An introduction from the host and award-winning Creative Director, Stephen Gates on his background, which inspired him to create this podcast and previews some of the topics that will be covered in the show.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/welcome-to-the-crazy/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
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An introduction from the host and award-winning Creative Director, Stephen Gates on his background, which inspired him to create this podcast and previews some of the topics that will be covered in the show.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/welcome-to-the-crazy/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
Welcome to the first episode of The Crazy One podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is going to be a bit of a new adventure for me. For the past 13 years, I've been writing down some thoughts, some ideas, some experiences that I've had, and sharing them with people through my blog. And I think this has been great. The only problem is, I'm not a writer, I'm a designer, I'm somebody who loves to speak and to teach and so constantly getting emails about my bad grammar, about my typos and not being able to put out nearly as many articles as I really wish I could. So we're gonna try something different. And we're gonna try this podcast and we're gonna see how this goes. And I think that it for me is something that I've spent a long time thinking about, why does the world need another podcast? Why is this something that I should do? Why is anybody gonna care about any of this? And I think a lot of it goes back to me to the very name of the show. It's hard to whenever you want to sit around and think about what do you call something like this? And so, you know, the name for me comes from Apple's famous advertising campaign think different with the the famous line that starts with Here's to the crazy ones. And so some people will attribute that to Steve Jobs, some to tie it day who did the ads, some to a jack Kerouac poem that bears a striking resemblance to all of that. But none of that has to do with this podcast. what it has to do with is it comes from the struggles that I've had in my career, the things that I've had to overcome, to really embrace my process, my creativity, my unique way of doing things. It's something that I've come to term embracing my crazy. It took me a lot longer than I wish it would have to really be able to do it and it was something that was much harder than it should have been. And I think out of that, I did something a little bit crazy. I had the words Here's to the crazy ones. tattooed on my right arm because it was something that I never wanted to forget, I never wanted to forget why I was different. I never wanted to forget what kind of made me special. And so having that tattoo there, you know what, some days it's an affirmation some days. It's a reminder that I'm doing the right thing by acting that way. But it's one of the things to where it also is something that's led me to do things like this, to speak, to teach. And to make a career out of the fact that so many people, whether it's at ad agencies, that companies in every profession, every company, big or small, as I travel around the world have seen our people that are just let down by the people who lead them by the people that run their companies. They can't see what real leadership is. They don't understand how to create real innovation. They don't understand how to do it with the team that they do today. They flounder and flail around, trying to find something that's unique. And genuinely to try to help people out. And so I think, you know, this, for me has been a 25 year Odyssey trying to figure some of this stuff out. And so I don't want to keep it to myself, I want to share some of my experiences some of my challenges some of the successes I've had. I lead teams all over the world, I've built new teams, I've fixed broken ones. I've somebody who has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world and worked with little mom and pop companies and found that the things that I want to talk about hold true for all of them. And that, you know, I've really been lucky in learning a lot of those things. And so some of the things that I want to cover here are just some kind of basic topics to start with. And then we're going to go from there. Some of them are around things like leadership, both for you as a person but for you as somebody who is looked to by other people to be able to lead a team to talk about creativity, which I think is often mistaken and people are deluded into thinking that it's a practice that involves like a light bulb and the spark of inspiration and Nothing could be further from the truth, to share some of the things that I've learned across my career things that I've done, right things that I've done wrong across all sorts of organizations and a lot of different sizes. And I am somebody that day to day, I'm a designer, I'm a creative director. And so they're going to be some of the things that we're going to talk about that a look at some of the trends that are going on with with design and with technology. But the one thing I would really encourage anybody who's listening to this intro to do is to don't tune me out just yet, if you're not a creative if you're not a designer, if you're not somebody that would classify yourself that way, because I think that some of the people who've had some of the biggest breakthroughs, whenever I've taught them whenever I've spoken to them have been the ones that come from other professions, because I think that is a really essential way. If you're a designer or if you're an accountant, the challenges that you have around being better at your job around leading people around trying to be more creative or more innovative or whatever it is, these are shared things. So you know, I really want Want and hope that this finds an audience that that is bigger than than just kind of the creative core community. But also know that I mean, for me, Look, I speak all over the world about this stuff. I've seen a lot of other people talk about things very similar. So I know that there's nothing here that's going to be terribly kind of unique on the surface to people. But I think one of the big things for me is that what I'm talking about, these aren't just theories, these are things that I've really done I've worked with for multiple years, companies like Apple and Adobe and Google and IBM and and a host of others that have turned to me that have looked to me that have asked me to come to teach some of these things there to work alongside them with some of the things that they're doing. And all of that goes back to, as with most people, it goes back to my parents. I'm somebody who was truly born to be a designer. I know a lot of people say that as a joke, but for me, it's really true. And so I was born into parents. When my father was a creative director, and my mother made soft sculpture toys for kids like puppets and clowns and things like that, that were all handmade, so while other kids, you know, maybe grew up in homes where you know, the most creative they were were going out and playing with their GI Joes or something like that, I grew up writing my own storybooks on a 700 pound letterpress that was in my parents basement, which basically meant I was a hipster. By the time I was in kindergarten because I had been self publishing my own books whenever I showed up to class the first day and was very confused why other kids were buying theirs. So I think I've been a design snob from the very beginning. But it means that I've been working as a designer, honestly, since I was probably 12 or 13 years old, which gives me over 25 years of experience as a designer. I've been leading teams of really high quality world class teams for the past 15 years. One of the things that I'm the most proud of is that I have been really lucky over that time to be able to work with companies like Apple who has included my work in nine different keynotes for different TV commercials, you can find what I've designed in the human interface guidelines and Apple stores, iTunes stores. You name it with them. I've been lucky enough to have done it over that time. And so I think it comes from, like I said, real experience. This isn't something that's just theoretical for me that I've spent equal amounts of my time working in ad agencies as I have insight of some of the world's biggest fortune 500 brands. The last two brands that I've worked at the last two jobs that I've had, I spent nine years helping to build the global brand design team four star hotels and resorts building brands, like Westin Sheraton, W St. Regis, and doing a lot of really innovative work there. And I think that coming out of that, went and made a decision that really probably confused all of my friends and went and became the head of design for Citibank. And I think if you really want to talk about being able to put concepts around leadership around creativity around design Go become the first head of design at a 200 year old Corporation in a regulated industry and see how you do and so that's the the what I'm in the midst of right now. But that's really it. I just wanted to be able to kind of give a quick introduction to be able to kind of just say hello and to let everybody know what this is gonna be and then kind of just go from there. And so you know, this is one of those things where if you're interested if you're just starting to listen to this for the first time, you can head over to podcast dot Stephen Gates calm Ph. n. In Stephen Gates like Bill Gates, no, I'm no relation. And yes, I've heard every joke in the book, so no need to email me any of those. Everything I'm talking about here is these views are my own right. These are representative of my current employers, enemy line, past employers, anything like that. But also look, I want this to be a dialogue. Right now. I'm sitting in my studio talking away at my computer screen, but I want to hear from you guys. I want to hear if there's something that you want me to talk about if there's a question that you really have. I will To find out about it because I really want to be able to make sure that what I'm talking about is resonating with people and that it's helping. So if you have one of those questions, shoot it over to ask at Stephen Gates, calm again ph n.com. And I'll cover it in a future show. So until next time, as always, thanks for listening and stay crazy.