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Author: cjanuska

  • Creative Truth 4: Place

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    cjanuska
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      I used to think this quote came from John Cage’s 10 Rules for Students and Teachers. However, I learned from Brain Pickings that they really came from Sister Corita Kent. I had this list of 10 Rules on the bulletin board above my desk for over five years and from it I learned some of…

  • Creative Truth 3

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        Creativity happens in situations and environments in which everyone can take risks, fail, experiment and try new things. Without trust, true creation is warped by hidden motives and agendas. If one can’t take risks, there is no possibility to construct something never seen before. Aggression is antithetical to creativity. Dominance squashes experimentation. I’ve…

  • Creative Truth 2

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    We all learn the hard way that everyone is replaceable. Everything is transitory. Be present wherever you are, whenever that is. Make the moment count. Fragment of sculpture by Rodin.

  • Creative Truths: Execution is Essential

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    Execution is essential was the mantra of one of my first professors at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Mary Fredlund. She ingrained in us that the execution of our ideas was critical to the success of the work. And she was completely right. Creative Truths is a series of posters visualizing creative truths I…

  • From Ho-Hum to Hot

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    In 2012 I was part of a presentation at Go East,  “From Ho-hum to Hot: Leveraging the Power of Trends to Transform Your Products.” In it my co-presenters, Heidi Broberg, Emily Jacobsen and I discussed why consumers want what’s new, how Go East understands and tracks trends. took a peek at a few trends we highlighted for 2013…

  • See yourself through Twylah

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    Twylah is a Twitter visualization that takes an account and organizes it by most tweeted categories. It uses good design to compose a personal brand statement about the tweeter. Like Flipboard, it makes Twitter more readable. I particularly like it to give me a current overview of my recent tweets, showing me how my Vines…

  • Wealth Inequality in America

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    Having spent the last 6 weeks in Alberto Cairo’s MOOC, Introduction to Infographics, I am obsessed now with data visualizations and infographics that really tell a great story and use data in effective ways. It is much harder than it looks. Today’s favorite is the data visualization of the Wealth Inequality in America. Unfortunately, even…

  • MOOC

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    This week I am one of 3,000+ enrollees in Alberto Cairo’s MOOC: Introduction to infographics and data. A MOOC, a massive open on-line course, is new variation on online learning—a global opening up of learning and increasing the reach of professors, institutions and learning. Classes may have thousands of participants who interact and learn together. I…

  • Learning to code

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    I am teaching myself to code. Like all the traditional languages I have tried to learn, I do this in fits and starts, which is the worst way to learn a language. Hence I am not fluent in Latin, Italian, French or Spanish. However, I like to be online and I am the perfect candidate…

  • The importance of purple

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    The use of color to convey meaning in design and communication is no where more apparent than in the many maps generated for the 2012 U.S. election. American imaginations are full of red states and blue states and the huge ideological associations that go along with those colors. Designers, whether working for one party or…