Do Your Own Thing

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Yesterday was a great day for inspiration. I stumbled upon some things and realized that they all have one thing in common, they tell you to “Do Your Own Thing (and share it)”! And that is exactly what I am doing and want to do even more.

What is meant by “Do Your Own Thing”? It’s easy, it means: get up, take some time and do what you like. Do anything, but it’s important to do something creative what your heart beats for. Do something you always wanted to do. Take photos, write a short story, knit yourself some pair of gloves, craft your own chair…and then share it. By this way people will recognize you and who knows what will happen next.

Ji Lee

The first thing I found was a talk of Ji Lee, Creative Director of Google Creative Lab, at the99percent. Ji Lee talks about “The Power of Personal Projects”. In his job he was bored by things he had to do and came up with the idea to start something for fun, for himself. So, he started to spread stickers of empty speech bubbles on billboards around New York and wanted people to fill them. Some amazing things happened. Then he shared the project with others via the website and asked people to contribute. And by now all over the world are stickers covering advertising with funny, political or philosophical statements.

But not only the web recognized his project. “The masses responded and the project went viral, gaining Lee recognition and ultimately forwarding his professional career.” (via the99percent). By now he is working for the Google Creative Lab. I can imagine that the job now is not that boring any more. But he realized some great projects again. For example the Google Me Business Card, or a campaign for the New Museum in NY.

There Are No excuses

The second inspirational post I found was once again at Stylespion. He reported about a project of two guys taking pictures of each other while they were walking down a long street in Toronto. He found the video at a blog post of the pro-photographer Chase Jarvis. It is called “There Are No Excuses“. And the bottom line is to get your ass up and start doing something.

“(…) I’ve heard you say you don’t know what to make, when to make it, how to make it, what to do. (…) But there really are no excuses. Just make something and share it. (…) Go make something and share it.“

Then I thought about Chase Jarvis talk at the Art Directors Club of Denver, “The Concequences of Creativity”, where he talked about the same thing. “Go make something and share it.”
I just embeded a trailer for the talk here. The trailer makes promotion for the talk but also is a personal creative project of himself. You should go to iTunes subscribe to the video-podcast (it’s called: Chase Jarvis CURRENT: The Consequences of Creativity, it’s for free) and take some time to watch it (iTunes link).

Chase Jarvis talks a lot about his Create-Share-Sustain paradigm a lot and basically it tells you what to do.

bornintents

The third project is a startup from Hamburg/Berlin. bornintents is making their own thing. They are making their own tents. Stefan² (Stefan and Stefan) had the idea 5 years ago during a surfing trip to Portugal and while facing the problem of building up their tent, they came up with the idea to make their own tents. And the great part is their document the whole process. Simillar to the project flaek, I presented a while back. They are writing in their blog about the process, posting pictures at flickr, using facebook and tweet about it.
I found the two via a tweet of Lutz, a crew member of Kingdrips. And then I tweeted about the incredible shirt of bornintents. That’s why Malte bought the shirt and reported about bornintents on his blog. Funny story, I know.

The shirt is amazing, the slogan gets it: “expect the best, be prepared for the worst, fuck what others think&do your own thing”. Malte also reported about the brilliant way they use design for making their project a little more interesting than other startups. They create boxes for the shirts, the website is well designed and all in all they put personal ambition into their profession. A progress I am really fascinated of.

So basically they do the same, what Ji Lee and Chase Jarvis are talking about and the slogan tells it. They make their own thing and share it with others. They are doing their professional jobs and adding their personal creative projects (like the videos).

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Do Your Own Thing