The City that Never Sleeps, Tweets…In Different Languages

In light of a recent class assignment where I was asked to a create visual map of my commute, I was inspired to see how other designers, marketers, and creatives have used maps to express themselves.  When considering my own project, I toyed with the idea of using geo-tagging in some way.  We are so connected to technology; you hardly need a map any more – just geo-tag your location and someone can find you.  Ultimately, I chose to illustrate my map through a series of characters I interact with along the way, but the idea of geo-tagging and how there is so much data involved in social media as a result. So when I found this infographic, titled The Languages Of New York, Mapped By Tweets, I knew I had to share it on my blog.

The maps, created by James Cheshire, Ed Manley, and John Barratt, look at 8.5 million tweets to see who speaks which languages in New York.  The maps are visually striking, with several colors representing different languages, spattered across the city.  But aside from looking like a modern Jackson Pollock painting, the maps also uncover a captivating amount of data. The bursts of color in midtown Manhattan reveal it is incredibly multi-lingual. Mark Wilson, a writer for Fast Company, noted the endless possibilities this sort of data provides, and not only for marketers.  He writes, “A relatively simple analysis of big data reveals, with extreme specificity, where various nationalities reside inside a giant urban melting pot. Even the minor possible interactions one can glean from this–like should the city distribute language-specific emergency information to certain blocks?–seem powerful on the sense of scale alone.”  Something as basic as language, when looked at in a map like this, provides new understanding, new context, for creative problem solving.  Social media is not just a tool for connecting with friends and your favorite brands. Social media has the power to uncover copious amounts of knowledge and could have a huge influence on our lives outside of the computer screen.

Hats Off (or on) to Creativity

In fourth grade, three times a week, we had a writer’s workshop in which we wrote and illustrated our own books. I was working on a highly anticipated suspense story. It was widely known as the most ambitious idea in the class, and that’s a lot of pressure for a seven year old. When it came time to read my story, it had all the makings of a spooky thriller, but it failed to impress. And just like that my dreams of being the next Stephen King were over.

Thankfully, I could still turn to my favorite books for the stories I so wished I could write. Among my favorites were the works of Dr. Seuss. Even as a twenty year old, those stories still resonate.

The New York Times recently ran an article about my beloved author and his infatuation with hats. So many of his characters wear hats or some form of headwear, most notably being The Cat in the Hat. But Dr. Seuss’ obsession with hats began long before he started drawing illustrations. He collected hats and would have guests wear them as costumes at dinner parties.

Dr. Seuss often incorporated hats into his advertising work. “[Hats] could give that character a lot of personality,” said Robert Chase, co-founder and president of Chase Art Companies. In one ad for Flit insecticide, Dr. Seuss showed a mosquito bursting out of a woman’s flower-decorated hat. “The ad helped jump start his career as a commercial artist and copywriter,” writes Leslie Kaufman, “And became part of one of the longest-running campaigns in advertising history, built around the line “Quick, Henry, the Flit!”

Dr. Seuss’ ads had a level of personality and creativity that I aspire to have in my own work.  Hat’s not only inspired the drawings in his ads, they inspired the man himself. For him, hats brought a level of playfulness and imagination to his work. They were a way of thinking through his stories and bringing them to life. Michael Frith, editor in chief of Beginner Books at Random House in the 1960s, remembers sitting and working with Dr. Seuss on a book. He said, “[We were] two grown men in stupid hats trying to come up with the right word for a book that had only 50 words in it at most.”

As silly as that sounds, the hats helped Dr. Seuss think outside of the box. The best illustrations, the best stories, and the best advertisements come from that sort of thinking. So if finding the right words for a tagline means wearing a silly hat, do it. If creating the perfect image for a magazine requires walking around with a flower pot on your head, so be it. Great work is inspired by great play, and that is what Dr. Seuss proved with his love of hats.

Dr. Seuss was much more than a marketing juggernaut or a pillar of the publishing industry, but an inspiration to your inner creative self. And with that, I leave you with a quote from “Oh the places you’ll go”

“You’re off to great places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting

So . . . get on your way!”

When High School Identities Come Back to Haunt You

Oh high school. Personally, I’m glad the days of homecoming queens, lunch table hierarchy and nine classes a day are behind me. But according to the New York Magazine article, Why You Truly Never Leave High School, the memories of those days will have lasting effects on my career and the decisions I make in the future.

Will my high school identity come back to haunt me?

Our adolescent life is crucial in the development of our self-identity. Any cultural stimuli we are exposed to during that time make more of an impression. They either become a part of our self-concepts or we reject them. But these decisions are not so easy to make when trapped in a factory-made school day where popular kids rule and the girl who plays the cello (or has a tea part in the kids section of a book store) is seen as a loser. Both the regimented curriculum and the pressure to fit in prevent us from fully exploring our interests. “Our self image from those years is especially adhesive,” writes Senior. “So too are our preferences.” And the emotions we experience, such as embarrassment and shame stay with us long after we graduate.

Homeschooling has become a more popular option for parents. Some believe homeschooling is the answer to the creative development of their children.  At home, they can learn through life and they are not forced work out their identity amid other soul-searching students. According to the article Homeschooling, City-Style, homeschooler’s in New York City learn American history by working with actors in Oklahoma. At Robofun kids work in pairs to build robots and learn computer programming. “One of the most popular programs among New York homeschooling families, and one that fulfills the city’s phys-ed requirement, is Wayfinders,” writes Lisa Miller, “a role-playing fantasy program in which kids run around Central Park in teams with large foam swords playing an epic version of capture the flag.” Now that sounds like fun.

Me in high school playing with chalk.

There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m still influenced by who I was in high school. Luckily, creativity did not escape my high school career, and my friends supported, if not encouraged doing things a little differently. If anything, I think high school may have had the opposite effect on me. No one’s stopping me from playing a childhood fantasy game in Central Park, or at least the Emerson accepted equivalent, Quidditch (I don’t play, yet). I can explore new parts of the city or go to a museum. My creative career has just begun.