Episodes

(Also published at Huffington Post.) Compared to our pre-digital forebears, we’re expected to produce torrents of writing: emails, text messages, blog posts, social media, presentations.

That’s because publishing all that stuff is easier than ever. The trouble is, the actual writing isn’t — especially if you care about quality.

“Easy reading is damn hard writing,” as Nathaniel Hawthorne said.

So how to write both fast and well?

(more...) about Creating Content Driving You Crazy? Here’s How to Write Both Fast and Well (Pt 1)

Also published at Huffington Post: In a meeting of nonprofit leaders the other day, I heard an executive praise some recent work done by his staff as “amazing” and “incredible”. I hear this kind of thing so often that, normally, it hardly registers — it’s become the equivalent of someone saying “thank you”. But this […]

(more...) about That’ll Do, Pig: If You Care About Excellence, Stop Over-Praising

Here’s a great new tool for us creatives – Palettab – available as a Chrome extension. It works like this: Everytime you open a new tab in Chrome,  a new combination of color palette and fonts appears in the browser window. If you see a color you like, simply click, and the hex number is […]

(more...) about Inspiration on the Fly

This article is crossposted at The Huffington Post.

Back in 2005, Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat made a persuasive argument that the globe was coming together on a level playing field, thanks to the equalizing forces of technology and peaceful economic competition.

But nearly 10 years later, it looks instead like the world is falling part.

(more...) about The World Isn’t Flat, It’s Hollow

This article is crossposted at The Huffington Post.

A while back, I predicted the coming of no-content marketing: what comes next after the sheer volume of content drives its value below zero. That’s the point at which we start paying to avoid content, no matter how compelling, shocking, funny, or celebrity- or puppy-laden.

That point is here.

(more...) about Shopping Made Psychic: No-Content Marketing Marches On

A long time ago, I had to learn from scratch how to manage visual designers, after having started out as a composer and audio producer, with no training in graphic arts — back then I thought of it as “the blind leading the deaf.”

Luckily, I found that most of the skills I’d developed while working with sound carried over to other disciplines, too. There’s one skill above all that I believe managers need to master in order to get the best work from a designer or any creative professional:

Talk about why, not how.

(more...) about How to get a designer’s best work for a logo, website, ad – anything

Last week I was in Washington, DC for a couple of days, connecting with old political friends — and one new one. The new one turned out to have some very interesting things to say about leadership, from a unique perspective: playing a key role in assembling Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign (this is not to say that the old friends weren’t very interesting, too).

While Henry DeSio was serving as the Chief Operating Officer of Obama For America 2008, I was on the ground working on communications teams in battleground states. I never met him back then, but I’m glad I have now. He’s working on a book about his experiences, and the lessons that can be drawn from them.

(more...) about Leadership Lessons from Obama for America’s COO