Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with creative

Where once we were lost, now we got founded. Name us plz.

TomMelee — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:02:51 -0800

Can you help us name our IT company? Or rather...will you? Myself and a friend have decided that it's time we stop doing small IT jobs on the "side" and actually incorporate and call it a business. (Mostly so we can pick up some nice contracts.) We need a name.

Bonus points for wittiness, humor, and ease of remembering. Obviously, it has to fit on a business card/car magnet. It should also sound good when we pick up the phone "Awesome Possum IT, where we make dinner from roadkill, how may I help you?"

We do pretty much everything your local IT company does, from network wiring to custom software. He's ex-millitary, huge, semi-pro rugby player. I'm uhh...smaller, and I play soccer. We are located in Appalachia, and the bulk of our work is with non-profits (although that might change once we're legal.) If we're not working, we're fishing, or at least playing in the woods.

Some suggestions from friends that have been rejected:
-Nuke From Orbit (NFO) (cuz we rarely nuke, we usually salvage the system)
-RedneckTechs (we might be good ol' boys, but we're not rednecks. We feel like this has a negative connotation.)
-Computer Fix (supposed to be a take-off on "drug fix", but I don't think 99 out of 100 people read it that way.)
-Kickass Seabass IT. (I just thought it would be fun to sign off "Kickass, Seabass!", but I think that's less than professional.)

So, lemme have it. I will espousenate any winners, if said winner desires espousenation. Feel free to include your catchy phone answer too.

Help me stage some photographs of a very mischievious paper butterfly!

malocchio — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:35:16 -0800

What kind of mischievious situations could a paper butterfly find himself in? Ideas requested for a photo shoot. A friend of mine sent me a paper butterfly, who has a decidedly mischievious nature. I would like to take a series of pictures documenting his misadventures (to delight and amuse my friend), but I'm sorely lacking in ideas.

Said butterfly is approximately 6 inches wide by 4 inches high. Anything that will cause the slightest harm to mon beau papillon is completely off limits, although the appearance of imminent danger is certainly a plus.

I'd like to keep the staging as simple as possible, using common household objects and situations, but I might go the extra mile for a particularly ingenious shot.

Thanks for any and all suggestions!

What career now?

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:33:01 -0800

What field am I supposed to be in? I always tested very well, went to an Ivy League school and got both computer science and liberal arts degrees... I didn't actually do very well in school, barely making all my requirements for graduation. I took the LSAT at one point in the past, and did very well and was accepted into law school and declined - Then and now I don't think I would like to be back in school again, nor am I sure I would enjoy any of the jobs available to someone with a law degree. Public policy has its attractions, it is even less tuned to my technical reasoning skills.

I like debugging things (computer programs and systems), but I find actually building them to be very tedious. I like building scripts to automate my everyday tasks, both at work and at home. I like creative pursuits, typically music and storytelling, but visual creativity is somewhat limited.

I'm currently in a field that is actually a fairly good fit and mixture of artistic and technical, but if I progress further up the food chain, my technical skills will no longer be used, and I am actually not so sure I am all that great at the other (more purely creative and political) aspects of the job...

Money has become an issue - I bounce right around the 6-figure threshold most years, and I need to stay in that area if I am to keep living in my house in the major metro area where I live. If I stay where I am at my job, I won't ever make any more money than I do now, more likely less. And I would still need to reconcile my ego to parking in a non-terminal position in my field. I feel like if I go back into computer and systems debugging (what I did out of college for 5 years), I am always a second class citizen to developers, and the path through tech support is a little menial. I have thought about doing something more in line with sales engineering - using my technical know-how to find potential solutions to problems without actually having to build them.

Any suggestions? Or ideas of how to hone in what would be a second career shift? I'm in my mid-thirties, and I don't mind repositioning myself, but I also don't love the idea of a major career shift in my forties if I don't settle into something I am happy with.

What gift(s) could I request for Christmas that would make my life more interesting, social, or creative?

Kirn — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:41:00 -0800

What gift(s) could I request for Christmas that would make my life more interesting, social, or creative? I've been asked by my mother for suggestions of what she could get me for Christmas. Recently I've realised that I spend too much time reading books, watching movies and playing video games, and not enough time doing creative or interesting things, attending cultural events, or being sociable and meeting new people. This is particularly daft as I live in the interesting city of Brighton, an hour outside the even more interesting city of London.

What gift(s) could I ask for that would help me to have a more interesting, social, creative 2010? There's infinite interesting stuff happening in London (and Brighton), so what would give me an excuse to see/do more of it? There's infinite new creative activities I could get involved in (none of which I really engage with currently) so what would give me an entry into them? What would get me out the house? What would get me outside my comfort zone? What would bring a bit more culture, a bit more social scene into my life?

Absolutely any and all suggestions welcome, I'd love a wide grab-bag of ideas. Thanks!

Please recommend books similar to Bill Simmons' Book of Basketball

reenum — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:44:05 -0800

I love Bill Simmons' "The Book of Basketball". What should I read next? I'm in the middle of Simmons NBA opus, and it fascinates as to how he's able to pack in so much info, yet have the book remain accessible. I especially love how he makes fun of and injects humor into the various characters and events in the NBA's history.

Are there other books that are basically all encompassing, sprawling accounts of a particular entity, field, event, etc., yet remain fun to read?

I know some folks might suggest Mary Roach, but I just couldn't get into her stuff.

I prefer nonfiction, but well written fiction would work too.

Thanks!

You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds.

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:21:35 -0800

I really, really want to write creatively but I hate writing creatively. WTF? All my life, I've really enjoyed telling stories, both in my head and verbally to other people. I come up with elaborate movie plots, novel characters, personal essays, all in my head, where of course they sound brilliant! I never tire of this.

But when I sit down to actually write these things out, it is absolute torture. I hate it! The images, dialog and characters that are so clear and interesting in my head come out wooden and flat on the page. And it feels like such excruciating drudgery to type out in detail the action that goes wooshing by in my head.

Occasionally, I'll get into it, and will really enjoy writing for an hour or so. Man, there is nothing like that awesome high of starting your story out in one place and then having the act of writing it down take it in a completely new direction! But then when I try to come back to it later, I'm always disappointed with how awful it seems on review.

I understand that part of this is just the fact that I need to embrace my shitty first drafts, and I am trying. And there's a part of me that says if this is such a miserable experience, I should just stop. It's not like I'm such a genius that the world will suffer from me not writing! But that feels like stifling myself and is also frustrating.

Oddly, I write a lot for work and never have this problem there. In fact, the writing projects I do at work are some of my favorite parts of the job. But that is a completely different kind of writing - totally impersonal, and not in my "voice."

I understand that this is pretty universal among writers. So how do I get past this? Is it worth it to try, or is the fact that I'm getting so easily discouraged mean I'm not meant to be a writer?

Can you help me find this essay?

codacorolla — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:18:01 -0800

I'm looking for a World War 2 essay that may be titled "Missing the War", which is about the difference in perception between how the Second World War was portrayed in the media and how it was for the soldiers involved. I remember reading it in a best-of essay collection that might've been published in 2006 or 2007. Google searching for that title doesn't bring up anything similar. It's a really great essay, and probably some of the best war writing I've ever read.

Found a bunch of some really pretty, nicely shaped clear colored with rainbow streaks, wine bottles. Any ideas what they can be used for?

watercarrier — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:24:13 -0800

Creative ideas for old opalescent bottles?

Me Draw Pretty One Day

EatTheWeak — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:22:13 -0800

Hey artists and creative types! How do you get back at it when you've been out of the studio for a long time? This question relates directly to visual art, so that's my main interest in this, but I'd like to hear answers from writers and musicians and any other creative folks who might have some insight to share. Basically, I'm wondering how you get your muse to start returning your calls again.

My situation is that I'm heading into a quarter of school where I get to spend as much time as I please in the studio, working on my art (comics, in my case) - trouble is, I'm coming off a summer where I worked six nights most weeks and scarcely had a moment to draw, so I feel really rusty. When my comics matrix is firing on all cylinders, inspiration is never a problem - rather, keeping up with it is. But getting there takes awhile, and I'd like to jumpstart my return if at all possible.

So, that's the question, creative AskMe readers: when you've been away from your artistic practice for a long time, how do you get your head back in the game?

How to get connected and get working as a retoucher in Berlin?

freudenschade — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:27:52 -0800

Talented, creative, experienced (but mostly non-German-speaking) Canadian digital artist looking for postproduction/retouching work in Berlin. Got any leads or advice for my girlfriend? We moved to Berlin a couple of months ago, and after some much-needed down time, the job hunt has begun. We have visas that allow us to live and work in Germany for at least the coming year. Being fairly competent in German and focused in the tech/software/marketing world, I'm OK for leads for now, but my girlfriend could use some tips.

Background: She graduated from Sheridan College with a diploma in Applied Photography in 2004. Spent the last four years working for Dixon Film & Photography, one of the top advertising photography studios in Canada -- the past two of which were as head retoucher, working on national and international ad campaigns for big clients in partnership with top ad agencies. She's incredibly talented, and able to contribute to projects creatively as well as technically. Basically, she's a postproduction ninja. She just needs someone in the industry here in Berlin to take notice.

You can view samples of her professional and personal (fine art) work here: www.lunaland.net

So, creative industry Berliners (and others in the know), what can she do to make some more connections locally and find the right position? Full time would be ideal, but regular freelance is an option as well. Again, she doesn't really speak German, but it seems like it would definitely be possible to find work as an English speaker in the mostly English speaking creative/advertising industry.

Any and all feedback is definitely appreciated. Specific suggestions for related work (i.e. art direction) would also be great. Danke schön in advance!

Don Draper would be out of a creative marketing job in this day and age?

thankyoumuchly — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:50:30 -0800

Do the creative marketing jobs seen in the A&E TV show Mad Men still exist today? I'm interested in becoming a creative marketer. I'm not sure if this is the correct title, but I'm interested in using my raw/pure creativity to help advertising efforts for product services companies. I'm curious if jobs currently exist similar to the raw brainstorming seen in the A&E TV series Mad Men.

If these jobs still exist, where do I apply? Can anyone provide a link to a job description (monster.com maybe)? What are the qualifications?

If these jobs do not exist or they are similar but changed, please explain. What is new? What is still the same as the good ol' days of Madison Ave Marketing? Anything else I should know?

Thanks in advance!

-Dick Whitman

Free use music

white_devil — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:37:39 -0800

I’m trying to find some creative commons or free use music for my GF to use on the video she did for Facebook as a fund raising tool for her Susan G Komen 3 day walks in October. She originally wanted Lady Antebellum’s “I was Here” but couldn’t because of license issues. I’m trying to find something in that same vein. Any suggestions of online resources or magic Google-fu would be appreciated. I read this previous question but had little luck and I have tried using the CC search engine but with crappy results.

German-owned Creative agencies in New York City

harlan — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:29:18 -0800

I would really like to know which NYC-based German agency is advertising this position on Craigslist:
Senior Systems Analyst
Anyone care to speculate?

The ideas, what to do with them?

TomMelee — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:14:45 -0800

How do I force myself to write? I have the ideas...I have the time, I think I even have the skill. I just don't have the follow-through. Lemme explain.

I'm always coming up with compelling story lines. Like...always. Several times a week, easy. Some of them are dream-based, some are true-life-experience based, and some...well, some I just don't know where they come from. I've started a couple 5th-graderish books several times, but I always leave them a couple chapters in. I've let people read them, and they always want me to finish them, but I just...don't.

When I was a late teen I used to write a lot of awful poetry but also some decent prose. Short stories because I never could think of where to take them.

So anyway, last night I had this crazy thriller-murder-torture dream centering around cyber-stalking and mefi meetups, and I think it would be a fun story to write and a fun story to read.

But I know I'll never *finish* it.

So tell me, if you write, for publication or otherwise, how do you stick to it? I flit around a lot from one task to another, that's a big part of it. Do you outline first? Do you storyboard? Do you just outline blocks of time and force yourself to write?

Looking for goal-oriented, creative hobbies

Quizicalcoatl — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:48:01 -0800

Ms. Quizicalcoatl is looking for an artistic hobby, but she is very goal-oriented. Help! Now that all the schooling is done and the job is got, Ms. Quizicalcoatl is looking for a creative outlet. 30-odd years of working towards a career type goal have left her a very goal oriented person.

She'd love to explore some artistic or creative activities. The problems she's run against are 1) she's not a naturally creative person and 2) she likes objective benchmarks and much of art is subjective.

Things she's already explored are amateur level knitting, and jewelry making. She's mentioned accordion lessons, but doesn't really know where to begin with it. She'd like something unique and something where part of the artistry is being able to complete it at all.

Finally, between job and family, a suggestion to spend a year in Tibet learning Buddhist chant would probably not be the best suggestion.

Innovative office design: What works and what doesn't?

degrees_of_freedom — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:15:03 -0800

Innovative Workspaces: What works and what doesn't? I work for a big and quite old company, in a department that does financial and operational analysis. We're all holed off in offices on the edges and 6 ft cubes in the middle. It's grey and taupe. One executive called our floor "the morgue" because of the lifeless atmosphere.

So the boss got a budget to liven up the space.

Three others and I were put on a somewhat secret committee to redesign the office. Here are the parameters as I understand them.

- Encourage more interaction and creative problem solving.
- Create a money-is-no-object concept and design. No constraints except the outline of the floor.
- Create an ultra-frugal version.
- Create as many versions as we want.
- It may amount to nothing. There's already a folder - that we can't see - with ideas (from the boss? a pro designer?).

I'm no designer, but I've been researching innovative office spaces. It looks like design trends have moved towards reduced barriers, sofas instead of conference tables, lots of shared space and privacy/quiet rooms on the sides.

A few questions:

- Have you worked in this more communal, innovative style? What made you happy and effective, and what are the empty gimmicks?

- Have you converted from a conservative, cubicle world to something more forward-thinking? What changed?

- More generally: suggestions welcome. Concepts that work/didn't work for you, colors, furniture, wall dividers, floor plans, blogs, books, experts, photos of your awesome workspace, anything.

I'm having so much fun just being a part of this project, and I'd like to hear your point of view.

Maybe you were never who you thought you were.

Hugh2d2 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:25:32 -0800

I used to be creative. How do I get that back? When I was a kid everyone told me how creative I was. How original. How entertaining. How witty.

Now I'm just a low-level government drone mindlessly filling in spread sheets all week and spending my weekends mowing my lawn like a good 'burbanite.

Were they lying to me? Can I get "it" back? How?

Trying to wrangle a creative business into a business plan is tons more difficult than I expected

divabat — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:09:10 -0800

How am I supposed to make financial projections for a business plan when I don't even know how much money I'd earn in a month? I'm in the process of starting up a small creative business aimed at providing services for creative productions & producers - anything from selling merchandise to stage managing to backup singing. From my experience, such people (basically anyone willing to do random grunt work that's necessary for a production to run) are quite in demand and it's something I enjoy doing anyway, so it's a viable idea. It's also going to be the brand/structure for my own performance/creative work.

I've already done a couple of gigs and am getting my name out there in the communities I want to work with. There are some grants and funding I'd like to explore, and they all require a business plan. However, I'm stuck at the financials section of the plan, because I don't know how to project my yearly cashflow or turnover.

The nature of my business means that my income is likely irregular, especially during the first year while I build my reputation. My potential income all depends on the people I work for, my level of experience, their budget, how friendly they are to me, whether they'd give me money or something in-kind, or so on. People tend to be really secretive about this as well.

I have an idea of a base hourly rate, based on previous work, but there's no telling how many of those hours I can fulfill. There's also the option of paid by commission, flat rates, retainers...so many variables!

I asked a well-known accountant in the arts industry this question and he gave me this reply:

I tend to not worry too much about income projections, well not upfront anyway, because, as you say, you have bugger-all idea of how much you’ll make. Instead, I concentrate on getting the costs identified and quantified as well as you can, and even that’s a bit more guessing than anything else. Once I’ve established how much the business is likely to cost on a day-to-day basis, then that tells you how much income you need to cover costs. Add to that your cost of day-to-day living. That tells you how much money you need to be getting to live on and run the business, in total. Subtract from that how much you get, say, from part time wages, and the balance becomes the business income you need to get by one. That’s the starting point and if you think you can make more than that, then that’s the figure you use. Don’t get too hung up on income from a budgeting perspective though; generally you’ll hustle enough to get by on!

I do have an estimated budget of my costs, as well as calculations of how much I'd need from my jobs (not just this one, but regular jobs as well) to get by. However, it still doesn't help my business plan - I'm not sure I can replace the Financial Projections section with "My accountant told me not to bother"!

How do you plan for irregularity in business, particularly a creative one? What do you do when you can't predict exactly how much you'll earn, but you have a pretty good idea why that's the case and how you'll price yourself?

Also, are there any examples of creative and unusual business plans? I know of the Right Brain Business Plan but that's about it really.

Edward Tufte, make me a taxonomy!

soviet sleepover — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:32:41 -0800

Help me devise an Edward Tufte-approved visual system for tracking my life/health/happiness! Portable, layered, colorful, graph-like but illustrated... Right now I'm imagining a 365 page accordion-fold book that opens both ways--forwards for a timeline (with illustrations and notes I add day by day), and backwards for a regular journal/notebook. But I'm not at all wedded to that idea, though I do like the idea of being able to view several/many days at once as a progression. (A huge set of scrolls seems like a theoretically good idea, but unwieldy and silly in practice. Maybe a 60p accordion Moleskine is most practical..)

Practically, I'd like this to serve as a visual diary of my day's events, plus a way of tracking trends. I also want to be able to record evolving goals I set for myself, no matter how banal ("floss teeth," "write for an hour"), and have some aesthetically interesting way of seeing their progress..

As a side question, give me ideas of how to develop emotional/tonal taxonomies! How do you categorize the events/ideas in your life in a way that takes into consideration their emotional qualities, seriousness/ephemerality, etc? How to overlay a cloud system (think web 2.0 in analog, but without the layers of acetate!).

But despite the bent toward data collection, I want this most to be a creative project using collage, illustration, etc. So, the questions: how should I approach a project like this? What should I keep in mind? How would you go about developing taxonomies for this? I want to hear your anecdotes, your speculation, your naysaying or wonderful visions for doomed projects! How would you do this?

Sublimation—does it work?

Busoni — Sun, 10 May 2009 11:17:02 -0800

Is the theory of sublimation—the idea of channeling sexual energy into creative or physical output—still considered valid? Is there evidence that it "works"? I was reading a biography of Leonardo da Vinci, written fairly recently, as I recall, by a surgeon and science writer (Sherwin Nuland). In it, he states somewhat matter-of-factly the likelihood of Leonardo having channeled his homosexual desires into his art, such that expressions of his libido were nonexistent. This is paraphrasing, but that was the essential message. Now, I'm not an expert in psychology, but I thought such reliance on Freudian terms was odd. But since it was from an actual medical doctor, not a literature professor (which would have been less surprising), I began to wonder if there was something to it.

So, my question: is there evidence that this concept of sublimation is valid? Can a person make better art and be more productive by curtailing sexual activity? And conversely, can a person diminish or eliminate sexual desire by committing himself to his art or profession? I'll take personal anecdotes as well as second-hand ones.

Does Don Draper still exist?

Big Fat Tycoon — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:34:21 -0800

Are there still jobs in the creative side of advertising that don't require a path from graphic design/art direction and aren't subordinated to marketing and its modern emphasis on data and metrics? I've been investigating advertising for a possible career change. I've always found myself to be visually and linguistically creative, but have rarely found an outlet for that in the career I've previously had, and it struck me that advertising (or the classic Madison Avenue vision of it) might be a better place for me.

Unfortunately, I'm unsure of how I could move into this area without coming from a graphic design background or specializing in marketing, which doesn't really interest me in the same way. Perhaps people in the industry who read this could give me some details on how they got to where they are now? Do people that just come up with ad campaigns and present to clients still exist like they do in Mad Men?

Will this help me jump-start my creativity?

wholebroad — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 10:21:42 -0800

Have you done a workshop with Julia Cameron and/or have you spent time at Kripalu in Western Mass? I'm thinking about signing up for Julia Cameron's Artist's Way Workshop at Kripalu next week, but money is tight and I want to make sure this will be worth the $500. I'm totally stuck in my creative work and need something to sort of help me get myself jump-started. I read Cameron's book years ago, and liked it, but never managed to get myself to stick with the morning pages.

I was thinking about doing a yoga/meditation retreat to clear my head and saw that Kripalu is offering this program, which seems pretty serendipitous. But I'm currently unemployed and would be paying for this with my tax refund. I set aside $500 to "do something nice for myself." So it's not like this money would otherwise be going towards food or rent. However, I want to have some assurance I won't be completely wasting this money.

Also, any other retreat suggestions in the New England area are welcome.

What should I do with 240 porn magazines?

Sully — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:31:14 -0800

My friend is getting married and just gave me his porn collection! A cursory count makes it about 240 magazines. It's mostly hetero mags from the late 80's, early 90's. What fun and creative thing could I do with them? In the past, I've done some "high concept" events like this and this so incorporating the porn as giveaways was my first thought, but I thought I would ask the hive mind for fun and creative ways to otherwise make use of the porn. Thanks in advance!

Writing has no place on the Internet.

SinisterPurpose — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:49:59 -0800

Is there an effective and easy to use website for writers to post writing samples? I'm looking for something like Monster or Career Builder for creative types. I'm also looking for something with which other Mefites have had some measure of success. I am aware that Craigslist and Elance function much in this way, but both have been ineffective for what I am searching. Thanks in advance to all.

When to go simple, when to go complex?

world b free — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:56:28 -0800

When creating, would you pursue a simple premise you know you can execute to perfection, or would you pursue a really complex you know might flop? I know what I'm really asking about is how to get through a creative process. I do believe you should learn how to draw before you can paint Abstract Expressionism. Maybe I just need some reassurance from Internet strangers.

One piece of me-specific information: I've been at this for about five years, but wouldn't say I can do it at a professional level yet.