Street Artist JC Rivera Champions His Commitment to “Doing the Work”

At the start of his June 2017 talk at Chicago’s CreativeMornings gathering, Puerto Rican street artist JC Rivera revealed that he didn’t make a habit of speaking publicly. “I paint, and that’s what I do. Pretty sure this is going to be the only time I do this, ever.” This sentiment is shared by many creative types who would rather do the work than talk about it.

The Bear Champ is a recurring character in Rivera’s work, sparked by his childhood dream to become a boxer, but not pursued due to his Mom’s disapproval. Since then, the character evolved into a symbol of Rivera’s ambition to “roll with the punches” in his determination to make art and be a working artist. The only way in living the dream is by going through all of the experiences: good, bad and in between.

His reluctance to talk about his work reminded me of the veteran-and-vanguard sign painter Ches Perry—selected to be the speaker for the CreativeMornings/Chicago-chapter meetup in July 2014 (read my write-up). Perry’s adult son did most of the talking as he shared the stage with his sign-painter father. This was one of the rare times that a CreativeMornings/Chicago-chapter talk was presented in the format of an interview. After the interview, father Perry gave a demo of his sign-painting skills. I was delighted to snap step-by-step photos of this cunning performance involving ink, letterforms and truly steady hands. It was magnificent proof of a craftsperson making the work and letting it speak for itself.

The work itself: its mechanics, its manifestations, its mania. This is where creative folks like Perry feel at ease. It’s where Rivera is also in his element.

At the end of his talk, Rivera highlighted another discipline he practices—helping others succeed. One way he does this is by steering aspiring artists, the ones recognized as “really, really good,” to opportunities resulting in awareness for them and their work. As I write this, it is the birthday (9-17-1935) of author Ken Kesey, who wrote the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1962). He also encouraged the act of giving props to others, fellow writers in this case, on the same path toward closing the gap between self-doubt and success. His affirmation: “It is important to support everyone who tries to write because their victories are your victories.” Satisfying to know Rivera’s alignment to the advocacy of peers, whether established or emerging. All sharing the same communal decision to try realizing their take on creativity—and keep at it like a chisel.

“I just want to try to do the best I can and surround myself with good people who don’t invalidate me.”
—Cat Power, Singer-Songwriter

Coincidentally, last August, I stopped by printmaking and street art showcase Galerie F at the Chicago Design Market, the debut pop-up store rotation managed by the Chicago Design Museum. While chatting with Galerie F’s founder, Billy Craven, I spotted a poster, beaming with character.



“Framed it for pick-up by a customer today,” Craven said. I asked who was the artist. “J.C. Rivera” was the answer. Now I know. 😌

• • •

Big thanks: to AgencyEA, Dark Matter Coffee, Event Farm, Green Sheep, Lyft Chicago, University of Chicago’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts (who hosted), for being Partners of Chicago CreativeMornings #64; to new organizer Jen Marquez who accepted the chapter’s hosting responsibilities from Knoed Creative who spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #7; to the team of volunteers for greatly helping to have CreativeMornings happen monthly in Chicago.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008.

• • •

Read more CreativeMornings coverage.

• • •

2011 was Chicago CreativeMornings’ debut year. Download the entire collection of selected insights.

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Enjoying the iPhone as a Tool for Creative Expression: Elise Swopes at the 64th Chicago Chapter Meetup of CreativeMornings

Of the many uses of the iPhone, its utility as a powerful piece of the creative individual’s toolkit is undeniable. At the April 2017 gathering of the Chicago chapter of CreativeMornings, Elise Swopes affirmed her fascination with the iPhone, especially as a camera. Specializing in photography and design, Swopes, who calls herself a mobile artist, adopted the iPhone as her go-to tool for self-expression. Her massively followed Instagram feed is a rich diet in magical realism, covering the amazing diversity of terrain, from nature to the built environment—in several instances, an element of the curious is imaginatively inserted. While writing this recap, I tended to spell her last name as Swipes, considering the gestural mobile interfaces of our times.

The first generation of the iPhone was launched on June 29, 2007. In January of the same year, Steve Jobs made a rippling announcement:

“This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two-and-a-half years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. And Apple has been—well, first of all, one’s very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate. It’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world. 1984, introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple. It changed the whole computer industry. In 2001, we introduced the first iPod, and it didn’t just change the way we all listen to music, it changed the entire music industry. Well, today, we’re introducing three revolutionary products of this class. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device. So, three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device. An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone…are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it iPhone. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone…”

The iPhone has both democratized and diversified access to photography and its craft. Swopes represents one of the billions of people who find prolific play in the iPhone’s ease of photography. With each new model, there are improvements—increased megapixels, additional sensors, robust software, better lenses, and more. By its iterative design and engineering, the iPhone naturally (and expectedly) ascended to the status of “the world’s most popular camera.” Swopes recognized the privilege to be born into an era that included the invention of the iPhone, a device whose major affordance was to incite creativity. There are rants here and there of mobile phones wildly killing creativity. But Swopes remains positively defiant in perceiving and practicing her usage of the iPhone as a means to follow her creative instincts—having fun in taking advantage of the creativity-charged toolkit of her time. Cheerfully declaring herself as an iPhone Photographer, not an “iPhoneographer.”

In Swopes’ case, as with countless other users, the iPhone is the most delightful tool in her world. A tool to create, no different than a stone, a tree branch, in one’s primordial hands. Most of all, an instrument that equips her, even encouraging her, to make the time to look and take a picture—something made that was worth making.

• • •

In her article “How Apple’s iPhone changed the world: 10 years in 10 charts” for technology news publisher Recode, data editor Rani Molla wrote, “The iPhone transformed photography from a hobby to a part of everyday life.” Check out too Apple’s Web-based series, consisting of less-than-a-minute videos set to chillaxing beats, about how to take optimal photographs with their iPhone 7.

• • •

Big thanks: to AgencyEA, Entertainment Cruises, Odyssey Chicago (who hosted), Green Sheep, Lyft Chicago, for being Partners of Chicago CreativeMornings #64; to new organizer Jen Marquez who accepted the chapter’s hosting responsibilities from Knoed Creative who spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #7; to the team of volunteers for greatly helping to have CreativeMornings happen monthly in Chicago.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008.

• • •

Read more CreativeMornings coverage.

• • •

2011 was Chicago CreativeMornings’ debut year. Download the entire collection of selected insights.

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At the 63rd Chicago Chapter Meetup of CreativeMornings, Leah Ball Creates Art with Unabashed Sensuality

At the March 2017 gathering of CreativeMornings/Chicago, artist and home-goods maker Leah Ball began her talk with a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke:

“I live my life in widening rings
Which spread over Earth and sky
I may never complete the last one
But this is what I will try

...I circle ten thousand years long
And I still don’t know if I’m a falcon, a storm
Or an unfinished song…”

It was an introspective introduction to her talk, which felt at times like a tone poem. Lyrical like Rilke’s prose. Romantic in reverie. Transcendental at heart. Like Rilke’s poetry, Ball’s talk spoke to wayfinding—the human quest of identity and for meaning. The two intertwine. Bell’s quest for self-discovery and self-fulfillment come together as a range of products for the home, from ceramic ware to apparel. Two currents running throughout her work: human sexuality and sensuality. These, as Ball put it, are “themes of life—of information to research and work from.” The (to borrow another phrase of Ball) “unique motifs” feeding her worldview can be rooted in her inspiration: the pleasure principle and the practice of it. Ball is not shy to declare and embrace the residually taboo subject of human intimacy. The simplest (and formidable) tenet that I saw translated in Ball’s straightforward work is: I am. Ball shared two of her realities: I am a survivor of sexual trauma; I am queer. Through her work, Ball reclaims herself—her identity, ultimately, her life. Rilke’s corresponding advice in moving forward:

“Make your ego porous.”

Ball’s ego proactively involves pleasure, but not in an exclusively self-serving way. In addition to enjoying the pleasures of the world, Ball strives to improve it. Her handcrafted objects support artistic activism. One manifestation of this dynamic is Shop Sensual, which she co-founded. It’s a weekend-long creative market, exhibition and series of workshops that explore sensuality as a vital channel for wonder and expanding its scope with regards to the unexplored and unexpected. The overarching condition is the pleasure found in self-expression with the potential of change in outlook, even perspective. The romantic poet Rilke again matches with a tip:

“Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.”

 Ball keeps taking this life cue—to heart.

• • •

Big thanks: to AgencyEA, Braintree (who also hosted), Green Sheep, Lyft Chicago, Palmer Printing, for being Partners of Chicago CreativeMornings #63; to new organizer Jen Marquez who accepted the chapter’s hosting responsibilities from Knoed Creative who spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #7; to the team of volunteers for greatly helping to have CreativeMornings happen monthly in Chicago.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008.

• • •

Read more CreativeMornings coverage.

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The Power of Listening: Improv Comedians Susan Messing and Rachael Mason at 61st monthly CreativeMornings chapter in Chicago

January 2017’s monthly gathering of the CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter was the second time improv was the central theme. The talk by improvisational comedians Susan Messing and Rachael Mason, who comprise the duo The Boys at The Second City, advocated the power of improv as a tool for creative work.

Susan and Rachel described the popular art form of improvisational theater as: “Listening to respond or listening to listen.” Artist Cheryl Pope, who spoke at February 2017’s CreativeMornings/Chicago gathering, claimed that “Listening is the most political act.” To The Boys, practicing improv is the act of conscious listening.

Einstein believed, “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” This concept applies to improv that demands being collaboratively agile in the present—in “why not” mode and having fun in the process. Playing with ideas. Playing well with others. The creative worker’s affinity to improv is apparent. When anything is creatively possible, listening is thinking without quickly judging.

Similar messages have been delivered on the monthly CreativeMornings/Chicago stage. In April 2015, sketch comedian Steve Waltien equated improv to “conscious humility” (read my write-up). In improv’s unplanned and unscripted situation, performers don’t conform to the ego of their own work or the script, but deftly steer their performance based on the input of both their group’s players and the audience. In our climate of “strategic patience,” Waltien’s emphasis on conscious humility can also be viewed as strategic humility, for improv excels when people come together—when everybody contributes, when everybody is present. Sound strategies (pun intended).

An example of the power of improv was told by Charna Halpern at the 7th annual Cusp Conference in Chicago (read my write-up). Charna is a co-founder of the ImprovOlympic, known as iO, and collaborated with Del Close, a pioneer in modern improvisational theater. She was called to help settle the heated debates among the scientists and engineers involved with the the world’s largest single machine in the world—the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) beneath the France-Switzerland border near Geneva, Switzerland. It is the most powerful particle collider and most complex experimental facility ever built by humans. (These are some of the reasons why I prefer its alternate name: the “Large Hard-On Collider.”) Though the LHC physicists and engineers were initially resistant to Charna’s discipline and role, Charna eventually helped them “to listen and be in the moment.” As a result of teaching some of the greatest minds (solving the greatest mysteries) about the greatness of teamwork through the social techniques of improv, she helped facilitate a solution—or as she put it, “saving the world.”

With paying attention as a hallmark of creativity, I’m compelled to reiterate the conclusion to my write-up about artist Cheryl Pope’s CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter talk: Still listen.

• • •

Big thanks: to AgencyEA, Green Sheep, Leo Burnett Department of Design (who also hosted), Lyft Chicago, for being Partners of Chicago CreativeMornings #61; to new organizer Jen Marquez who accepted the chapter’s hosting responsibilities from Knoed Creative who spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #7; to the team of volunteers for greatly helping to have CreativeMornings happen monthly in Chicago.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008.

• • •

Read more CreativeMornings coverage.

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The Art of Listening: Cheryl Pope at 62nd monthly CreativeMornings chapter in Chicago

February 24, 2017: Cheryl Pope’s multimedia projects are composed with a sensitive mix of words, spoken and visible, situated to provoke interaction from her audience. But in her address to the Chicago CreativeMornings chapter, the focus was not on expression, but listening, claiming that it is “the most political act.” Her personal manifesto starts with:

“The role of the artist is to make the invisible felt.
To help a people understand their experience.
To document this search and understanding.
To challenge, question, and ask.
To shed light in dark places.
To listen.”

Her adjacent influence is, as she put it, “the physicality of language.” One of the best, and most formidable, unions of listening and language, to my recent recollection, was Marina Abramović’s “The Artist is Present”—performed from March 14 to May 31, 2010, at the Museum of Modern Art. For 736 hours and 30 minutes, Abramović sat in front of 1,545 sitters across from her. Hi-fi. Lo-fi. Listening without losing.

After being present with Abramović, Yazmany Arboleda, also an artist, shared this account:

“Walking around the museum, people on different floors stop to ask me how it felt to sit with her. ‘How long did you sit for? How was it? How did it feel?’ My friend, who had come to document the entire ordeal with her camera, turns to me and exclaims: ‘It’s as if paintings could talk.’”

And when paintings have something to say, it’s a chance to glean what the message could be. To Pope, art offers space—a listening room for one’s mood, even state of mind, to be reached. To be “the channel,” as the poet Gabriela Mistral practiced:

“I write poetry because I can’t disobey the impulse; it would be like blocking a spring that surges up in my throat. For a long time, I’ve been the servant of the song that comes, that appears and can’t be buried away. How to seal myself up now?…It no longer matters to me who receives what I submit. What I carry out is, in that respect, greater and deeper than I, I am merely the channel.”

Joining the pursuits of Abramović and Mistral, contributing to the artistic ledger of meaningful transactions, and reinforcing the advantage of art on the side of the vulnerable, Pope’s work and talk urged CreativeMornings attendees to endure this challenge: Still listen.

• • •

Pope’s artistic practice includes boxing. The soundtrack while writing featured prominently rapper LL Cool J’s hip-hop hit “Mama Said Knock You Out” (1990):

“Don’t call it a comeback
I’ve been here for years…
I’m gonna knock you out
Mama said knock you out…”

• • •

Big thanks: to AgencyEA, Savage Smyth (who also hosted), Green Sheep, Lyft Chicago, for being Partners of Chicago CreativeMornings #62; to new organizer Jen Marquez who accepted the chapter’s hosting responsibilities from Knoed Creative who spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #7; to the team of volunteers for greatly helping to have CreativeMornings happen monthly in Chicago.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008.

• • •

Read more CreativeMornings coverage.

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Contemplating CreativeMornings and Zooming in on the Chicago Chapter

CreativeMornings is an international series of monthly talks dedicated to creativity and its community. There are currently chapters in 164 cities—in 2011, it came to Chicago, “My Kind of Town.” And CreativeMornings is my kind of design conference: local, no-frills and grounded. What I find in CreativeMornings is the same renewable source of vitality that drives my passion project of Design Feast: creative culture.

Having started in January, designer and Chicagoan Jen Marquez is the new organizer of the CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter. She wrote an op-ed piece for the blog of Agency EA, this year’s partner involved in helping to move the CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter forward. Being an observer of breakfast lecture series CreativeMornings (explore my 65+ write-ups, particularly on the Chicago chapter), I was positively provoked by what Jen shared, and felt that there were opportunities to further clarify and spread the wealth of support that CreativeMornings, specifically its Chicago chapter, attracts.

The system is a fundamental part 
of the solution

Obviously, a CreativeMornings chapter doesn’t just pop into existence. In her post, Jen gave a snapshot on how the CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter got real—a story of human initiative in building something good and, at the same time, galvanizing a community. A chapter (pun surely intended) in this story was the chapter’s first gathering in 2011. The most special to me (read my write-up) in the chapter’s history. CreativeMornings founder, SwissMiss a.k.a. Tina Roth Eisenberg, flew in to attend and gave remarks. Chicago became the fifth city to join CreativeMornings and the first happening in the Midwest. Typographer Jessica Hische was also a part of the event. Chicago-based photographer-phenom Paul Octavious and two members, Alex Fuller and Chad Kouri, of Chicago-based collaborative The Post Family also attended and who all later spoke at a chapter gathering. Read my write-up of Paul’s awesome talk about the “Fucking Future.”

Since 2013, the CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter has evolved dramatically under the direction of Kim Knoll and Kyle Eertmoed, who comprise graphic design studio Knoed Creative. They helped forge what the chapter needed desperately: Infrastructure. Their efforts improved the chapter from the inside out. Have consistent monthly gatherings?—Done. Film and archive each event?—Done. Advance an inherited Web-based toolkit to facilitate and govern the flow of chapter-organizing information? Done.

Another change that was particularly welcome: Far more women speakers. Before Knoed Creative’s management of the CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter, there only were two female speakers—Kim then Sara Frisk, who also spoke in 2012 when she was a Communication Design Lead at IDEO (read my write-up). Jen too is visibly advancing this pattern—boosted by the mindful efforts of Kim and Kyle.

Systems thinking and execution can be a gift that keeps giving. CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter attendees, plus future hosts and organizers, have Kim and Kyle to thank for how smooth and connected the CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter is, turning it into a system that benefits everyone. The chapter’s quality and stature is primarily due to their four years of proactive and steadfast attention to detail. A friend of mine said, “Some organizers are more organized than others.” Kim and Kyle have demonstrated themselves as the more organized organizers.

A city’s creative community 
isn’t exclusive to visual artists

No doubt, artists constitute a richness of Chicago’s creative scene. Jen reinforced this fact. But other creative individuals have expressed their perspectives on the CreativeMornings/Chicago stage. There are also:

• Software designers and developers, like Jason Fried, who co-founded 37signals—renamed Basecamp, after its popular web app for project management → My write-up
• Creative agencies, like Digital Kitchen → My write-up
• Printers, like Jay Ryan of The Bird Machine → My write-up
• Product designers, like Shawn Smith → My write-up
• Craftspeople, like Raun Meyn of FoundRe → My write-up
• Educators, like Erin Huizenga, who founded Till School and EPIC → My write-up
• Bakers, like Sandra and Mathieu Holl of Floriole → My write-up

And the landscape of creative disciplines unfolds furthermore on a monthly basis, via the CreativeMornings vehicle. A multidisciplinary serving of viewpoints, matched by a body of work, with creativity a strong current circulating throughout.

CreativeMornings is a free event
(requiring a lot of investment)

An advantage of CreativeMornings’ appeal is that there’s no admission fee. The common, even siloed, perception of “free” remains with this definition—this one metric. Yet, “free” exceeds the absence of ticket price. It largely testifies to the fact that each CreativeMornings/Chicago meetup is only achieved through an orchestrated range of actions, in essence: Raw human power (as I put it in this past write-up). Making a monthly series of events, year after year, consumes much time and energy when you take the ideation, planning, managing, physicality—and slew of micro-actions in between, into account. It’s a work-out!

Yet the noble efforts are not apparent to a number of attendees. Rare as it is, whenever I encounter someone who complains about CreativeMornings, I point them to the fact that it’s volunteer-driven. If they fail to find this fact profound, even motivational, they may, I strongly suspect, be reminded comfortably that it’s “free” for their potential to ultimately feel soothed, inspired and more.

The chapter’s continued success 
is also due in large part to people outside 
of the chapter’s team

Without a dedicated team, there would be no CreativeMornings chapter—anywhere. To the Chicago chapter, I offered thanks to its volunteers. The hosts and partners get the majority of the spotlight, but there are adjacent people who play a part and command it at each event, parts such as photographers, videographers, guides, producers, communicators, moderators, the list of players goes on. These volunteers deserve regular recognition beyond a chapter’s gatherings.

Thanks must be also stretched to people who socialize it through media platforms, particularly those who socialize it through writing. CreativeMornings is a universe for connecting thoughts, whether they’re light as notions or heavy as convictions. It’s an environment optimized for writing.

My chief motivation for appreciating CreativeMornings is the excitement (rather than the embarrassment) of riches, presented via speakers generously sharing the enthusiasm of doing what they do, chance chats and observations—the total experience preceding, during and after the event ends. Expert user researcher Steve Portigal’s practice of “noticing power” is enabled at each CreativeMornings event. All ingredients for writing, all inputs to write. And writing one’s heart out about CreativeMornings matches the quality of the teams’—completely voluntary. If you write about CreativeMornings in your city, let me know. Thankful to be called “a roving reporter on CreativeMornings.” Explore my write-ups ← 65+ and growing.

Faced with the constant change of climate—politically, socially, physically, CreativeMornings is a coping mechanism, whether it’s in-person or remote, with the benefit of long-range empowerment.

• • •

From the blogging archives:

Rainbow Connection at The First CreativeMornings Summit (2014)

Wisdom at CreativeMornings: Kalman, Lois, Glaser (2014)

I like CreativeMornings—a lot (2014)

Delightful Details of the CreativeMornings.com Redesign (2013)

Design Conference Reworked and Reloaded: CreativeMornings (2011)

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Audience Takes the Stage at the 60th monthly CreativeMornings in Chicago

Photograph by Chris Gallevo, Volunteer

In the final CreativeMornings/Chicago meeting of 2016, three creative folks spoke for the third “Audience Takes the Stage” gathering. Started by former chapter organizers Knoed Creative, applicants vie for the opportunity to speak about what they’re enthusiastic about in this annual event. It’s proven to be a great way to wrap the year with a trifecta of creative voices.

This third go-around felt like a movie with a bold start, a fulfilling middle, but a confusing ending.



Anna Brenner on human-made monsters,
from literature to life

Web designer and front-end web developer Anna Brenner spoke first. Her topic was “man-made monsters” found in literature, TV and movies. She studied this cultural phenomenon as an English Literature major—with an informal concentration in body studies—at George Washington University. Inspired by her string of highlights shared during her talk, from the TV series “Westworld” to the movie franchise “Jurassic Park” to the novel “Frankenstein,” I mentally reciprocated with Guillermo del Toro’s co-created TV series “The Strain,” the Kurosawa-directed movie “Ikiru” and Saramago’s novel “Blindness.” Assumed that she’s into Legendary Entertainment’s “MonsterVerse” with the second installment “Kong: Skull Island” in theaters now. These stories have the surface pattern of monstrous characters, but what Brenner amplifies is the symbolism of monsters, the relationship between freedom and fragility. In the worlds of art, literature and cinema, monsters are human constructs to construct meaning—that major innate desire.

Recall this meaningful exchange between a young Bruce Wayne and his father in the movie “Batman Begins” (2005). While recovering from having dropped into a well, infested with bats, Bruce experiences flashbacks:

Thomas Wayne: “The bats again?” 

[Bruce nods] 

Thomas Wayne: “You know why they attacked you, don’t you? They were afraid of you.” 

Bruce Wayne: “Afraid of me?” 

Thomas Wayne: “All creatures feel fear.” 

Bruce Wayne: “Even the scary ones?” 

Thomas Wayne: “Especially the scary ones.”

Motivated by her literary background, Brenner serves “man-made monsters” as another viable source of meditation for makers to examine themselves and their work, the vulnerability seething throughout, coalescing into the aggressively persistent monster of F.U.D.: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. This a monster that consumes and cannot be exorcised. But Brenner, through the monster-lens, gives a coping mechanism to counter its effects: empathy. This is a quality evangelized a lot by creative people, especially designers, to the point of tone-deaf. Yet it was refreshing to hear Brenner not insulting the human race, asserting that human beings are inherently stable, even good. And can act with goodwill by default, albeit with the spectre of primordial monsters always on standby. As the prolific novelist, John Updike, said, “We are cruel enough without meaning to be.”



Chakka Reeves on engaging low-income communities to mentor the next generation of creativity

The second speaker was Chakka Reeves, a videographer and digital storyteller, who spoke about mentorship, especially to benefit youth in communities that sorely need it. Through the lens of social justice, she calls herself “a youth empowerer.” She rallied the audience to consider mentoring, an activity that scales. As a proactive educator in programs such as After School Matters, her work joins the noble efforts by other like-minded individuals who are ambitiously mindful of mentoring beyond themselves:

• At last year’s Cusp Conference, Julius Givens spoke about why he founded The Explorer Program, “a platform that provides high school students—particularly first-years from urban minority communities—the opportunity to explore, be inspired and transform their lives by bringing to life their creative and artistic abilities.” Read my write-up.
• Also presenting at last year’s Cusp Conference was Sandee Kastrul, president and co-founder of i.c.stars, “an innovative nonprofit leadership and technology training program founded in 1999 to prepare inner-city adults for technology careers and community leadership.” Read my interview with her as part of my series on Makers.
• At the Cusp Conference in 2015, graphic designer Maurice Woods talked about his creation the Inneract Project, “a professionally-supported program that provides free design classes and initiatives to inner-city youth, in order to introduce them to the field of design and channel their creativity into viable career paths.” Read my write-up.
• CreativeMornings/Chicago attendee Jason Early, a proactive mentor currently at global learning space General Assembly, shared his thoughts on mentorship in this interview, also as part of my series celebrating Makers.

The novelist Ralph Ellison elegantly declared, “Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.” Reeves is generously advancing the ancestral line of human generations whose religion is compassion.



Emily Belden’s wax on, wax off

From the literary imagination of Brenner applied to the creative process, to the mentoring by Reeves of the disenfranchised and marginalized in her city of Chicago, the third speaker was Emily Belden, the memoirist behind “Eightysixed” (2014), a book about “Unforgettable Men, Mistakes and Meals.” She’s also a media powerbroker, impressively writing, publishing and achieving a two-book contract with publisher Harlequin.

After a stimulating first act, followed by a bold second act, the talk by Belden felt like a confusing way to end the third “Audience Takes the Stage” event. She prefaced her talk by claiming that hers would be “wild in comparison” by sharing her “haunting story” of waxing her eyebrows for the first time. It was an impromptu decision during preparations for a holiday party. When asked if she did anything to her face, Belden was in denial. This experience was pivotal, shaped her attitude to bravely “own up” to her actions moving forward, whatever they are (like ripping off those delicate hairs above the eyes). In so doing, she urged the audience to openly practice “super authenticity,” though nurturing and maintaining a baseline level of being “authentic” is challenging enough. Back to Belden’s claim of giving a “wild” talk. Was it? Sure. Just not my kind of wildness—substantially embodied and expressed more authentically by the previous two speakers.

• • •

This was the last gathering organized by Kim Knoll and Kyle Eertmoed of Knoed Creative, who took over management of the Chicago chapter of CreativeMornings in 2013. They improved greatly the chapter’s operations and frequency of talks that, for the first time, were held consistently on a monthly basis. Another major change was the regular showing of women speakers, further demonstrated in this third event where the “Audience Takes the Stage.” Read my writes-up on the second “Audience Takes the Stage” and its debut in 2014.

• • •

Big thanks: to Braintree (who also hosted), Nestlé Toll House, Green Sheep, Lyft Chicago, for being Partners of Chicago CreativeMornings #60; to new organizer Jen Marquez who accepted the chapter’s hosting responsibilities from Knoed Creative who spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #7; to the team of volunteers for greatly helping to have CreativeMornings happen monthly in Chicago.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008.

• • •

Read more CreativeMornings coverage.

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Keep it Weird: Creative Director Michael Freimuth at the 59th monthly CreativeMornings gathering in Chicago

During Michael Freimuth’s talk at the 59th gathering of the Chicago chapter of CreativeMornings, the Eagles 1975 hit song “Take It to the Limit” looped in my head:

“…Take it to the limit, take it to the limit
Take it to the limit one more time…”

The refrain of Freimuth’s presentation was “balancing convention and fantasy.” He described the former as “good solid design.” The latter, “interesting and weird.” Together, they make “pure imagination”—compelling me to recall the 1971 movie “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” with Gene Wilder, who crooned:

“Come with me and you’ll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you’ll see
Into your imagination 

We’ll begin with a spin
Traveling in the world of my creation
What we’ll see will defy
Explanation…”

I pictured Freimuth with a mad hat, as Willy Wonka, giving a tour of his version of the Chocolate Factory—the Brooklyn-based design studio Franklyn he co-founded with collaborator and life partner Patrick Richardson. This is his lab, where he and his colleagues, “take it the limit” with client projects. Design is a process of iteration and the creative folks at Franklyn iterate a lot. Asking themselves: How can the work be more interesting, a la more weird, while still maintaining a solid design grounding, a la convention?

Freimuth shared the story behind his team’s identity design work for the Nike Tennis brand. A refreshing demonstration of stirring the graphic design brew and playing with visual matter: colors and shapes, lines and letterforms. Gauging the threshold of designerly exploration and client reception. Though this project transpired without realization, no reason given by Freimuth except that they had “gone too far” with their iterating, I appreciated Franklyn’s daring work in this case, albeit having the appearance of vector-graphic sludge.

Striking harmony between the conventional and the fantastical is, of course, highly subjective. When Freimuth displayed his slide, showing a montage composed of sample art and collectibles portraying his client Sotheby’s, he described the world’s largest broker of culture as “a little bit stodgy.” The montage was visibly eclectic, from Cubist art by Picasso to dazzling labrador-retriever-inspired jewelry. Bowie was also a part of this Sotheby’s-centric montage. “A little bit stodgy”? WTF?

There was an undercurrent of making weird design for weird’s sake throughout Freimuth’s talk. A precedence-is-automatically-judged-as-dull vibe. What’s conventional and what’s not is open to interpretation. But it can lead to a dismissive attitude. When it comes to creativity and design, work from the past shouldn’t be passed as passé.

In keeping to strike that balance where conventions and weirdness are married blissfully, Freimuth provided a combined best practice: Keep being mindful of the tried and true ← Keep it weird.

• • •

Portland, Oregon—“PDX”—proudly shares the “Keep It Weird” decree. View my travel photos.

• • •

Big thanks: to Braintree (who also hosted), Savage Smyth, Green Sheep, Lyft Chicago, for being Partners of Chicago CreativeMornings #59; to new organizer Jen Marquez who took over the chapter’s management from Kim Knoll and Kyle Eertmoed who both spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #7; to the team of volunteers for greatly helping to have CreativeMornings happen monthly in Chicago.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008.

• • •

Read more CreativeMornings coverage.

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Believe in Magic: User Experience Designer Rebecca Ussai at 57th CreativeMornings gathering in Chicago

One of the few times the CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter had an interface/interaction designer as a speaker was Jason Fried in 2011, who co-founded Basecamp, which is both the company and popular Web-based project management app. At the chapter’s second gathering (see my write-up), Fried offered his version of design principles, primarily dealing with clarity.

Fast forward to September, 2016, Rebecca Ussai, a user-experience design director in ad agency R/GA at the time, shared her angle on design principles at the 57th CreativeMornings/Chicago chapter meetup. Whereas Fried aligns himself to software that is useful throughout its design and build, Ussai finds insight and inspiration in Disney, whose storytelling and world-building in their animated films have become a source of reference in her work on digital projects. The long captivating appeal of Disney’s animated films is due to their execution. Their narrative substance (emotions, ideals) and style (simple focus of plot) influence Ussai’s sensibilities. She’s allowed the magic of Disney’s filmmaking to infuse her designing. To her, user-experience design and Disney are strongly connected.(1)

Connections

“Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects…the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.”
—Charles Eames, Pioneering Designer, 1907–1978)

Ussai reinforced design as a discipline characterized by making connections between entities, however disparate. She connected the practice of user-experience design with the discipline of animated storytelling, exclusively the Disney model. Dubbed “UX Choreography,” she gave a tour of her five principles motivating and guiding her work. Most of which are relatively intuitive:

1. Feedback
2. Feedforward
3. Spatial awareness
4. User focus
5. Brand voice

All of these, curated as a set of affirmations—is nothing new. Though “UX Choreography” is a regurgitation, it’s a recurring reminder of factors that people, not just those in the design world, should be mindful of in solving and making things.

With the connecting reflex in mind, I was making connections per principle that Ussai was elaborating. It was also an exercise in traceability.

With Ussai’s principle of “Feedback”—when a system communicates running results of an interaction in a manner that promotes understanding, I recalled web usability specialist Jakob Nielsen’s “10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design” from 1995. The top rule of thumb is “Visibility of system status”:

“The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.”

Matching Nielsen’s principle, Ussai’s take on “Feedback” centers on mobile computing. Beyond the screen, feedback applies to workflow, indicated by this recent article “Running productive design critiques” where feedback is a refrain.

The second principle of “Feedforward” speaks to interaction designer Dan Saffer’s advocacy of what he coined “microinteractions.” To Saffer, these “are contained product moments that revolve around a single use case—they have one main task. Every time you change a setting, sync your data or devices, set an alarm, pick a password, log in, set a status message, or favorite or ‘like’ something, you are engaging in a microinteraction. They are everywhere: in the devices we carry, the appliances in our homes, the apps on our phones and desktops, even embedded in the environments we live and work in.”

Ussai’s principle of “Spatial awareness” has roots in architecture. The architect Eero Saarinen expressed it perfectly: “Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.”

The fourth principle of “User focus” recalls Allen Hurlburt’s classic book “Layout: the design of the printed page” (1977). In it, there’s a section called “Grids and systems.” These are tools for achieving a hierarchy of information. From Hurlburt, “A designer’s grid organizes specific content in relation to the precise space it will occupy.” At the time, the “precise space” was the printed page. But this concept easily connects with today’s digital display, especially the handheld mobile phone that dominated Ussai’s presentation.

Ussai’s last “UX Choreography” principle of “Brand voice” connects with the performance toolkit of “method acting,” whose goal is performing an honest portrayal—demonstrating an ease and economy of sincerity, or to use the overly propagandized synonym: “authenticity.”

What Ussai recommended can be connected or traced to something else. Our remix culture affords this kind of tethering.

When it came to the optimal time to utilize her toolkit of principles, Ussai emphasized the beginning of a project. Makes sense. But as the author Kurt Vonnegut keenly pointed out in his 1990 novel “Hocus Pocus”: “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” “Maintenance” is the operative step here. “UX Choreography” can and should be engaged throughout a project’s duration, before, during and after—not only at the height of a project’s start. Because principles are pliable. They can bend over time.

And in time, it would be great to see Ussai diversify her presentation beyond the bubble of the mobile interface to other spaces. “User experience” is a multiverse. The principles identified in “UX Choreography” connect with other disciplines, such as product design and service design, even health care, and other events, such as enrolling for job benefits, buying an insurance policy, completing and delivering taxes, voting, including writing this 57th CreativeMornings/Chicago-related write-up of mine. The blinking cursor is an awesome “Feedforward” detail. At the same time, it gives consistent “Feedback.” A visual pulse in decision-making: To write on or not to write on.

Magic

“Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it."
—Roald Dahl, Pioneering Author, 1916–1990

Seven years ago, Apple Co-Founder and then CEO Steve Jobs said, “We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary new product.” The first-generation iPad was launched. At the time, journalists and tech reporters poked fun at Jobs’ use of the word “magical.” They missed the essential qualities of delight, satisfaction, or to use another word that also happens to be overly advertised in designer circles and therefore not surprisingly used by Ussai in her talk: “empathy.” Jobs recognized the empowering convergence of engineering, design and marketing. He believed in, as his biographer Walter Isaacson put it, “the magic of technology.”

The highly scalable quality of “magic” to help people be happy and productive. Something wonderful to believe in.

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(1) Not a surprise that Ussai highlighted Disney, a legendary studio that’s kicking ass in producing and marketing blockbuster movies—one tiny example, persisting the “Star Wars” mythology (whether we like it or not).

• • •

As Rebecca Ussai detailed her five working principles, inspired by Disney’s narrative substance and style of their animated films, I recalled other connections claimed and seized by designers. There are designers, particularly in the same field of Ussai’s user-experience design (UXD), who connect with the storytelling model of comics, notably the 1993 book “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud. There are designers who align their creative processes to the rhythms and movements of dance. Starting this write-up coincides with the birthday of local design legend Gerald Arpino who founded the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. There are designers who channel the lens of filmmaking, such as the book “The Film Sense” (1969) by director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein.

• • •

While Ussai enjoys Disney, illustrator and visual development artist Lissy Marlin adores the narrative flow and emotion in the animated films by Hayao Miyazaki, who co-founded Studio Ghibli, who make acclaimed anime feature films, like “Princess Mononoke” (1997), “Spirited Away” (2001), “Howl’s Moving Castle” (2004), among many more works. Read my interview with Marlin as part of my series celebrating Makers—83 interviews and growing!

• • •

Big thanks: to Braintree (who also hosted), Green Sheep, Lyft Chicago, for being Partners of Chicago CreativeMornings #57; to organizers Kim Knoll and Kyle Eertmoed who both spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #7; to the team of volunteers for greatly helping to have CreativeMornings happen monthly in Chicago.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008.

• • •

Read more CreativeMornings coverage.

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Please consider supporting Design Feast
If you liked this lovingly-made interview, show your appreciation by helping to support my labor of love—Design Feast, which proudly includes this blog. Learn more.

A Most Colorful Life: Painter Reginald Baylor, first meet-up, CreativeMornings chapter, launched 2014 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

To an artist, both color and artist are idiosyncratic. With their respective nature in mind, neither can be tamed. It is the headiness of color that drives painter Reginald Baylor to find refuge in his process: color by numbers, color within lines, color applied to precisely crafted compositions.

In his CreativeMornings/Milwaukee talk, Baylor shared his youthful connection to coloring books. This object could be seen as a tool to conform. But to Baylor, a coloring book is a model of logic, similar to an architectural blueprint. Baylor’s paintings are composed of strategically plotted outlines, but their most distinct variable is color, which Baylor coined as his “spontaneity.” Although he colors within the lines, Baylor’s works don’t cling to convention. Each piece of artwork he shared was iterating two of the most visible and liberating forces: lines and color.


Reginald Baylor: Neighborhood, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

In his talk, Baylor referenced the painter Cy Twombly. When making lines, Twombly described the act this way: “It does not illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realization.” Baylor finds sensation in lines, amplified by the sensation of colors. With masking tape to achieve the linear clarity of his visual artistry, acrylics are selected purposely and applied vigorously to achieve a canvas—plotted, populated and personified in color.

Baylor’s first wave of work was driven by observation. On the surface, associating colors with roses, lollipops and butterflies, as Baylor expressed, sounds trite. Yet it magnifies realities, delightful ones, that are a part of the world and taken easily for granted. Baylor’s medley of color-and-image pairings is a method shared by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who pointed to such colorful associations in his book “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are” (1992):

“Fireflies out on a warm summer’s night, seeing the urgent, flashing, yellow white phosphorescence below them, go crazy with desire.” 

“Peacocks display a devastating corona of blue and green…” 

“Luminiscent squid present rhapsodic light shows, altering the pattern, brightness and color radiated from their heads…”

From roses, lollipops and butterflies to fireflies, peacocks and squid, a sliver of nature is identified and recognized immediately for the colors of its essential appearance. Without the reality of color, experiencing the natural and the artificial, and every being and thing in between, would be void of visual stimulation.

In 1740, the mathematician Louis Bertrand Castel compared his findings from examining the phenomenon of color with Newton’s “spectral description of prismatic color.” Castel published “L’Optique des Couleurs” in Paris. It displays this charming diagram:



Baylor’s paintings are proactive études in color and its perception. They’re in the exploratory vein of Castel and his contemporaries who were enamored with the perception and science of color. A fascination with optics. To behave as a prism yields a clear benefit: Take in people, places and objects as a rainbow—not reducing anyone and anything to a single impression, a single color.

Intellectually and emotionally, the prisms of ourselves and the world present a reality endowed with visual richness. The opposite of this inheritance is a life robbed of the wealth of light.


Source: Bill Healy for NPR

After 22 years in prison, Tyrone Hood was released. He received clemency from 41st Illinois Governor Pat Quinn when it was proven that he was wrongly imprisoned. In an interview with National Public Radio’s Steve Inskeep, he described the long-repressed experience in terms of color. As Hood put it, on being outside and coping with the shock of a new environment unfamiliar to him and his senses:

“The colors was very limited: dark blue, light blue shirt, grey as the bars and white ceiling. That was it. So when I seen the color red, I stared at it. It was a pop machine, or something in front of this gas station. I just looked at that machine for a while, because of the color red.”

Hood’s experience of a restricted color palette was not just harsh. It was dehumanizing. Access to color is living unchained. This is a life full of light. It is a prism set free.

Color is civilization. The human interaction with color goes back 1.3 to 1.8 million years ago, when the earliest human beings began to use fire and tools.



In 1947, LIFE magazine’s Ralph Morse became the first to photograph the paleolithic art throughout the network of caves known as Lascaux in southwestern France. These paintings that portray primarily large animals—horses, cattle, bison, among others—are estimated to be 17,300 years old. From the February 24, 1947, issue:

“[Cro-magnon human] ground colored Earth for rich reds and yellows, used charred bone or soot black for dark shading and made green from manganese oxide…”

Echoing our ancestors, Baylor and his art remind us to live and give the most colorful life imaginable.

• • •

“Color is primarily Quality. Secondly, it is also Weight, for it has not only color value but also brilliance. Thirdly, it is Measure, for besides Quality and Weight, it has its limits, its area, and its extent, all of which may be measured.”
—Paul Klee (1879–1940), Painter

• • •

Big thanks: to The Box MKE (who also hosted), MKE Production Rental, Holey Moley Coffee + Doughnuts, Wellspring for sponsoring Milwaukee CreativeMornings #1; to organizer Paul Oeming and to the Milwaukee CreativeMornings crew for their volunteer work in making CreativeMornings happen in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008.

• • •

Read more CreativeMornings coverage.

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Please consider supporting Design Feast
If you liked this lovingly-made interview, show your appreciation by helping to support my labor of love—Design Feast, which proudly includes this blog. Learn more.

Becoming a Working Artist: Ryan Duggan at 56th monthly CreativeMornings in Chicago

At the 56th monthly CreativeMornings gathering in Chicago last August, artist and printer Ryan Duggan started his talk with the inspiration that led him to his life’s work. Not a surprise that the roots of what he does for a living are traced back to home, especially his father:

“Art was always a pretty big thing in our family. My dad always drew. It was something that both my sister and I took to early on. We really liked drawing.”

Identifying the source of one’s lifelong passions is the gift of reverie. It provides the fundamental baseline driving one’s desire, and ultimately one’s purpose. In Duggan’ case, he committed himself to take advantage of some of the world’s best natural resources: ink, color, shapes, alphabets and words. Turning them into posters for bands and skateboards, even making a series of prints starring shitting dogs amidst postcard scenes.

That Duggan’s prolific body of work reflected his interests was apparent. His keenness on screen-printing and the enduring form factor of posters reminded me of a past CreativeMornings speaker, Jay Ryan, who spoke at the fifth monthly gathering of the Chicago chapter back in 2011. They’re artistic brothers from different mothers—sharing advocacy of rock bands, storytelling and typography. All made tactile through the shared technique of printmaking, involving drawing, stencils and rubylith.

Like his contemporaries, Duggan keeps fulfilling his purpose—in remaining an artist.

• • •

Stemming from Duggan’s sharing of childhood experiences that ultimately cemented his life’s direction, I have a fetish for discovering creative people, who recall definitively the start of their creative leanings. The following are a few examples where family happened to play a significant role, whether they knew or not, in instigating their children’s future:

“Both my parents are artists—my mum is a painter, my dad an illustrator. My grandparents were artists and illustrators too—I’m the third generation. So drawing and art was always a huge part of my life. I drew from the moment I could hold a pencil and made little clay sculptures and paper dollhouses and all sorts of things. I think I was always quite serious about it. When I was a bit older, five or six, I began making tiny illustrated books—most of them are on the topic of cats, girls and death. So I guess my kind of illustration was always on the cards.”
—Kaye Blegvad, Designer, Illustrator 

“I grew up watching my father do various little woodworking projects and I always wanted to design something for him to build. I grew up eating at a pine dining table he built in high school, it was in my grandparents’ house for a long time, then my parents’, and now we have it in ours.”
—Katie Thompson, Woodworker 

“I used to spend a lot of time in my father’s studio. It was a magical place. It was on the top floor of our house and it was a great place to lie down on the floor with a big sheet of tracing paper, some pencils or magic markers, and draw away. And he would draw his books, and I would draw cars and airplanes and soldiers or whatever else a little boy likes to draw.”
—Richard Scarry, Jr., Artist, Illustrator

For more actual stories by people discovering their labor of love, check out my book “Become: On the Origin of Passion.”

• • •

Big thanks: to Braintree, Green Sheep Water, Lyft, TEKsystems (Host), for being Partners of Chicago CreativeMornings #56; to organizers Kim Knoll and Kyle Eertmoed who both spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #7; to the team of volunteers for greatly helping to have CreativeMornings happen monthly in Chicago.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008. The fifth chapter was launched in Chicago, June 2011—my write-ups and photos.

Read more about the people who make the Chicago chapter of CreativeMornings possible.

• • •

My coverage: read more write-ups about CreativeMornings; view photos of CreativeMornings/Chicago gatherings.

• • •

2011 was Chicago CreativeMornings’ debut year. Download the entire collection of selected insights.

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Art for the public consciousness: Luftwerk at 55th monthly CreativeMornings in Chicago

Last July, the Chicago chapter of the CreativeMornings community held their 55th monthly gathering with speakers Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, the couple behind art-installation studio Luftwerk. Regarding public art, they recommend: “Let it live. Let it go wild.”

When art is installed—even integrated—into public areas, it begs to be noticed. While traveling through Chicago and elsewhere, I recalled a few examples of artistry, in the open, that happened to catch my attention.

This tree, in a Chicago South Loop neighborhood, wrapped in yarn.



This parking lot, in Downtown, illustrated with a mural.



This tree stump, at Starved Rock State Park, carved into a sculpture.



Each demonstrated a physical transformation of both the object and its surroundings. Visitors are likely to take a pause to feel a bit of wonder. Encountering each interpretation of art, situated in the public, reawakened a sense of delight. I smiled with my eyes.

I’d like to think this is the fundamental purpose of public art. That no matter how arid a person is in the inside, seeing something imaginative and unexpected helps facilitate a positive impression, a taste of the extraordinary, even if the resulting experience is short-lived. The artistic pulse beats on, especially in common spaces—the public wild.

• • •

Big thanks: to Braintree, The Nerdery (Host), Hannah’s Bretzel, Green Sheep Water, Lyft, for being Partners of Chicago CreativeMornings #55; to organizers Kim Knoll and Kyle Eertmoed who both spoke at Chicago CreativeMornings #7; to the team of volunteers for greatly helping to have CreativeMornings happen monthly in Chicago.

Especially big thanks: to Tina Roth Eisenberg—Swissmiss—for inventing CreativeMornings in 2008. The fifth chapter was launched in Chicago, June 2011—my write-ups and photos.

Read more about the people who make the Chicago chapter of CreativeMornings possible.

• • •

My coverage: read more write-ups about CreativeMornings; view photos of CreativeMornings/Chicago gatherings.

• • •

2011 was Chicago CreativeMornings’ debut year. Download the entire collection of selected insights.

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Pay it forward by supporting Design Feast
If you liked this lovingly-made write-up in my series of reports on design-related Events, show your appreciation by supporting my labor of love—Design Feast, which proudly includes this blog. Learn how you can help.