Portfolio, June 2009
Hugh MacLeod has been blogging about marketing, the Internet, and various other ephemera since 2001. I don't recall exactly when I stumbled across his blog at www.gapingvoid.com, but I do remember being captivated by the vaguely psychotic drawings on the backs of business cards that MacLeod published there.
Drawings on the backs of business cards?
Yeah, go figure. It's a hobby he began a decade ago during off hours from his real job at an advertising agency. Now he sells limited-edition prints of the same drawings, is the American CEO of a South African winery, and still blogs about the Internet, though these days it's with the reputation of an Internet and Web 2.0 guru (at last count, @gapingvoid had 16,000+ Twitter followers).
Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity is the recent reincarnation of a piece MacLeod published years ago on his website entitled "How to Be Creative," which has been downloaded over a million times. It's a small book with large type and lots of pictures, but MacLeod squeezes a lot of meaning into this small package, as with his business card drawings.
Hugh MacLeod has been blogging about marketing, the Internet, and various other ephemera since 2001. I don't recall exactly when I stumbled across his blog at www.gapingvoid.com, but I do remember being captivated by the vaguely psychotic drawings on the backs of business cards that MacLeod published there.
Drawings on the backs of business cards?
Yeah, go figure. It's a hobby he began a decade ago during off hours from his real job at an advertising agency. Now he sells limited-edition prints of the same drawings, is the American CEO of a South African winery, and still blogs about the Internet, though these days it's with the reputation of an Internet and Web 2.0 guru (at last count, @gapingvoid had 16,000+ Twitter followers).
Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity is the recent reincarnation of a piece MacLeod published years ago on his website entitled "How to Be Creative," which has been downloaded over a million times. It's a small book with large type and lots of pictures, but MacLeod squeezes a lot of meaning into this small package, as with his business card drawings.
Some of the messages in Ignore Everybody are obvious - put the hours in, keep your day job, sing in your own voice - but the reasons these are cliches is because they are truths. What MacLeod does is render these truths with the voice of experience - and it's his own voice, one he's sung in for a while, and as such it commands our attention. I particularly like this passage:
"Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, ect. Being suddenly hit years later with the 'creative bug' is just a wee voice telling you, 'I'd like my crayons back, please."
For a little book, Ignore Everybody packs a big punch. It's like a creativity koan, and it is especially salient in this time when an extraordinary number of people are reconsidering how to spend their productive lives' energies, reinventing themselves. If you find yourself striving towards a more authentic path in your work or paying closer attention to your creative voice, Ignore Everybody will nourish you.
"Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, ect. Being suddenly hit years later with the 'creative bug' is just a wee voice telling you, 'I'd like my crayons back, please."
For a little book, Ignore Everybody packs a big punch. It's like a creativity koan, and it is especially salient in this time when an extraordinary number of people are reconsidering how to spend their productive lives' energies, reinventing themselves. If you find yourself striving towards a more authentic path in your work or paying closer attention to your creative voice, Ignore Everybody will nourish you.
