan to increase their Facebook advertising spend in 2017.

Facebook has over 1 billion active daily users. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest on earth! Not only that, the average Facebook users logs on 15 times a day and spends 20 minutes browsing, watching videos and interacting with relevant and interesting content! For U.S. users, it’s 40 minutes! Your job is to figure out how to make your content relevant and interesting enough to get a share of their attention.

Facebook collects something like 10,000 data points on each and every user. No one knows the exact number. But it is staggering. “Facebook boasts the broadest, deepest, and most comprehensive dataset of human information, interests, and activity ever collected. (Only the NSA knows for sure.)” Think about all the extremely informative things people tell Facebook: “I live in Chicago.” “I am the Director of Marketing at Company X.” “We just bought a house!” “I love beach vacations.” “I am interested in digital marketing.”

In addition, Facebook partners with companies like Acxiom and Datalogix to fill in blanks. These companies gather information from loyalty programs and credit cards and then match it to social media user IDs. And then there are the approximately 2 million webites that have a Facebook tracking pixel on them so that the website owner can retarget its website visitors. But you are not the only one using that data. Facebook, of course, now knows the web visitor history over a huge swath of the Internet.

In case you are wondering, the data is anonymized so advertisers can’t specifically see which user makes over $100,000 or is a senior executive in the construction industry, for example, but marketers can use that information to target them.

Facebook’s ad platform offers over 10,000 data points for ad targeting. Targeting options fall in the broad categories of Demographics and Events, Location, Mobile, Facebook Connections, Interests, Behaviors, Education and Workplace and Advanced Demographics. There is no other ad platform where you can target this precisely.

Because of the amount of data Facebook collects and its inference algorithms, you can put your content in front of the exact subset of Facebook users who are dying to see it and are most likely to take action on it.

#advertising #social media

Growth and comfort do not coexist

#ginni rometty #business #growing

Small Business Marketing

One universal small business goal is to sell the business's products and services. This is usually best accomplished by positioning the business in front of the target audience, and offering something that solves a problem or that they can't refuse or find elsewhere.

To this end, one of the smartest things a small business owner can do for his or her business is to take the time to develop a small business marketing plan that will set them apart from the competition. A marketing plan clearly outlines how you will reach your ideal customers by effectively implementing your marketing strategy.

There are thousands of ways you can promote your small business. With the right mix of activities, you can identify and focus on the most effective marketing tactics for your small business.

Marketing Planning

Update or create a marketing plan for your business.

Revisit or start your market research.

Conduct a focus group.

Write a unique selling proposition (USP).

Refine your target audience and niche.

Expand your product and service offerings.

Marketing Materials

Update your business cards.

Make your business card stand out from the rest.

Create or update your brochure.

Create a digital version of your brochure for your website.

Explore a website redesign.

Get creative with promotional products and give them away at the next networking event you attend.

In-Person Networking

Write an elevator pitch.

Introduce yourself to other local business owners.

Plan a local business workshop.

Join your local chamber of commerce.

Rent a booth at a trade show.

Direct Mail

Launch a multi-piece direct mail campaign.

Create multiple approaches, and split test your mailings to measure impact.

Include a clear and enticing call to action on every direct mail piece.

Use tear cards, inserts, props and attention-getting envelopes to make an impact with your mailings.

Send past customers free samples and other incentives to regain their business.

Advertising

Advertise on the radio.

Advertise in the Yellow Pages.

Advertise on a billboard.

Use stickers or magnets to advertise on your car.

Take out an ad in your local newspaper.

Advertise on a local cable TV station.

Advertise on Facebook.

Advertise on LinkedIn.

Buy ad space on a relevant website.

Use a sidewalk sign to promote your specials.

Social Media Marketing

Get started with social media for business.

Create a Facebook page.

Get a vanity URL or username for your Facebook page.

Create a Twitter account.

Reply or retweet someone else on Twitter.

Set up a Foursquare account for your business.

List your business on Google Places.

Start a business blog.

Write blog posts on a regular basis.

Start social bookmarking your online content.

Create a Groupon.

Internet Marketing

Start a Google Adwords pay-per-click campaign.

Start a Microsoft adCenter pay-per-click campaign.

Comment on a blog post.

Record a video blog post.

Upload a video to YouTube.

Check your online directory listings and get listed in desirable directories.

Set up Google Analytics on your website and blog.

Review and measure your Google Analytics statistics.

Learn more about local search marketing.

Track your online reputation.

Email Marketing

Create an email opt-in on your website or blog.

Offer a free download or free gift to make people willing to add their email address to your list.

Send regular emails to your list.

Start a free monthly email newsletter.

Use A/B testing to measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

Perfect your email signature.

Add audio, video and social sharing functionality to your emails.

Contests, Coupons and Incentives

Start a contest.

Create a coupon.

Create a "frequent buyer" rewards program.

Start a client appreciation program.

Create a customer of the month program.

Give away a free sample.

Start an affiliate program.

Relationship Building

Send out a customer satisfaction survey.

Ask for referrals.

Make a referral.

Help promote or volunteer your time for a charity event.

Sponsor a local sports team.

Cross-promote your products and services with other local businesses.

Join a professional organization.

Plan your next holiday promotion.

Plan holiday gifts for your best customers.

Send birthday cards to your clients.

Approach a colleague about a collaboration.

Donate branded prizes for local fundraisers.

Become a mentor.

Content Marketing

Plan a free teleconference or webinar.

Record a podcast.

Write a press release.

Submit your press release to various distribution channels.

Rewrite your sales copy with a storytelling spin.

Start writing a book.

Marketing Help

Hire a marketing consultant.

Hire a public relations professional.

Hire a professional copywriter.

Hire a search engine marketing firm.

Hire an intern to help with daily marketing tasks.

Hire a sales coach or salesperson.

Unique Marketing Ideas

Get a branded tattoo.

Create a business mascot to help promote your brand.

Take a controversial stance on a hot industry topic.

Pay for wearable advertising.

Get a full-body branded paint job done on your company vehicle.

Once you have a few brand new marketing ideas to try in your small business, get started on creating or fine tuning your marketing plan.

#business #marketing #marketing ideas

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