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Either way, you’re probably right
There’s a saying often attributed to Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.” (Apparently, the quote is a variation of Dryden’s translation of Virgil, “For they can conquer who believe they can.”) A saying like this resonates through space and time for a reason. In this case, it explores…
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Icing on the cake
I’ve often written things that I don’t get paid for directly. It’s not that I never got paid directly for my writing. It’s just that I didn’t mind writing, even if I didn’t get paid for that particular piece. Writing and publishing without getting paid often led to opportunities in the long run. For example,…
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The happiness folder, redux
I’m revisiting a fun concept I first described nine years ago: a folder to store your happiest memories. It’s been a delight. In a professional, practical, context, you can consider this a brag document. These can be great companions to the action board.
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Craft, plus
“Fashion is kinda a joke,” Virgil Abloh says to Carl Swanson for New York magazine. “I don’t get too bogged down in the clothes. For me, it’s one big art project, just a canvas to show that fashion should have a brand which has someone behind it who cares about different contexts. Social things.” Jon…
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I dare you to hope
“[Virgil Abloh has] become such an inspiration to so many people. But also he made it look easy,” Eugene Rabkin says (37:53, emphasis added). It’s not. I think down the line, Virgil is going to be indirectly responsible for a lot of streetwear lines who came on the scene and then went out of business…
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Cruel optimism
“The persistence of the American Dream, Berlant suggests, amounts to a cruel optimism, a condition ‘when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your own flourishing.’ … Berlant tuned in to a wider sense of disaffection—the feeling among average voters that neither of these visions for change was really about them, or for them.…
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5 sentences on Pharrell’s appointment as Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Creative Director
1. Two weeks ago, LVMH welcomed Pharrell as the creative director of menswear for its flagship brand, Louis Vuitton. 2. Louis Vuitton’s former artistic director of menswear, Virgil Abloh, has described his own approach as, “One big art project, just a canvas to show that fashion should have a brand which has someone behind it…
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Declassifying secrets
“Flip your 80:20 rule for keeping secrets. Instead of classifying 80% of your information, aim at classifying only 20%. Most of the secrets you keep no one would bother reading even if you delivered them with the morning newspaper.” via The Cluetrain Todo List
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Contentions: Content strategy, in action, at a very early startup
If you want to see a cool example of content strategy in action at a really early stage startup (pre-product, pre-seed, etc.), check out Aboard’s podcast. It’s just a podcast, accompanied by transcripts, which they launched after a launch party to keep people updated because the product was taking longer to develop than they’d estimated.…
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Blind Faith Heroic by Richard MacDonald
Richard MacDonald(American, b. 1946) SculptureBlind Faith Heroic, 2007.Limited Edition of 8 The cube is your life and we are balanced on the tip of life,So we can fall in any direction.We are poised in a pose that we can only hold for a split-second…So it is about being in that instant, in the moment.We are…