I am passionate about helping leaders and artists present the best versions of their ideas. As a Creative Director, I believe that beauty enhances story and experience with magical and intangible impact. I know that great process architecture makes an invaluable difference in the long term; and that it can begin being built during the first project we partner in. With extensive expertise in consulting and designing for special presentations — live event, walk through experience (including window displays), and video presentation *extensive broadcast and streaming experience as well as produced product for playback and sharing — I love collaborating with leadership and artists to maximize ideation and strategy.
Showing all posts tagged #ideation:
passion to collaborate with leaders and artists in maximizing ideation and strategy
Posted on April 23rd, 2021
Coaching Stage Design
Posted on September 3rd, 2020
So, I’m coaching a Worship Director friend in a consultation thread about the design updates they want to implement on their stage. Here’s a copy/paste of the last message I typed in the thread:
My encouragement to you in thinking about design is to build a mood board of things that you’d like. I can then help you in designing something that is true to your taste and feels current and that will look good for in the room as well as for the lens.
And I definitely encourage not gathering any more than 50% of your inspiration from HOW. Honestly, I recommend staying beneath 10 or even 5% if possible.
The "church scene" is sadly very derivative. Don’t make a copy of a copy of a copy. The best design in the world is inspired by nature and original eureka ideas. If choosing existing work to be inspired by, I suggest studying great architecture, flipping through an art history textbook, or watching a broadway show. Watch the Grammys or some top name as well as highly creative indie concerts if you want something that is more live production. Watching other churches is far too often simply copying people who have copied many people before.
Also, it’s never about specific gear. It’s about the feel that you want to have things look like and the budget and existing inventory that you have access to.
And then I just read this related thought in the book, Disrupt by Luke Williams.
Algorithms and Intuition
Posted on October 22nd, 2019
A combination of strategies I choose to utilize in my work as a Creative Director is creating algorithms for human intuition to be maximized as I help coach and reveal beauty to enhance story and experience. This is a key part of the "process architecture" that I put in place for our teams to use in our planning process: A series of questions and process guides to begin with as well as a timeline with both back burner space for peace as well as checkpoints and prototyping deadlines that each can yield an "eureka idea" to add to the plan. It’s a magical thing when both both logic and instinct are allowed to team up as part of the creative process.
Ideation Fibonacci
Posted on September 6th, 2019
"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."
—John Steinbeck
Care well for initial musings; the flow of ideation will pour out as fruitful bounty.
Invent the new, Break paradigms, Strive for magic
Posted on August 16th, 2019
A repost originally from 5 years ago:
Invent the new - artistically, with technology, and by helping people realize a better process.
Break paradigms - dare to bend the implications of what people think they know.
Strive for magic in relationship between technology and art.
(August 28, 2014)
Leadership and Design Principles
Posted on August 1st, 2019
Create excellent systems and ideal processes to best support a brilliant team.
Intentionally develop what is usable and useful by focusing on the end experience.
Imagine the experiencer’s situational hopes and needs; then dream further about how to care for what they don’t even yet realize would be better.
Empathize with the misfits of society; never settle in curating only for those in the middle of the bell curve.
Design for humanity.
Strive for justice and peace.
Love everyone along the journey.
Consider every perspective.
Pursue sustainable excellence.
Refine continually.
Enhance the good; discard the clumsy; innovate the untapped potential.
Illuminate the future; building toward virtuous legacy and health for all.
Pioneer possibilities.
Optimistically always forge ahead.
Be ambassadors of hope and beauty.
Value effective as well as efficient.
Multiply intuition and knowledge.
Relentlessly pursue the greatest intersection of stewardship and creativity.
Coach and reveal beauty to enhance story and experience.
Maximize ideation and strategy.
Connected Hunches = Progress of Ideation
Posted on July 29th, 2019
"Chance favors the connected mind."
Jessica shared this video with me. https://youtu.be/NugRZGDbPFU I do indeed find it fascinating and encouraging.
Anyone who wants to meet up for some ideation over coffee, hit me up!
The Innovator | Creative Types
Posted on June 30th, 2019
I took the creative personality profile test that Adobe has on its website. I got the following results, which I find remarkably true and insightful.
I’d love to know what creative type you are. It’s a really quick test: mycreativetype.com
Please do share your results with me!
Genius in Teamwork
Posted on November 5th, 2018
Be openhanded. Practice awareness and humility and know the one who knows. Such teamwork is where magical breakthrough and creativity occurs - at the nexus of conventionality and novelty.
My friend Michael shared this article. I find it both fascinating and encouraging.
20 Front Street
Posted on October 17th, 2018
Venue Creation and Lighting Design
A few years ago a friend came to me with a dream of creating a space for artists to present their music in an unique, distraction-free, beauty-filled, environment. He took me to a run down old building that literally had dirt floors and birds living in the rafters. It was freezing and dirty. All I could envision was the magic that would be. We began ideating out loud. We walked the space, and in the actual space we paced out where we would put the stage, and have people sit and enter, and where the green room for the artists would be. We used our hands to visualize what our design aesthetic would be.
I napkin sketched some ideation and kept the dream simmering in the back burner of my mind. Months passed before I got a call that the venue was approved and that we would get to take our dreams forward with reality. We put on some temporary concerts in the dirt and construction zone along the way. This was great for us as we got to braintrust our concepts by interviewing people who would be customers and investors. After many months, we finally got to integrate our V1.0 design. We were remarkably frugal with our choices so that we could open up; and at some point, we’ll upgrade to our dreams of 2.0, but it feels so great now, that we may just live with the budget version…
You should really take in a show there. It’s an unique experience found no other venue in the world! We’re really proud of it.
Creative Director | Process Architect. Design Strategist. Leadership Coach.