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...

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!

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.

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.

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?!

Magna Cosma design job is finished!

I am satisfied with those job we did together with girls from HR department of "Magna Cosma" factory here in St.Petersburg. Personally, I am fan machines, vehicles, automotive production, etc. But first of all I am fan of those brain, who created all those machine and who made them alive. And for sure I like the productive line of this factory. Cause robots now are able to do a lot of things.
Recently, we have finished internal communications campaign. The main goals of visual parts were:

• to introduce new concept of fairness committee to workers,
• to deliver benefits  and tasks to them
• and to have them prepared to make a decision when electing this committee.

So, mostly those posters and brochure are made of information.They are formal and almost not emotional. They are aimed to make people also proud of their work place. Their work place is taking care of them, and company wants to have civil society inside workplace with people "who care".
There is a logo of fairness committee. Colors of materials are colors of Magna brand (dark grey and bloody red).
Here are works. Hope, you will like them!

Open publication - Free publishing - More anna skryabina

Open publication - Free publishing - More anna skryabina

Who are Children Born in the Era of Internet?

This post is absolutely connected with the one called What Technologies are doing with Our Brain. But tonight I would like to share with you some thought, I found in a book  iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.

According to authors, there is type of people born before Internet Era and in the Internet Era. As human brain is very plastic, there may have happened several changes, which we can not feel, but we may notice. During the process of evolution we gain some new functions and we lose some too.

WE LOSE

ability to recognize emotions. In research made by Robert McGreeven, where group of computer-addicted pupils was recognizing main human emotions worse than those who haven't computers at home. What is important human empathy have had an urgent, and life-important ability to survive. Using empathy human beings were able to hunt, to communicate in society and to understand emotions of animals.

WE GET

multitasking. All threads of information contemporary teenager meets, may be not as empathic as it was before, but it is much more diverse, deep and multifunctional.We are able to switch from book to movie, from movie to article. Imagine if our predecessors were switching from tiger to elephant and then to birds...

WE LOSE

close contacts. In past people were living/ hunting/ surviving in small groups with closest relatives and friends. Now the number of social contacts is enormous. Remember how many friends do you have on Facebook or Vkontakte?! But to most of them you are just ready to write "Hey, what's up? How are you?"

WE GET

new gestures. We recognize smiles, menu of the browser and also we are able to type on keypad with a speed of 200 signs per minute. We are using mouse or we are using touch pad with our fingers- and now this gestures are much more meaningful to us than to our ancestors.

WE LOSE

our language. Accoring to Noam Chomsky, grammar is inside our brain from our birth. General rules are included. Apparatus of grammar is common for every language, and the difference between different languages appears only when person learns languages. Now we included a lot more things in our language. LOL, WTF, IMHO, (:, (;. Internet like parasite is putting new formulas in our brain.

WE GET

computer as a best friend of a child. Children are giving names to their computers and the miss them on holidays. It seems like small ducks think that you are their mother, considering the fact if you were the first thing they saw after birth.

WE LOSE

slow reading. Twitter, MSN, Skype, SMS taught us to be short. Influence of the language on the ability to think is well-known. There is an opinion that our logical thinking was born with writing and speaking clear, with slow reading. Now for us is much more difficult to read articles and books than messages and statuses.  Text is not oral speech: you can compare parts, you can go backwards, you can follow the development of thought. Reader is not under the influence of speaker. Text includes more complicated constructions. Short statuses bring us bactk to exclamations ? Or they make us be more concrete in producing our thoughts?

WE GET

deep logic. The brain technique of reading web-page is absolutely unique. Hypertext is another type of reading. Here you can go deeper (move with a link, than with another one, and it  can be infinity). 

There was an experiment where scientist invited experience Google-users and newbies. They put them into MRI (tomograph), which were scanning they brain while they were making Google search. At the end, they found that those experienced users were using particular and specific zone in their brain, which were not active in the brain of newbies. This means that brain created/planned particular zone for the internet search! Brain is reading web with another part of the brain, than when it is reading book. This part of the brain is also responsible for the fast and intuitive decision making process.