- Talk to us!
- 306.535.9697
- info@strategylab.ca
- Visit us at Path Cowork
- 200 – 1965 Broad St, Regina, SK
Tag Archive for: Can you learn to be creative?
Just Try It: Cheat Codes on How to Differentiate
(From the night of!)
It’s hard to give a presentation on being different. So instead of talking about it I wanted to show people that creating and being different is something anyone can do.
We made a painting, a song, and a video!
Check it out!
The Most Infamous Street Artist of All Time
He stands up for what he believes in. Love him or hate hime, Banksy makes you think different.
One of the most prolific artists of our time and the most famous street artists in the world. Banksy’s style of anti-authority and entertaining political commentary within his art, makes him loved by many and hated by some. One thing is for sure, you can’t ignore street art. It makes your city look better and it creates inspiration out of a blank space. The more artists the better.
“This was not my dream.”
“Let them eat crack” beside the infamous Banksy Rat. A spin on the ol’ “let them eat cake!”.
A caveman delivering a fast-food meal.
The crying kid might be my favourite, I think it sums up our society quite well.
“Kissing Coppers”
Einstein with a bottle of Jameson is the funnier part of this Banksy piece. To top it off he adds “Just Google it!”, another comment on society’s addiction to simple solutions and no longer worries about the bigger problems in our world.
Many people recognize the original sayings he’s using, then he makes it “Banksy” by adding “cancelled” by the desperately looking painter.
Stop Wars.
The stop and search painted in Palestine.
In Palestine….
Enjoy your lie.
Making sure he’s go to go for school. A constant reminder that unconditional love is unconditional love.
“No Ball Games!”
Robot Graffiti.
“Graffiti is a crime”
What we do in life echoes in eternity.
“If graffiti changed anything-it would be illegal.”
Pretty relevant in our world today. We’re so quick to call the boss, manager, Mom, teacher or whoever, and call in a preverbal Airstrike.
No parking.
“One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.” -Diogenes
Learning Friday(s) 2017
We want to be one of the most caring, smartest, driven companies in the world. How can we do that? By working on the team!
Every Friday after lunch our team gets together and learns something about work at @StratLab. We invite clients to learn with us and so far it’s been awesome!
Week one was “All About Dat Measurement”
This coming week (January 27th) is “Learning About Your CreativEddy” -with your favourite @edwardoalvaro.
- Learn how he uses Photoshop and Illustrator
- Learn what goes though his mind when he posts on Instagram
- Learn how to put simple text over a photo as well as make simple edits
- Delve into the awesome world of Edwardo Alvaro
February 3rd – 5 Minutes Question Roundtable, no question is off limits.
February 10th – Eddy (Illustrator) Alvaro is leading down another creative rabbit hole.
- Reviewing Photoshop quick keys (lets make a checklist!)
- Troubleshooting in photoshop
- Creating freaking amazing Instagram moments
February 17th – Creating your own business cards/team building
- You business cards should reflect you, your personality, your beliefs. Let’s create some!
- Similar to the Hugh cards, we make personalized business cards by illustrating and putting quotes on the back
- What’s on the front you ask? Well lets decide as a team!
February 24th – Brooke on how to create a following on Instagram
- How do you make pictures look GOOD?
- What frequency do you post at? Time of day? Day of the week? Are those annoying questions?
- How do you gain a following?
March 3rd – Andy on how to make you a better videographer with 5 tips
- How can you take a simple video, add music, a title and post, AND still make look good? ………..You can’t.
- How do you prioritize what to do when creating a major video? (Walter Scott as an example)
- What have you changed your mind on in regards to video in the last three months? What trends are happening currently?
March 10th – Conrad on how to be a better, faster, smarter writer
February 24th – Brandon on how he designs a website and where websites are going in 2019
The Next Time Someone Doesn’t Like Your Original Idea Remember….
They just don’t get it yet.
John Cleese’s advice is so perfect for creatives, “if you do something a bit original nobody gets it at the start”. You can’t be discouraged when someone doesn’t like your new idea. They just don’t get it yet.
I used to have the wallpaper on my computer of a Seth Godin quote: “All the creativity books in the world aren’t going to help you if you’re unwilling to have lousy, lame and even dangerously bad ideas.”.
No one understands an original idea in it’s first form, that’s why you shouldn’t get discouraged when people don’t like your ideas. The trick is to keep coming up with ideas, that way, when someone doesn’t like one of your ideas that’s just fine, tomorrow you’ll come up with another and the day after that another. As long as you keep creating, keep trying, and keep pushing yourself to get to that “one” person to say, “I get it”, you’ll be just fine. It’s that endless pursuit that makes it fun isn’t it?
Unleashing Your Creative Genius: Touch The Snake
In a brilliant Ted Talk, David Kelly (founder of IDEO, an innovation firm on steroids) shows us how everyone can be a creative genius, it just takes a lot of mini steps.
The analogy he gives is a story from Dr. Albert Bandura (the greatest living psychologist in the world, also born in Mundare Alberta, fact) who is world renown for curing phobias in a radically short period of time, sometimes in 4 hours or less. His secret? He does it in many small steps,working up to the finale, the crux, the thing they’ve always been afraid of.
He’ll bring a patient into his office and tell them there’s a snake in the room next door. The patient obviously thinks it’s ludicrous that they’ll ever go into the snake filled room. He opens a one way mirror to let them see the snake, calms them down. Then opens the door and calms them down. Then into the room, then calms them down. Recognize the pattern?
It’s a series of many steps, over time, they contribute to a major outcome. It’s really how we humans get anything done.
With this process in mind, David encourages everyone that they can be creative and they can come up with novel, unique solutions to problems they never thought were possible before. In small steps, over time, you can be come a genius.
Video Is The Future And These Regina Kids Are Beating You At It
An article by FastCompany, already a year old, claims that short-form video is the future of marketing. Well, the future is now and it’s plain to see that FC was dead on.
YouTube is the internet’s second most popular search engine (behind Google), Vine is this year’s fastest growing app, and Instagram followed suit with the addition of video mere weeks after Vine’s explosion.
The Fast Company article cites 5 main reasons for video becoming the dominant medium:
1. More and more users are consuming video entertainment online.
2. Marketers are using video to engage social media audiences.
3. Barriers to entry are low.
4. Quality is rapidly improving.
5. There are plenty of avenues for videos to spread.
Wondering what this means for you and how you should go about doing video? Start off by seeing how effective a simple and bare bones video can be by checking out Gary Vaynerchuk’s YouTube Channel.
Then, take a look at some local talent who have been absolutely crushing it with dynamic video content:
1. Chris Dimas – Drummer – 16 Years Old
2. Alex McIntosh and Matt Stefan – Students – 20 Years Old
What makes these videos so successful? Here’s what I think:
Both of the above videos reside at the intersection of the creators’ strengths and what is relevant. In Chris’s case, his strength is his high energy and skillful drumming and the relevance is that he uses popular music in his videos. For Matt and Alex, their strengths are sense of humour and comedic timing and the relevance of their video lies in the fact that levelling was partially a spoof on the planking craze and exemplified what most people are looking for on YouTube: a good laugh. This concept is illustrated below:
For your business, this “sweet spot” framework should really simplify things, as it did for Stella and Sway in this video we filmed for them:
Stella And Sway – Summer Weddings from Strategy Lab on Vimeo.
If you have any video questions please comment below! And if you’re looking for some help with your first/next video, email us at info@strategylab.ca
How To Actually Teach Entrepreneurship
I’ve taken several entrepreneurship classes in my day, in Highschool and in University. Nothing compares to what Mr. McFarlen is doing at Regina’s Campbell Collegiate. Read more