Adunate Word & Design

creativity

Iowa Evokes Passions

Last weekend, while presenting my Marketing Your Uniqueness workshop at the Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) Convention, I posed this question: “Why do you do what you do; what drives you?”

Put another way: What is your passion?

My workshop attendees were business owners, ranging from farmers selling directly to consumers, to agri-tourist operators, to farm service providers. This question was part of the 5Ws and an H exercise we did to identify their uniqueness and build an authentic brand. As important as the whole exercise is, the “why” is perhaps the most compelling. It’s the heart and soul of a business.

The workshop went great, by the way, as did the whole conference. Kudos to the PFI team who, in the midst of blowing snow and road treacheries, hosted a full house of ag enthusiasts.

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Given that I asked my workshop attendees to examine their passions, I felt I should reflect on mine as well. It’s my 15th year in business, after all. So why does Adunate help people build their brand and grow their business?

This awesome collage was in the entry of Cafe Milo in Ames.

That Right-Brained Gene

The master creator planted in me (and my peoples) an incessant need to create, explore, make, design, research, write, plant, observe, discover, build, grow, appreciate. Admittedly, this is a bit of chaos. But I also like to think of it as creativity. I feel good knowing my myriad of ideas and pursuits helps others succeed with theirs.

God’s Good Earth

Every day I’m blessed to wake up and view God’s magnificent creation. I’m passionate about sustaining what he’s given us for the time we’re here on this earth. I’m adamant that all people be treated with the same grace he’s has shown each of us. I mean, why would we not?

Food, Glorious Food!

I love good food and drinks! I love the growers, the bakers, the artisans, and the makers. I appreciate their hard work and endless days. I want to help them grow their business. I want to help them succeed.

When it comes to innovation, this exhibit from the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque says it all.

Amazing Women

When we were first married, my husband and I dairy farmed with his family. This was in the 1980s (whoa, we’ve been married that long?) and the farm economy was in crisis, just as it is today. Many people, including us, quit farming.

Our family has since recovered quite nicely, thank you, and this by no means is a sympathy grab. But I often wish the local food movement was as strong then as it is now. I admire women today who’ve found ways to earn a living from home. I’m in awe of their innovative ideas; CSAs, home-based food businesses, farm-stays, so many ventures we never heard of forty years ago. I’m inspired how they work together for the good of all, not just for themselves.

It’s 2020 and I want to be like these women!

Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God

Actually the passage in its entirety says, “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God,” 1 Corithians 10:31.

This puts into perspective just about everything we do, don’t you think?

So What About You? What are Your Passions?

This year are you looking to amplify your brand? Do you know who you are, what you do, and why you do it?

My monthly newsletter can help. Along with the 5Ws and an H worksheet, I’ll send tips to guide you through the branding and marketing process. Emphasis is on the monthly, as in once a month, so don’t worry about me bombarding your email.

Signup here for news you can use!

Kicking Off a Creative New Year

Project Creativity

Would it be terribly punny of me to say that creatives are creative with their New Year’s resolutions? Check out this calligrapher who in 2015 hand-lettered the entire Book of Proverbs. Absolutely stunning, not to mention a work of perseverance and inspiration.

Creative resolutions are wonderful exercises for those of us who make a living on our ideas. They challenge us to try new things. They broaden our thinking. They combat the dreaded creative block. How do I know this? Easy. Over the years I’ve made a gazillion resolutions, from photo-a-days to sketch-a-days, from gratitude journals to blogging. Some resolutions I kept faithfully, others I lost interest by week two. And through them all, I’ve come away a more creative and focused professional.

Because I have a short attention span (multipotentialism—how exciting there’s now a label for us :-), I’ve learned my most successful creative resolutions are year-long blogs. Twelve months is ample time for me to master a topic and ramp my writing skills. Posting once a week, give or take, doesn’t overwhelm my schedule, yet it requires some major self-discipline. By the end of twelve months I’ll be completely bored of the blog, but I know if I stick it through I’ll feel highly accomplished.

So that’s what I’m doing.

My creative resolution for 2017 is a year-long blog called Project Creativity. What is creativity? Why is creativity important? How we can further our creativity? These are some of the discussions I hope to cover. I’ve done a lot of research on the subject, but all the books and studies have nothing on a broad scope of personal experiences. That’s why I’m hoping you’ll participate in this exciting project.

That means you! Whether you’re a creative professional or creative as a door knob, please participate. Please peruse regularly and offer lots of comments—you know what they say, it’s the comments that make a blog.

Click here and check it out!

And, hey, have an awesome 2017!

Creative Thinking for The Blogging Bee

The Blogging Bee website, designed by Adunate.com

Last week Chris Kirsch and I were excited to kick off The Blogging Bee, a collaborative venture in teaching fiber-istas the fine art of blogging. Today I’m going to approach The Blogging Bee from an art director’s view. I want to share our creative thinking and explain just how it is campaigns such as ours come to be.

Our Challenge

One day months ago, Chris mentioned many of her fiber friends would love to blog but don’t know where to begin. Would I be interested in teaching them? I jumped at the idea. I regularly teach my clients to blog and they quickly learn it offers great benefits to their business.

And so, The Blogging Bee was born.

The Blogging Bee logo

Our Target Market

Quilters—all fiber artists, in fact—are as diverse as a patchwork quilt. Yet, according to a recent Quilting in America survey, the average “Dedicated Quilter” is female, about 64, well-educated (79% attended college), has a household income in excess of $100,000 and has been quilting an average of 20.3 years.

Quilters are becoming a tech savvy bunch. Five years ago when I introduced Chris to blogging, a concern was that many of her peers barely used email, let alone the internet. Today, she averages more than 1100 views a week on Chris Lynn Quilts. Quilters are looking to get cross-creative with their fiber art. They want to challenge the analytical side of their brain. Blogging is just the thing, especially when taught in a personalized, hands-on method—the very way they’ve been learning fiber techniques all these years.

The Blogging Bee website, designed by Adunate.com

Our Brand: A Romantic Contrast of Old and New

I have two antique sewing machines with drawers stuffed with vintage gadgetries. Their emotional factor is priceless. They also create an interesting, if not paradoxical, brand. In addition to using them in our website imagery, I also started an Instagram photo series the week before our kickoff. I plan to continue this through April so be sure to check it out.

Here’s where the paradox happens: Even though our look is vintage, our design is trendy. And for very good reasons.

Our website uses a responsive framework, complete with scrolling navigation, full screen images and large text. Being mindful of our target market, we want to make our message easily readable on whatever device the viewer chooses.

We’re also trendy with color. Drumroll, please, for Pantone’s 2016 Colors of the Year: Rose Quartz and Serenity!

Pantone is the leading color authority and each year it introduces its attention-getting Color of the Year (this year it chose two). While Pantone is most associated with the printing industry, it inevitably sets the trend for interior design, fashion and…fiber arts. Naturally, this season’s fabrics will show lots of pink and blue, and with Dedicated Quilters spending an average of $3,296 annually on quilting-related purchases, you can bet they’ll notice this color trend.

Pantone poetically describes its 2016 colors as an “inherent balance between a warmer embracing rose tone and the cooler tranquil blue, reflecting connection and wellness as well as a soothing sense of order and peace.” Our goal was to bring this intrigue to our brand. The Blogging Bee is a romantic contrast of old and new, from the glorious tradition of quilting to the exciting, new levels of online technology.

If you’re in southeastern Wisconsin and want to learn blogging, check out The Blogging Bee. If you’re a business and want this same creative attention for your marketing, check out Adunate!

How Fun – A Promotional Photo Series!

Vintage Needles and 1910 calendar

One of my goals for the year is to challenge myself with something new. That opportunity came along right away in January when my walking partner proposed a brilliant collaboration. Since then we’ve been busy planning, scheduling, designing, and doing whatever in preparation for a big opening this Friday, April 1. No April Fool jokes happening here!

In the meantime, I want to share some vintage advertising I found stashed in a drawer. For the rest of the week I’ll be posting these and a few more treasures on my Instagram. Be sure to check them out!

Art Nouveau in advertising

I’ve always loved art nouveau and according to this history, it was a popular medium for advertising from the 1880s until World War I. This is the cover to the 1910 calendar above.

Advertising copy for wright's Fancy Patent Flour

Who says copywriters aren’t fun? Or creative? This reminds me of the Rollings Reliable Baking Powder story contest in Anne of Green Gables!

Stay tuned until Friday!

Difference Between Giving and Taking? NYPL’s 187,000 Images

Dinner by Food and Cookery Magazine“DINNER [held by] FOOD AND COOKERY (MAGAZINE) [at] “THE MONICO, LONDON, [ENGLAND]”

Generally, professional designers don’t like crowdsourcing. We hold little enthusiasm for so-called “opportunities” offered by profitable companies to submit work—for free, of course—in hopes of winning their approval (like when Dog é Style Restaurant announced its logo contest). In most cases, crowdsourcing results in companies taking a lot for themselves and giving very little to designers.

That’s one side of the issue. Here’s another, more positive side:

The New York Public Library

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is “chronically underfunded,” as PCMag says in this article. Yet, the 105-year-old public institution initiates brilliant crowdsourcing programs that benefit the givers (doers) and much as the receiver (NYPL). Take, for example, What’s On the Menu?. Launched in 2011, this epicurean’s delight crowdsources the transcription of 45,000 historical restaurant menus, which, by virtue of their type and design, are indiscernible to optical character recognition when digitalized. To date, online volunteers have transcribed more than 1,331,929 dishes from 17,545 menus.

In return? We, the people, whether we volunteer or not, are given viewing access to NYPL’s magnificent collections.

Just last week, NYPL thrilled the world once again with this news release:

“Today we are proud to announce that out-of-copyright materials in NYPL Digital Collections are now available as high-resolution downloads. No permission required, no hoops to jump through: just go forth and reuse!”

That’s right, 187,000 public domain images for digital download. For free! For artists, historians, educators, scientists, well, for everyone, this is an unimaginable treasure trove. Oh, the glory of it all!

In celebration of this release, NYPL invites us to participate in its Labs Remix Residency. Yes, this is crowdsourcing of sorts (the PR will certainly generate donations). And yes, it’s a contest. But once again, NYPL puts the people back in public and offers us something in return—creative use of 187,000 images!

So here’s the dish:

NYPL invites us to brainstorm “transformative, interesting, beautiful new uses” of its digital collections. They’re looking for projects that use pre-existing works to create new things (you know, a remix). Maybe a menu? Maybe a quilt? Maybe a board game? They encourage us to surprise them!

Here’s another way NYPL is unique in its crowdsourcing: Participants are only required to submit a proposal of their project. From there, NYPL will choose two proposals and award them each a $2000 stipend for completing their project. How cool is that?

Start brainstorming! Proposals are due February 19, 2016.

Looking for ideas? Here’s a good article. In fact, any one of the NYPL blogs is a good article!

Want to show your appreciation for 187,000 free images? Consider donating to NYPL or your own local library. Libraries offer us so much!

Creative Minds Need Persistence Too

Adunate is celebrating 10 Years of being a creative business!

As Adunate wraps up its momentous 10th anniversary year, perhaps one thing most satisfying (amazing, actually) is that I’ve stuck with this creative business of mine for ten whole years! 

Yes, there’s the statistics factor: According to Business Journal, 50% of businesses fail in their first five years. But mostly it’s the focus factor, or lack thereof. Lest you think me flighty and irresponsible (I’m neither), let me explain the short attention span under which I and so many other creatives operate. We jokingly refer to it as a creative attention deficit disorder. Basically, our ever-curious minds impulsively dance from one interesting thing to another (and everything is interesting!) and it’s often hard to stay on task.

Some people consider creatives hard to live with (what, who me?). Others relate creative personality traits with ADHD. I like to focus on the positive aspects—things like independent thinking, openness to new ideas, versatility and adaptability, traits that Leslie Owen Wilson, Ed. D., lists in his article “Characteristics of Highly Creative Individuals.”

Hang in there!

Wilson also stresses the importance of persistency. Here he says, “One thing I would like to stress about thinking and creativity is that in order for creative ideas to become realities there is the necessary component of persistence.”

This, my dears, is what’s hard for us creative types. Sometimes Adunate gets boring. Many times it’s hard. Other times I feel like it’s going nowhere. But if I’ve learned anything in ten years, it’s to take pause for a breath and a prayer. I realize if I just hang in there, the flicker of enthusiasm will once again catch into an ongoing flame.

Hey, I’m hoping to hang in there for Adunate’s 20th!

Wednesday Webs: Things I’m Learning in January

The books I'm reading right now

I just came home from a morning yoga class. Ah, there’s nothing like an hour of sun salutations with friends to chase away the winter blahs. I’m energized. I’m motivated. I’m itching to do something constructive with January instead of watching it blow by from under my quilt.

In yoga we’re reminded to ground our feet deeply before rising our arms toward the sky. As my teacher Sunshine says, we must set our roots before we can grow. How applicable that is, especially while our New Year’s sense of renewal still lingers. Even if nothing’s growing outside, I’m using this month for personal growth, as in learning new things. And I’m using online education as roots for that growth.

Here’s what I’ve been clicking into this month for some great coaching and tutorials. They’re free. I listen to them while I work. There are no excuses!

 

Wednesday Webs: Invigorating the Creative Mind

swimming

So, four months ago I started swimming laps at the local Park & Rec. At 6:30 in the morning. In the middle of winter. With my 50+ year-old, not-so-in-shape body exposed in a lap-appropriate Speedo swimming suit.

Ewww.

To top it off, I really can’t swim so I enrolled in adult lessons, which happen to be at the same time all the young parents bring their 5-year-olds to learn the same things I’m learning. In terms of giving up on all manner of dignity and looking cool, this rates right up there with attending college in my 40s (maybe even higher).

Nonetheless, I’ve gotta say the swimming is grrrrreat! I love coming back to my office feeling strong, healthy and excited to start the day!

Here are a few more things to invigorate a creative mind:

  • Yes, exercise does increase creativity—an interesting article about shutting out the chatter and moving into a creative state of mind.
  • Does Facebook make us miserable? Time to put it away and get moving!
  • Your desk is making you stupid! (I’ve posted this before, but the picture makes me laugh.)
  • A great TED Talk: Our minds shape our body. Our body shapes our minds.
  • And then there’s always the diver in a red speedo, thanks to the talented James Lancett and his skilled collaborator Sean Weston