Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Hands On - Hand Made (vol.1)


It has been a long time, since I didn't write anything in my blog.
It was very tiring and intensive period with a lot of work, ideas, people and emotions. Till now I was feeling kind of empty. But now I am ready to share.
Me and my friend Stepan Belyakov (www.styoupa.ru) started TV career. We were authors, creators and TV-presentors of a show called "Ideas for the House" [later I will write a separate post about this satellite TV channel, but now I want to show you those things we were able to make with our own hands and to explain the idea and process to people].
My favorite topic is Cardboard
Great Recyclable Material. Popular among Dutch designers. People throw out thousand of tons of cardboard everyday. 
So we went around many of junk yards in the center of the city, searching for broken chairs, cardboard material, and other objects.
And we created a futuristic chair for garden, living room or terrace. And a coffee table.
Coffee table has rather simple but stable construction. To create this chair we collected more that 75 pieces of packing dual-layer, tree-layer and four-layer cardboard material, 3-4 liters of glue and something like 5 days of cutting and glueing. It was difficult. But the result is exciting.
Enjoy!

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Summer in The City

Saint-Petersburg have 3 times less summer sunny days than Amsterdam. And people here enjoy summer as much as it is possible. Everything seems to be 2 times more beautiful, peaceful. I just love Saint P. during summer days like today. Hot air, beautiful people girls in short and light summer dresses, sun is shining into my window when I wake up, warm walks with my dog around the city in the morning, green grass, green flourishing trees, public transport, tasty drinks, fresh fruits and vegetables, sunglasses, favorite clothes, friends (some are missing, but still). Opportunity to go to the forest, to eat berries, to go the Finland Gulf to grab some sand. Bicycle. Warm walks around the city at night. No procrastination.  Hot cars, many ideas, open roofs somewhere, gardens and flowers, water, boats, yachts. Good articles, nice leaflets. Just joy and enjoyment. And also we have found some nice yard with a lot of graffiti, which also can increase your mood. Cause graffiti is not just drawings on the walls...

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

10 Rules of Effective Creativity

Austin Kleon is an artist. You can visit his website http://www.austinkleon.com, where he stores his creations. Also he formulated his Rules of Effective Creativity, which made him famous. I would like to share them with you, cause they are really simple and cool.
cause
and 
look at this image
You is what you admit in your life
To start doing something there is no need to wait for something
While doing things you get to know who you are
Even if you don't know how 

Be accurate. Run a diary.
Be able to filter information. And skip those unnecessary things.
Hope you liked it, and you liked Austin. And be happy!











Monday, July 25, 2011

Irrational Living-Irrational Planning



What to do, if planning models don't work and strict graphic causes monotony and boredom?
These questions were following me for a lot of time.
There are 2 types of people:
  1. The first type are consistent, systematic, deliberate, organized and thoughtful people (Rational);
  2. The second type are spontaneous, impulsive, improvise people, who are flexible in emergency situations (Irrational).

Almost all modern systems of time management are ideally suited only to rational people.But for the irrational, these methods are unnatural. When irrational are trying to accustom themselves to planning, they are swimming against the stream and act against their inner nature. The following happens with every irrational, forcing himself to run on schedule: he/she burns! There is no motivation, and thoughts about the work are disgusting.

SIGNS  of irrational:
  • Have a whole arsenal of different purposes. Strive to develop in various fields;
  • When he can not achieve the same goal, irrational, switch to another. In contrast to the rational, that changes not the goal, but a way of achieving it.
  • The efficiency strongly depends on the mood. If irrational is in bad mood, he will avoid the planned work, putting it "for later";
  • Uniformity and monotony oppresses them. They like to do the work in the form of the game. They are often looking for new ways to perform the same work;
  • Spontaneous and unpredictable. In unforeseen circumstances, act quickly, flexibly and efficiently. Lack of control over the situation does not bother them;
  • Do not like to clean up. They do not care, if things are on place or not. The term "creative clutter" was invented by irrational;
  • Always tolerate failures, trying to apply the recommendations of recognized systems of time management;
  • Motivation decreases, when they have to learn new stuff, reading a book in a strict sequence. Often they want to go ahead and move on to more interesting
  • chapters;
  • For them is difficult to answer such questions as: "What will you have for dinner?", "How much time will be at a party?", "How much time do you need to do this job?";
  • When talking they may switch to  extraneous topics, then return to the main topic, then get distracted.
So how to transform those weaknesses of irrational people into their strengths?
There is no logical way to do this. Let's just transform them.

Irrational never finish one case and grab the other case.
May be you noticed once, that you want to learn Adobe Photoshop, and play guitar, and learn new language and practice yoga... So many things and you don't know on which to concentrate.
The solution is: Never isolate yourself from other goals, allow yourself to move in all interesting directions! That's according your nature.

Uniformity and monotonous labor are killing motivation
Trying to reach result they ignore new emotions and new impressions.
Solution is to switch spontaneously from one thing to another during a day. Put one hour on playing, another one on doing some practices, than some hours to work for your сlient. 

Productivity depends on the mood
We are not talking about emotions, we are talking about mood to do some particular for today, now. It happens that now you don't want to make presentation. But it means that now you want to work on something absolutely different.
Solution is to have a list of things you want and need to do, and switch from one to another during a day when you have mood.

If you are listening to yourself, doing this irrational things you may increase your productivity a lot and become a person, who is able to do 100 things at the same time successfully.

I found an article and read it. And everything sounded like it was about me. That's true, that's the way I behave, and that's my type of productivity. I also had those doubts, that may be I need to concentrate and finish one thing I started. But then I was losing every motivation, mood and productivity, that time procrastination appeared. Now i am sure, how and what I need to do.



Wednesday, June 15, 2011

REcycling ART + ADV

Wanna share with you one very nice outdoor advertising campaign from Mini.
In a smart and beautiful way they make innovative outdoor advertising for their product. I liked it. Interesting point is that all their banners are different one from another.

Friday, June 10, 2011

I think I am in Like with you

Social media changes our life completely.
Today, instead " I think I am in Love with you", it is possible to say "I think I am in Like with you". That's a new form of emotions, feelings and relations. 
Out of 767 friends on Facebook and 679 friends on Vkontakte, with whom of you I really share my reality, who of you devote yourself to our friendship? This list certainly will be shorter. Cause Facebook is mostly showing our network, and friends doesn't mean friends.
But what I noticed, new technologies doesn't really help me to be "a good friend". And I can say that I am very bad in virtual communication with my friends, in maintaining friend's relationships with you, friends. It's a pity. And I am sorry for this.
But really to maintain relations I should probably create my own communication strategy, and servicing plan, to service my friends on a regular basis and connect with friends more often. Cause friends are those who share your life somehow...
I found a video, where a girl is putting a tattoo made of her 200 friend's profiles on Facebook. It is amazing. Really, in honor to all those people who feel themselves as my friends, I devote you this video. I want to reveal some of my feeling to you. 
Friends will be Friends?!