Creativity and the Collective

Tuesday May 20, 2008 - 3 months ago

Posted by James Ellis / Filed under Design, Events, New York, Speaking Engagements

This past Saturday Jason, Matt and I had the pleasure of speaking at AIGA/NY’s Smart/Models one-day business conference here in New York. Our presentation, “Creativity and the Collective”, focused on our studio-as-collective business model.

The bulk of our presentation examined the differences between a traditional business structure and our collective model. As we’re so often questioned about the nature of our organization, we wanted to provide examples of how members of the collective form teams on a per-project basis to tackle work involving a variety of a creative disciplines — from graphic design, illustration, print and motion/broadcast/directorial, to web design and development.

To illustrate various points, we prepared a series of infographics designed to be part informative, part humorous, and part inside jokes for both designers and fellow aging hardcore kids/former edgers.

For the design nerds, we reinterpreted the classic 1969 Eames diagram.

Eames diagram versus Athletics diagram
(Click to enlarge)

And we were so pleased with the following graphics that we opted to include them in our presentation, despite the risk of having our cleverness lost on portions of the audience.


(Click to enlarge)

(Didn’t catch these? See here and here.)

Some thoughts

45 minutes goes fast; we had to blaze through the last five minutes.

Speaking early in the day is the way to go. With our talk out of the way we were able to relax and enjoy the other speakers.

Apple’s Keynote is a breeze. Give it a look if you’re putting a presentation together. Copy/paste vectors no problem, drag-n-drop Quicktimes, export to PDF, whatever you want. Near-zero learning curve.

TheTimesCenter is an amazing event space. Totally pro-form. The building’s interior nature/garden zone: blockbuster.

Michael Surtees of DesignNotes posted a review of the event, including some photos:

Athletics at Smart/Models

Update: Armin from Under Consideration published a very nice review as well.

Unanswered questions

We did a 45-minute presentation with no Q&A, as the organizers asked that we save questions for the end of day panel discussion. We were able to address some audience questions during the panel, and it was certainly interesting, but given the number of questions we received during the reception, and later via email, it appears that a few attendees left with questions unanswered.

The most common point of confusion regarded distribution of revenue. It seems some misinterpret the term “collective” to indicate a form of communism. Others simply wanted to know how we structured proposals, paid taxes, or formed LLCs.

We're happy to pull back the curtain for those with questions. Just get in touch:

Thanks

We’d like to extend a big thank you to the Smart/Models event committee – Tina Chang, Liz Danzico, Kent Hunter, Bobby C. Martin Jr., and Sam Potts – for the hard work of organizing the event, and for making us a part of it. And, of course, thanks to everyone for coming out on a Saturday.