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Great design equates with understanding and love. Sounds like marriage I know. And in a way it is.
Take a look at the iconic Nike logo, the Apple campaign for Mac or the print ads for Mastercard.
You get the brand when you see the ads.
Used to be that we worked for corporations where there was plenty of time. Time to complete tasks. Time to eat lunch. Time to spend moments with colleagues in the rumour mill next to the water cooler. The gossip, the business, the game took place in our own backyards and we were happy for it to be so.
...
I had two brushes with higher education this month.
How on earth am I going to get my studying done? Hmmm. This student had taken out a loan for her 3 year degree, was worried about paying it back, wanted a job desperately after her studies ended and was worried about time.
The second occurrence happened when I went to a session hosted by the Communications Students Association at UWI. It had been 16 months since I had been on the campus of my undergrad years. Nothing looked the same. There were more buildings. Less green spaces. More students. Less strident discussion.
At the end of the session which was about Government's proposed implementation of a media bill, I said that when I was a student we wouldn’t only have had a discussion, we would have marched around campus, gotten petitions signed and taken our angst to the streets. Everyone looked at me askance.
But in fact, I was serious. On campus I spent as much time out of class as I did in. I walked in protest over higher university fees, I published a newspaper, I organised fetes to raise money for my faculty. I served on the Guild, I had real experiences.
It was on campus that I realised that I could stretch and morph into something better. That I could be anything that I wanted to be. That I could run a business. Join a protest movement. Marry a non English speaking Italian. That I didn’t have to conform to be successful.
So my two brushes with higher education left me somewhat concerned. Afraid for those who treat university like an extension of high school. For those who try not to get into "trouble" with their professors or face the uncertainty of the unknowable. They are the ones who spend six hours a day in the library, reading their textbooks and do little else.
Maybe there is nothing wrong with playing it safe but now that I run my own business, I get CVS all the time and I confess I never hire the ones who documents suggest that they never made the time.
It was a conscious choice not to become a “crackberrian.” Among my friends that makes me an anomaly. I am aware of course, of the life advantages of the little black box clutched in your hand with the same tenaciousness the way a baby does an umbilical cord. The blackberry keeps you connected. Switched on. Clued in. But I swore a long tine ago never to become one those people.
As communicators especially those of us who are entrepreneurs we have a responsibility to live in the real world. To live in living colour. To participate.
And after many years of 16 hour days when I was just too exhausted to fully engage, I understand now that my role as leader of a strategic communications firm is to live and work a different kind of life, one that moves me from previously small world of billable hours into a bigger world of imagination and social contribution. Having made that decision I began looking at things differently.
