Kupambana Issue 1

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Issue 1

DECEMBER 2012

Creative Inspiration for Communicators

CREATIVITY THE NEW BLACK is

WHY TOP EXECUTIVES ARE TUNING THEIR CREATIVE SKILLS – AND WHY YOU SHOULD TOO

?

SECRETS OF A BRAND NAMER HOW ONE PHOTO CHANGED TWO LIVES THE FILM FESTIVAL YOU CAN STAR IN FOUR YOUNG ARTISTS WITH A MISSION

1

2

THE POWER OF THE IMAGE

THE FILM FESTIVAL YOU CAN STAR IN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A photo taken during a terrifying night changed the lives of both the photographer and the subject

3-18

A $20 camera was the inspiration behind the Disposable Film Festival

3

CREATIVITY IS THE NEW BLACK Books on it are best-sellers, business schools are investing in it: creativity is in high demand as an executive skill

20-26

4

5

GOODBYE CUBICLE, HELLO HUDDLE

THE NAME CHANGER

Today’s offices are made to inspire and nurture creativity

27-40

A naming expert shares how brands get their names - and the creative processes behind successful branding

41-48

6

7

BARCELONA

CHANGING THE WORLD:

Exploring the creative highlights of Barcelona, Spain

One Art Project at a Time Meet four gifted art students with a mission

49-60

19

61-78

8

9

WANT A STANDING OVATION? TIME FOR INNOVATION?

THE KUPAMBANA FOUNDATION

How to deliver a killer presentation with your iPad

79-83

An overview from Chris Lewis

84

“TO FIGHT FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN” So help me with something.

Where are you and what are you doing when you get your best ideas? You know. The ones so compelling and so inspirational you just have to do them.

Go on. Have a think. I’ll wait.

So you said somewhere like the shower, running, about to nod off, walking the dog?

Chances are, it happens not in your office but during a routine when you’re on your own.

Welcome to the first edition of Kupambana magazine. Inspired by the Foundation of the same name its goal is to arm professional communicators with creative inspiration. But we’re not talking fish. We’re talking fishing rods.

Kupambana magazine will help you understand the creative process – where it comes from, how you can boost it in yourself and others.

They need to be fluent in visual arts, design and multimedia in order to convey their message in compelling ways.

Kupambana Magazine exposes readers to exciting ideas and emerging techniques across a range of art forms. It explores the trends in media and communications that are driving a need for greater creativity. And it reveals how successful brands kindle their creative spark.

In this first issue, we explore the growing impact of creative arts on our society. Our cover story on The Creative Leader examines creativity as a core executive skill, taking us inside top business schools where creativity is taught alongside corporate finance and organizational theory. In The Power of the Image, we step into another creative field, photography, and witness how a single photo can change two women’s lives.

So, open your mind, engage your right brain and help us explore the creative edge of the communications industry.

Effective communication is about much more than just clarity and consistency. When the volume and frequency of communication is increasing so quickly communicatators have to compete for attention. If you want the message understood you have to entertain and engage as well Chris Lewis as inform. Communicators need to be inventive Founder, Kupambana Foundation to cut through the noise.

CEO, LEWIS PR

LETTER FROM THE FOUNDER

Swahili for

PHOTOGRAPHY

ech

e

By Keith B

T

he summer of 2011 saw some of the most violent scenes seen on the streets of Britain in decades.

London was worst affected by the riots, but disturbances spread and for one photojournalist the biggest story of her life landed on her doorstep, on a night that would change her life forever.

34-year old Amy Weston was on a day off in her home town of Croydon, just south of London. On returning from a run she switched on the TV news and was shocked to see images of her own streets in a state of chaos.

Instinctively she picked up her camera and headed out to the focus of the riots. Moments later she had captured one of the most iconic images of that time, an image that would travel the world.

“I heard the screams, held up the camera and took three frames. One when she was climbing out of the window, another when she was in mid-air and a final shot when she landed.�

This photograph of Monika Konczyk jumping to safety from a flaming building is the image by which many people best remember those riotous times.

Amy Watson

Amy Weston describes the now iconic photograph tha

“The place was in chaos, it There was noise all around second when I took the pic the click of the shutter.”

The image was sent to the photographic agency WEN was an image that Amy ad

“I didn’t sleep for 72 hours photograph. Within hours I television channels around photograph made the front newspapers and magazine

It was almost exactly a yea meet the subject of the pho and her agency tens of tho Konczyk is the woman in th Polish and had only moved before the riots occured. U famous in a matter of seco lens of her camera, Monika featured in a line or two of It was the image - a mome transported her into a glob that she resented the fame she found it to be an intrus she was making for hersel met for the first time on Jul explains that to this day Mo

e moment that she took the at has made her famous:

t was like Armageddon. d me but for that split cture all I could hear was

e New York office of the NN, which Amy works for. It dmits changed her life:

after I took that I was being interviewed by d the world and the t page of hundreds of es.”

ar before Amy finally got to otograph which earned her ousands of pounds. Monika he photograph. Monika is d to London a few months Unwittingly she became onds. Without Amy and the a may have perhaps copy in the local press. ent captured forever - that bal news story. She admits e that was forced upon her, sion into the new life that lf in the UK. The two women ly 3rd 2012 and Amy onika feels detached:

Monika Konczyk

“Monika was thinking of one thing and one thing only when that photograph was taken, and that was doing everything that she could to stay alive.

When she looks at the photograph now she feels like she is looking at some body else, she feels little connection to it.”

“But the resentment has eased. When we met it was two people looking at an image that captured a moment that changed both of their lives. It was an image that told a story, an image that was more powerful than a thousand words.”

We live in a visual world and most often it is a picture that stays in our mind rather than a piece of news copy, however well written. Marketing professionals already know that it is most often a photograph or a video clip that captures the interest and hooks people in.

We now all have the ability to create images, share them with our friends and colleagues and these days we are more and more likely to be captured on camera whilst we go about our daily lives.

Pictures are often the landmarks of our lives - after all it is said that a picture is worth a thousand words.

The impact of a compelling image is felt as strongly with the media industry as it is within the general population. Recent research by RealWire showed that a press release that included a video element within it is three times more likely to be published than one that is purely text based.

It is perhaps unsurprising then to find that, in social media, it is the image that is also the engine for online conversations. Dan Zarrella of HubSpot, found during his research into Facebook, that photographs yielded greater likes, comments, and shares than text, video or a link.

Iconic News Photos

The destruction of the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, was the most watched and photographed event in human history. While millions of people around the world viewed the developing situation unfolding on television, tens of thousands of New Yorkers took their cameras to rooftops, open windows, and the streets to document the disaster and its aftermath in images.

At the 2012 Olympic Games in London images of the world class sport led directly to increases in newspaper sales.

In the UK more than 100,000 additional copies of The Times newspaper were sold on the day after the opening ceremony, and its sister paper the Sunday Times put on 70,000 extra sales after each of the two Olympic Saturdays.

Among the most photographed people in the world was Princess Diana, who was followed by photographers and camera crews for much of her life. Her wedding to Prince Charles was one of the most watched television events of a generation and this was all before access to mobile phone cameras became commonplace.

The Disposable Film Festival HOW A TWENTY DOLLAR CAMERA SPARKED AN INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTION

Carlton Evans, co-founder of The

“The key is being innovative and

Disposable Film Festival, tells Kupambana

experimental in how you tell your story.

what led him to create this annual event. He

There are seven billion people on the

shares his views on what makes a great film,

planet, let’s see seven billion stories and let’s

how video sharing platforms such as Vimeo

see them all be told differently and with the

have impacted the filmmaking industry, and

specificity of that particular person.”

why good storytelling is such an

- Carlton Evans

Q&A

essential skill.

Founded in 2007, the Disposable Film Festival is an annual event that celebrates the democratization of cinema made possible by low-cost video devices including mobile phones, pocket cameras, and other devices.

Creativity

is the New

Black

Books on it are best sellers, business schools are investing in it, rightbrained executives are celebrities: creativity has gone from fringe to main event and there is no looking back.

By Lee Gomes

After all, the syllabus for the class promises week after week of guest lectures from a parade of artists, poets, musicians, architects, curators and other “right brain” types.

Indeed, the very name of the class -- “Creativity” -- would seem to tell you just about everything you’d need to know about its subject matter.

FEATURE

Someone chancing upon the University of Pennsylvania graduate level class listed as “MKTG292001” in the school catalog would be forgiven for thinking they had wandered into some typical ivory tower haven for the humanities or liberal arts.

But if you expected to find some future poets sipping espressos around a seminar table, you’d be in for a surprise. “Creativity” is offered at the Wharton School of Business, one of the nation’s most prestigious centers for executive education, definitely better known for MBAs than MFAs. The fact that Wharton students are spending a semester learning to be creative is but one indication of a profound shift now underway in how executive skills are valued and measured.

Not long ago, “creativity” was something needed only in a few isolated silos of the business world. There might be, for example, some sort of “creative services” department, otherwise known as the marketing folks, where longhairs were free to march to a different drummer. Ditto for the design departments of companies working in a small number of consumerfacing industries: Movies, fashion and the like.

Everyone else was supposed to come in every morning, fire up their spreadsheets, and spend their days analyzing, dissecting, formulating and categorizing. There is no Excel function for creativity, a fact that didn’t seem to bother anyone.

But that’s all changed in the last few years. Modern managers are expected to know as much about emotional intelligence as they are internal rates of return.

“Creativity, you might sa And business historians and analysts say there are two reasons for the big change.

ay, is the new black.�

1 2

The first involves the phenomenal, high-profile success that Steve Jobs had in turning around Apple Computer between the mid-1990s and his death last year. Jobs was notorious for instilling his creative perfectionism in every part of Apple’s operations. The end result?

Apple became the most valuable company on the planet, as measured by stock price. Jobs proved there was money, lots of it, to be made by thinking differently.

But experts cite another, much less obvious reason for the business world’s new emphasis on creativity: The global financial meltdown of 2008, which rewrote the books on how business was supposed to be done, coupled with megatrends such as globalization. Business strategies that had worked for years, if not decades, suddenly stopped working. Managers needed to improvise -- in other words, be creative -- or perish.

“

“After the 2008 crisis, you couldn’t simply come in every morning and salute the flag,” says Josh Linkner, an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan’s business school and author of “Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity.” “The new realities of global business

hit everyone in the face like a

two-by-four. People needed to adapt and be fluid.”

People needed to adapt and be fluid.

”

The result? Business schools still

teach classic skills like financial

analysis, and companies certainly

still expect their top executives to be well-versed in them. But they are also looking to make sure that upward-bound executives have a touch of the creative in their skill set.

Evidence for this trend is everywhere. Business schools are following Wharton’s example and increasingly introducing creativity as a serious topic of study. Business books with “creativity” in their title are becoming best-sellers. It’s affecting even the biggest and most button-down companies: Linkner described one study commissioned last year by IBM, that asked what single leadership trait companies considered the most important. Creativity led the list, with more than 60% of those surveyed putting it in the top spot. ciplined Dream-ing: A Proven System to And this new interest in creativity isn’t limited to just Fortune 500 behemoths. Nancy Pfund, whose San Francisco venture capital company Double Bottom Line Investors was a key backer of such recent high-profile start-ups as Pandora Media Inc. and Tesla Motors, says choosing creative players is crucial in getting a new company off the ground. list, w “In the early days of a company, everything is a David and Goliath fight, and you’ve got to be very creative to deal with all the challenges, she says. “Later on, you’ll have the time you need to hire people to deal with issues like getting the supply chain right. But you’ll never get that far without being creative right at the outset.”

Business schools are scrambling to rework their curricula to keep up with these changing expectations about creativity.

Few people know more about this that Yoram “Jerry” Wind, the Wharton professor who designed his institution’s second-year class on business creativity, the one that brings in musicians and artists every week to interact with business students.

“The world has been changing,” said Wind, who is also director of Wharton’s prestigious SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management. “But business schools haven’t always kept up.

They think about being creative or being analytical as either-or propositions. Unfortunately, they’ve tended to put too much emphasis on the analytical side. We’re trying to change that.”

While creativity is often associated with the solitary genius, Wind -- author of “The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business” -- says his research suggests that many more people are capable of creative thinking than is commonly believed. But a big obstacle, he said, are corporate cultures: “You need to give people permission to experiment, which means occasionmeans occasionally failing,” ally failing,” Wind Wind said. “Great compsaid. “Great companies like Facebook are anies like Faceexperimenting all book are experithe time. So...” menting all the time. So if As creativity becomes more people fail they important in business, more is fail fast, then being learned about how the move on.” creative process does -- and

“

... if people fail, they fail fast, then move on.

”

As creativity becomes more important in business, more is being learned about how the creative process does -- and doesn’t -- work.

One myth: That creativity comes in a single Archimedes-like “aha” moment of blazing solo enlightenment. That may make for a good story, but it isn’t the way the real world works, says New York Times business columnist Randall Stross.

For his just-published book, “The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Most Exclusive School for Startups,” Stross spent several months following 64 small teams of entrepreneurs trying to transform simple entrepreneurial insights operations into real businesses.

One of his most striking findings, Stross said, involved the highly-interactive, down right social nature of creative thinking. “What you learn about creativity from studying start-ups is that it’s almost never a case of someone coming down from the mountain top with some golden tablets,” he said.

“Instead, co-founders are always bouncing ideas off each other, off their investors, off their potential customers, and just about anyone else they can find,” said Stross. “The great ‘new ideas’ that we always hear about have always been knocked back and forth beforehand among a big crowd of people. It turns out that creativity is a very iterative, very social process.”

Another myth about creativity: You only find it in “cool,” designoriented companies like Apple. Instead, creativity pops up in places where it’s least expected.

One of Linkner’s favorite examples of a creatively-minded company is Quicken Loans. It’s in one of the most prosaic industries imaginable: Refinancing home mortgage loans via the Internet.

But executives at the company rethought everything about the online mortgage refinancing process, replacing a taxing and tedious process with a crisp, friendly redesign. (Think of it as doing to Web loans what Zappos did to buying shoes, Linkner suggests.) “They couldn’t really change the product, so they’ve applied creativity everywhere else in the company,” he said.

The result: Rapid growth, expanding market share and increased headcount.

Business school professors such as Linkner and Wind take it as an article of faith that creativity can be taught. “It’s a huge myth that only one in a thousand people is creative,” said Wind.

“Some people may have more of it than others, but it’s an under-developed skill in almost everyone.”

But can you develop creativity without going back to business school? Authors of books on the subject certainly think so. But so do a new breed of entrepreneurs, like Walter R. Roth, whose startup, Inward.Me, is developing creativity-fostering tools that run on mobile phones like the iPhone and Android.

“Right now, we have too many ‘productivity’ tools,” says Roth.

“What we need instead are tools that will help us ignore the noise and see things clearly. Once you do that, then you can start being creative.”

And, in the process, start being ready for the business world of tomorrow.

Lee Gomes, who worked for 12 years as a reporter and columnist at the Wall Street Journal, lives in San Francisco.

SPATIAL DESIGN

ServiceSource Headquarters, Huntsman Architecture

GOODBYE CUBICLE, HELLO HUDDLE So–called ‘Creative Workspaces’ are popping up everywhere, from high rises to suburban campuses.

Kupambana talks to principal designers David Link and Melody Schumacher, of renowned architectural consultancy, Huntsman, about the latest trends in office design – and what really gets those creative juices flowing.

How can office design inspire or foster creativity?

Ideation happens in environments where users can break away from the routine. From a basic planning standpoint, this means creating areas outside of dedicated workspaces for both group collaboration and individual focus. The workplace also needs to allow groups to disperse and reconnect, so flexibility is very important.

ServiceSource Headquarters, Huntsman Architecture

LEWIS PR San Francisco office, Huntsman Architecture

In group settings, presentation techno solutions to a challenge. But even low board coatings that go over painted su

How can office design inspire or foster creativity?

ology is key as team members need to share and discuss potential w-tech options can work well. For example, new, low-VOC markerurfaces allow any wall to become a place to share ideas.

TRX Headquarters, Huntsman Architecture

How are corporate attitudes toward office design changing?

The footprint for individual space has been shrinking, due in part to the cost of real estate, the advent of mobile technology, and newer attitudes toward team work. Rather than enabling staff to personalize their individual space, companies are allowing people to contribute to a collective signature in the common space.

How are corporate attitudes toward design changing?

This can include media dashboards in lobbies or lounges highlighting staff social media posts, or it can be demonstrated through wall art and graphics that may not relate to the business but to the people who work there.

Casual areas like lounges, cafes, reception, and break rooms no longer look like they belong in an office environment.

Instead they reflect the design trends users gravitate toward while they are outside of the office. For example, we recently designed a cafeteria

TRX Headquarters, Huntsman Architecture

ServiceSource Headquarters, Huntsman Architecture

that takes its design cues from the popular food trucks that line up in urban financial districts. More intimate break areas for one or two people resemble that tucked-away spot a person might seek out at his or her favorite coffee bar.

The bar-height counter has become a permanent fixture in corporate office kitchens, and walls surrounding them have opened to make coffee bars more a place to stay in and socialize rather than one to simply pass through.

LEWIS PR San Francisco office, Huntsman Architecture

What are some of the most unusual features you’ve seen incorporated into commercial office spaces?

LEWIS PR San Francisco office, Huntsman Architecture

There definitely have been follies thrown into office spaces in the recent tech boom; slides, swings, fire poles, the red British telephone booth - they all have made their mark as unusual elements, but these iconic features are becoming somewhat of a clichĂŠ.

The focus now is to turn previously utilitarian elements or spaces into special features that are really useful. For example a staircase may be strategically placed and designed to be a gathering spot. Or a lobby may eschew the traditional reception desk in favor of an informal meeting space.

What are some of the most unusual features you’ve seen incorporated into commercial office spaces?

The water cooler concept is expanding into many areas throughout the office, taking on forms like an indoor park, an Applestore inspired help desk, or meeting spaces patterned after nomadic yurts. With their aim to inspire, connect, or transport staff, these features question the framework of what an office can be. It’s an important concept for employers to understand that we are at a point where the workforce represents four generations, and their varying tastes and work styles all need to be addressed in office planning and design.

TRX Headquarters, Huntsman Architecture

INTERVIEW

Name THE

CHANGER Brand naming specialist, Anthony Shore, has built a career writing copy that’s ‘six words or fewer.’ He’s named everything from management consultancies to relaxation drinks. In this interview he tells Kupambana about his creative process, the secrets behind a great brand name – and how to avoid a naming disaster.

Kupambana: How did you get into brand naming?

Anthony Shore: One of my favorite books as a child was The American Heritage

Dictionary - and especially an index of Proto-Indo-European roots. I found it fascinating to see how a single word created 5,000 years ago could give rise to so many different words in different languages. It’s one reason I became a linguist.

I started my professional life as a typesetter, then moved into copywriting at an advertising agency. I got my first naming gig for a real estate developer in Monterey.

I worked in various other marketing roles but always maintained my love of words. Then in 1996, I found an ad for a Naming Specialist at Landor Communications, where I led the naming and writing practice for 13 years. I also worked at Lexicon Branding.

I started Operative Words in 2009. We focus on brand names, taglines, brand definitions and descriptors, as well as creative direction for brand identity and packaging.

K: What do you love about this work?

AS:

Everything. I love listening to clients talk about their brand, then discovering in all that information a hidden truth, a simple idea that brings it all together.

Then there’s the creative development process itself. It reminds me a bit of that book on Proto-Indo-European roots. It’s fascinating to take a single metaphor or concept and look at it from hundreds of perspectives in order to create a list of candidate names.

Part of my job is storytelling. I enjoy presenting potential names to clients and telling a story that connects that word to their business. When you present a set of names, they’re not just names, they are different possible futures for a business.

Then, when they select a name and implement it you get to see that word take on a life of its own – often in ways that are unexpected. It’s extremely satisfying.

Lytro, a name created by Operative Words, is a great example. Lytro is absolutely disruptive in the photography category. The Lytro camera captures the complete light field which means pictures can be focused and re-focused after they have been taken. We knew we had to choose a name that’s as disruptive as the product itself. Lytro does that. Now it’s hard to imagine it could have had any other name because it has grown and taken on a life of its own.

K: Did you know at once it was the right name?

AS: In the naming process, you must achieve a critical mass of names to choose from. It’s

important to learn early on not to fall in love with a name as it might not be the final choice. I do I was quite excited about the name Lytro. It brings together “light” and “nitro”. The “Ly” and “nitro” have their origins in Greek, the language of science and analytics. The tone felt right.

That said, names are rarely born right. Typically they become right because of the way they are used.

K: How do you arrive at a great name?

AS: There is a process that tends to lead to success. It requires iterative work. I start off by

naming very broadly – going a mile wide and an inch deep. I look at different metaphors and types of words. I explore names that fir the strategy and those that deliverately violate it. Then I present those and do a second round of creative development that is an inch wide and a mile deep, focusing on names the client was more interest- ed in. For example, I might learn that a client is attracted to names that are more masculine so I’ll focus on those instead of more feminine ones.

K: Youíre not a fan of group brainstorming. Why not?

What other creative techniques do you favor?

AS: The odds of success are greater with individual exercises vs groups. There are some

creative techniques that can be done in groups, however, such as Creative Excursions. This is where you look for examples of x from the “world” of y where x is an attribute of the brand and y is a “world”. For example, I recently named a relaxation drink ‘Pause.’ In our creative excursion we looked for examples of ‘change’ (ie change in emotional state) from the world of electronics.

We wanted to use a word from the vernacular of typical working people today. The target audience is very connected so we decided to use electronics as our ‘world.’ That’s how we hit on the word ‘Pause.’

Another technique is the Cloaked Technique. This involves taking a key attribute then creating a whole imaginary product or brand in another category and naming that thing. When, at Landor, we named the Samsung Instinct (a phone), we drew inspiration from cool nightclub names.

In the case of the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, I led the creative team at Landor to come up with names for a new circus troop because we knew the name needed to be remarkable in order to reflect the product’s remarkable capabilities. I figured if it’s a good name for a circus troop, it’d probably make a good name for a microprocessor, too.

The story behind the brand name >> I discovered that the emergence I’ve had the privilege of naming many innovative technologies in my career. But none have garnered the kinds

of relaxation beverages bears significance. More than just new products on the shelf, relaxation beverages are an inevitable

of headlines that Lytro, a new computa-

outcome of our times.

tional photography company, has. When

Click to read the full case study >

I was invited to name the company, then named Refocus Imaging, I could tell this was going to be a special project. The clients were fantastically brilliant, and there was great chemistry between us.

My enthusiasm, which typically runs on the high side, was boiling over.

Click to read the full case study >

A brand name should be able to simplify a complex set of ideas into a single word. That was the creative challenge Operative Words faced creating a new name for a division of United BioSource, which helps pharmaceutical companies run efficient and effective clinical trials.

Brackets provide support, and, as symbols, they are endemic in clinical trial reports. Brackets are used to indicate subsets; they delineate and thus suggest precision. The word ‘bracket’ sounds smart and strong. And, as a real word, it’s easy to relate to and understand, unlike some of my client’s competitors who have Latinate coined names that are alien and institutional.

Click to read the full case study >

When you’re caught in a fastmoving stream of thought, just relax and follow the current. That’s what I was doing one May evening, riding a current of ideas creating names for a renewable energy company. Then I typed a word that suddenly stopped the current. Pattern.

As a company name, Pattern is a springboard that’s grounded in strategy. It’s distinctive. It’s memorable. Its vivid associations can inspire all of their marketing communications. Pattern has built-in phonetic bookends, what linguists call ‘stops’. The sounds that begin and end the word -- ‘p’ and ‘n’ -- serve to fortify and delineate it. The word even looks well-defined: With no descenders to break the baseline, Pattern stands solid and even-keeled, even in ASCII. Click to read the full case study >

K: How hard is it to rename an already well-established brand?

AS:

There’s always the concern that you will lose brand equity. At Landor, I worked on the renaming of Andersen Consulting to Accenture. The change came about because a judge had required Andersen Consulting to change its name as part of a formal separation from Arthur Andersen. At the time Andersen Consulting was a revered brand, so retaining equity was a concern. But this was just before the Enron scandal hit and Arthur Andersen got caught up in that. Even though it had no actual involvement, the fact Andersen Consulting had to change its name was a very lucky thing. Sometimes equity can be brought forward in a brand’s visual identity. That’s what happened with Accenture. We were also able to keep the A and C from the previous name, albeit in a completely different word.

K: Who you think the naming process is more art or science?

AS: The answer is it’s both! It requires both logical and illogical thinking. Different modes

happen at different points in the process. For example, deciding to give Qualcomm Snapdragon an Anglo Saxon name so it would stand out from all the Latin and Greek names in its field (Pentium, for example) was very logical. But how you arrive at the actual name is very rightbrained. That’s why it can be a challenge when you have to build consensus with a management team, especially when it’s comprised of highly logical engineers. It’s interesting then that so many developer-oriented products have wildly creative names, like Java or Ruby. Snapdragon is oxymoronic: ‘Snap’ is small, fast and precise while ‘dragon’ is wild and powerful. That collision is what makes it stand out.

A name also has to feel natural, very human. That’s a right-brained process too. I named Fanhattan (a movie app) and Wanderful (interactive story books). Both bring together two very different ideas but neither feels contrived – they follow natural language principles and feel human, even though they are coined words.

K: What are some of the great myths and misperceptions about naming an already well-established brand?

AS: One myth is that the name Chevy Nova failed in Latin America. ‘Nova’ was said to mean

It doesn’t go’ in Spanish. But in fact, the car was successful in Latin America. Consumers didn’t interpret the name as meaning ‘It doesn’t go.’ GM knew the literal translation could have been negative and ignored the fact. It was a risk, but in the end it was a success.

On the other hand, when Reebok launched the Incubus shoe, it ignored the fact that an Incubus is a demon that attacks women in their sleep. That turned out to be a huge mistake.

In general, the idea that a brand name can’t have any negative connotations is a myth. Caterpillar doesn’t seem to suffer from the fact that its name is that of a crawling bug. Does anyone believe that pilots on Virgin have not flown before? No one thinks that Dirty Potato Chips are actually covered in soil. In fact, humans are always inclined to seek out the positive in a name.

Arguably, if a name compels them to seek out the positive, you are increasing engagement. It implies there’s a story behind the product.

But it is a fine line and you have to tread carefully.It can be scary. One tool I use to bring clients on board is to look at analogies. When I led the Landor team that named Earthlink’s municipal wifi service. We have chossen the name ‘Feather’ and had to present it to senior executives in Atlanta. There was a concern that ‘feather’ would come across as too delicate. So we showed analogous names. Shell and Blackberry, for example. In the end, ‘Feather’ was the perfect name: it conveyed mobility, lightness, and freedom.

K: What are the biggest mistakes brands can make when naming?

AS: Using a focus group to choose a name is a huge mistake. I always recommend other

research techniques. Focus groups are useful for finding names that are familiar to people, not for finding the distinctive names for a brand. Human instinct is to reject things that are unfamiliar so it stands out.

CITY SPOTLIGHT

For centuries, Barcelona has been a cradle for the creative arts.

Today, Spain is in the throes of its deepest economic crisis in recent history, and new forms of creative expression have become a lifeline for many of its inhabitants. Kupambana takes a stroll down Barcelona’s cobbled streets – and some of its futuristic urban avenues – to discover five districts that display the unique mix of modern and classic that defines this city.

Sagrada Familia Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia is arguably the most well—known tourist destination of the city — despite the fact that it has been in an unfinished state for over 130 years. Gaudi famously died in 1926 before completing it and the cathedral has been at the center of controversial efforts to finish construction ever since. Although the cathedral was consecrated by the Pope in 2010, some argue that it will never be truly complete — and never should be.

22 @ Barcelona The home of 22 @ Barcelona, an ambitious project to rejuvenate the industrial area, Poblenou. The concept was to bring technology businesses together with residential housing, public and green spaces, creating a complete community focused on innovation.

Gràcia

Gràcia is where you’ll find one of Barcelona’s most exciting Festa Major, which take place throughout the city and throughout the year. The street party is famous for its varied and vibrant street decorations as residents compete with each other to put on the most impressive display of creativity. Each street that participates has a committee that chooses a theme.

Residents often prepare decorations months in advance for the festival. Gràcia transforms its ordinary streets into imaginative portals, with everything from chandeliers and dresses to spaceships and caricatures on display.

Poble Sec

The site of the annual Street Art Jam, where graffiti artists come together to paint the town red (and blue, pink and every other color), while listening to live music. Despite city council efforts to outlaw graffiti, Barcelona is one of the world’s hubs for street art.

The walls and buildings of the city have become a canvas for both unknown taggers and globally known urban artists.

Raval Here you’ll find one of the most innovative hotels in the city, The Casa Camper, designed by celebrated Catalan architect, Fernando Amat. “The name is Casa Camper because the idea is that the guests use the hotel in the same way they would their house,” says Amat. Starting with a list of hotel mistakes and clichés, from minibars to tiny closets, the architect set about turning all of them upside down.

ARTIST PROFILE

Kupambana meets four young artists from Chelsea College of Art in London and the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Each has a mission: to understand and explain the world around them.

By Miles C. Daniels & David Russell

PHOTO: Adriano Castellivia Shutterstock.com

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or most artists, their journey usually begins with a crayon, their canvas a bedroom wall or a toy box. It continues through youth where they are often viewed as the odd balls, the nonconformists, misfits who in high school sit together at their own lunch table. What unites them is an artistic fervor that is as much a part of their DNA as the color of their eyes or the fingerprint that distinguishes them from the rest of the world.

Realizing that artistic expression is more than a juvenile distraction, many eventually find themselves in a school of higher learning

where they start to imagine how their artistic talent might translate into a lucrative future. Most of these students are not out to change the world, they simply can’t imagine doing anything else with their lives.

For this issue of Kupambana, we’ve selected four art students from two top-notch schools who are actually on a mission to do something bigger with their art, to make a lasting impact. Two are from San Francisco’s Academy of Arts. Two are studying at London’s Chelsea College of Art and Design. Each is equally talented. Each plan to leave the world better than they found it.

NAWNEET RANJAN

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f Nawneet Ranjan has his way, Dharavi will soon be a household name. Dharavi is India’s largest slum. It is home to one million people who live in tin shacks on less than one mile of land. Ironically, it also happens to sit on the edge of Mumbai’s wealthiest district.

“I couldn’t rid my mind of the images of Dharavi’s people walking barefoot through large piles of waste,” said Nawneet. “But despite the slum’s poor condition, I often saw smiles on the faces of its people.

I always felt that there was more to Dharavi’s story than just its distinction as Asia’s largest slum.”

Nawneet grew up in a more affluent part of the world’s largest country. His family includes doctors and college professors.

But while studying advertising in Mumbai, Nawneet encountered images that continued to haunt him even after he’d moved across the world to San Francisco.

Nawneet, a film student at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, decided to use his camera to tell that story. The result is a documentary film called “Dharavi Diary.”

In August of this year, Nawneet’s film was selected as the Best Student Documentary in the 2012 Independents’ Film Festival.

NAWNEET RANJAN

Tell us more about DHARAVI DIARY, your film that was just selected as the Best Student Documentary in the 2012 Independents’ Film Festival.

I lived in Mumbai for seven years, and used to work in an advertising firm that was close to Dharavi slum and I used to pass through that neighborhood and see smiles on the faces of the kids and the people around. So when I came to San Francisco for my film studies, all those images started to come to my mind and in a way it was kind of haunting me. So last summer I went back to India and back to that community to learn more about it. I learned that Dharavi had recently become a hot spot for real estate development. As such, they are breaking apart the slum houses and lots of people are facing hard times. They are jobless. They don’t have enough food to feed themselves. Kids have stopped going to school. They are living in tents. So I started to film all this from the perspective of the kids and residents of that neighborhood. Our next step is to go back and teach these kids how to tell their own stories through videography.

What about your own story telling process? When you go into a film like this, how do you plan it out? How do you go in to tell the story?

I always look for people that have contrasting points of view. In this film, one of the kids wants to go to college so that he can join administrative services in India and make changes to the policies. He wants to make the government more inclusive. The other kid is not into studies. He wants to go into performing arts. So I go into the community and try to meet people of different age groups, different backgrounds, different ethnicities and talk to them and then try to pick characters who can give a kind of cosmopolitan outlook to the whole story. I then start filming.

With documentary films you never know how things are going to fall in place. So it’s kind of fluid. But overall, I have a structure in my head, which I try to follow while I am filming. Along the way I start to get other clues around something about their story that might be interesting, then I’ll investigate this further, which sometimes brings a new shape to the whole story I’m telling.

Who is your favorite filmmaker?

Steven Spielberg, because although he touches on a lot of genres, all his films speak to the human endeavor and how, through effort, humans can change their own circumstances.

What would you say to someone just getting out of high school who came to you and said, “I would like to study filmmaking?�

Go travel, see the world, read books, and look for stories close to your heart. The craft will come, but first look for the stories that are close to your heart and then learn how to tell these stories through filmmaking.

RUIXIAO ZHANG

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n the “About Me” section of her website, Ruixiao Zhang, a student at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, describes herself as a “funny, crazy creature” whose big head helps her think about all of the world’s chaos.

What she doesn’t point out is the fact that she’s using her artistic talent, especially in the area of product design, to help ease some of that chaos.

In addition to being a talented illustrator, photographer and t-shirt designer, Ruixiao has designed YOMi, a toy that provides audio games for visually-impaired and sighted children to play together. YOMi means You and Me are friends forever.

It helps children enhance their listening skills, fine motor skills and expand their social life.

YOMi has been selected by IDEA 2012 finalist, and is in process for Final Jury.

RUIXIAO ZHANG

Yomi, your project for visually-impaired children, is a project that seems to really excite you. What inspired you to create this?

I decided to design for visually-impaired children because my sister is visually impaired, and I still remember how hard it was for her to have friends during that time. I was also a volunteer for the “Blind Babies Foundation” two years ago and found that there are so many opportunities for designers to create products that can improve these children’s lives. The idea for YOMi was inspired by an octopus with a big cylinder in its center. Children can sit around and hold its different “hands” to play. YOMi provides light and vibration to children. This gives them sensory stimulation and allows them to interact with YOMi and with each other to enhance their listening skills, fine motor skills and expand their social life. A lot of work went into YOMi and it has become a friend to both visually-impaired and sighted children alike.

You are talented in a wide-range of art forms, including product design, illustration, crafts and photography. Which of these forms are you most passionate about? Why? I like illustration a lot, because first of all, doing illustrations for me is like writing a diary. It is a way to record my life. All the illustrations and paintings I do reflect moments of my life - moment of sadness, happiness, loneliness, the moment of the memory. I also like to put myself into my illustrations, sometimes in the form of creatures. Ruixiao could be a mushroom in one illustration, and could be an elephant in another one. This is a way to express various emotions and tell the different stories that have happened in my life.

Much of your work centers around making the world a better, more convenient, place in which to live (portable sushi maker, kid’s nutrition guide). What is it that draws you to this kind of meaningful work?

All the ideas were inspired by life experience. For instance, I was a picky eater when I was a kid and I find that a lot of kids are picky eaters nowadays. So I thought, “What if I designed something to help picky eaters change their diet habits, and encourage them to eat healthier foods while at same time providing nutrition information?” So, I designed the MUGU kid’s nutrition guide. MUGU is a mushroom shape. It was inspired by the video game Super Mario, which just happened to be one of my favorite video games when I was a kid.

When Super Mario ate mushrooms; he became more powerful and stronger. I hope MUGU will encourage kids to eat healthier foods and grow up to be stronger.

I got the idea for Wakasu, a portable sushi maker, while waiting in a long line one day to pick up sushi during my lunch break. I was thinking about a way to make sushi myself, but also so that I can share with my friends. Wakasu is fun and easy-to carry. The fact that lots of people online like this design, means they probably encountered the same situation I did and thought to themselves, “What if?” I just turned this “what if” into a real design.

What project are you most proud of and why?

All of my works are like my kids. I can’t say which one I most proud of, but if I had to pick which one is most meaningful for me, I would have to say YOMi. Because I spent a lot of time with visually-impaired children when I was creating YOMi, I learned a lot about their lives. I went to the Chandler Tripp School almost every week when I was doing user testing and each time I went to there, some kids always said, “We miss you, Ruixiao, did you bring a new toy for us? ” It was clear that these kids wanted to play with others so I wanted to give them a gift, a toy that would make that a reality.

Dead or alive, if you could meet anyone in the world, who would it be?

I would love to have met Joan Miró, I fell in love with his paintings when I was a kid. They are all full of imagination and feeling. I also love Pablo Neruda. His poems are beautiful, intense and make me think a lot.

JENNA EDGAR

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rtists and designers throughout the UK are reacting to their environment whilst often trying to make the world we inhabit a better place to be. Jenna Edgar is one such graduate whose heart lies in spotting problems that can be solved through intelligent design. Her background growing up in Northern Ireland has resonated through to her approach to problem solving and graphic communications.

JENNA EDGAR

What’s your creative process – how do you tackle problems?

Communication design involves a lot of awareness of what’s going on in the world and spotting things that can be improved. I observe on a daily basis what’s happening around me to look for ways of providing solutions to problems that can be solved through design. Often it means getting involved with people directly, so it involves one-on-one chatting with people, gathering their stories, finding out what the experience is like for them and from that you can get all the inspiration to help solve that for them.

Other than getting inspiration from the world around you, are there any individuals or collectives who have inspired your approach?

Absolutely, there is a group called Ideal who have been a big influence in what I do, especially just in the last six months as I’ve been refining my design process. That’s what my MA is all about; taking your own process of working and refining that to the best way that you can.

I’m also really inspired by Candy Chang’s work. She provides really elegant and fun urban interactions that encourage people to get involved more with the public spaces around them and the people that live there.

What are your ambitions and career goals?

I want to continue on the path I’ve been on for the past three years. It’s not something I’ve always been able to find paid work in but as long as nobody tries to stop me from doing what I want to do, I’ll be happy.

What do you think the challenges facing people in your field?

It’s generally about getting the work experience. I found that a lot of companies expect you to have work experience but are not willing to provide that initial experience. There are also too many graduates coming out of university and not enough jobs for all of them. I think if someone was to develop an initiative that meant students could go out and get involved with existing groups as well as instigating more self-initiated projects that would be a great thing.

How do you plan to make the world better through your art?

Design, by definition, is about making life better for people. So if it ever gets to the point where I’m not fulfilling that, it will be time for a career change.

You obviously grew up in Belfast, what’s your preferred creative environment?

Generally, when it comes to problem solving, if you’re in a place with a lot more problems then there’s a lot more inspiration that can come from that environment. Belfast is a city that traditionally has had a lot of problems but the arts there is very underdeveloped. There’s not a lot of money to support artists, so there’s a lot of self-initiated stuff going on.

In London, there’s a different set of challenges. It’s quite nice doing what I do because it fits in anywhere.

No matter where you go there’s another set of problems that need to be solved.

And finally, what do you like to do outside of your design work?

I sing and I’m teaching myself to play the guitar but outside of that I like to eat! London is a fantastic city to eat in so I like to explore as much of that as possible. I also perform with local artists both from the music and visual arts worlds. Performing is great because it broadens your scope and means you’re meeting as many people in the industry as possible.

ADAM

DeBOER

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rt can impact the world around us by exploring the culture and identity that we often take for granted. By researching his own ancestry, Adam de Boer discovered how little he knew about his background beyond his own upbringing in California. His work combines different elements of a hybrid cultural

identity researched and portrayed through paintings that incorporate traditional Indonesian woodcarving techniques. By recapturing a culture lost through generations of emigration, his findings encourage viewers to consider their identity and improve their knowledge of their environment.

ADAM

DeBOER What has inspired your work?

I think ever since I began making art I’ve been a painter primarily. Very recently my work is moving into different directions but it’s always been about witnessing culture and usually having a lot to do with travel.

My dad was born in Java but after moving to America, completely integrated himself into a Californian identity so I grew up knowing that I was of Indonesian descent but never really knew anything about it. A couple of summers ago I went to Indonesia for the first time and the taxi driver on the way to the hotel looked just like my father. It was at that moment during the surf trip that I realized I needed to start understanding more about that identity. My grandparents had died many years ago so I felt like I had to research and figure out my history for myself.

During this time in Indonesia, I learnt a lot about traditional techniques, carving and textile design and then started adding those things to my work.

Instead of making paintings about going to Bali, my work now involves making large-scale batiks about a hybrid cultural identity. I’m interested in the outcome of being an American who is revisiting traditional materials from a previous generation.

What does the creative process look like for you?

This creative process I think was a long one. It really involved a lot of travel and research about colonial and a post-colonial history and then what I consider a post-post-colonial history. I designed the carvings in my work about a year ago so the iconography is very specific to the things I was thinking about at that time.

What’s the next step for you and what are your ambitious for the future?

I’m really lucky in that I have a plan for next year. I’m at Chelsea because I got a scholarship to go here through an Indian university. So immediately after graduation I’ll be doing a three-month residency at the International Institute of Fine Arts in Modinagar, which is India’s first private art school. I’ll be running workshops and have a studio there for a few months. Following that I’ll be doing another residency at a school in Columbia. I have a show scheduled at the Riflemaker Gallery in London so I’m excited about that too.

Will you be heading back to London for the show?

It’s beyond my wildest dreams to exhibit in London but I don’t know that I need to physically be here.

While I understand that London is an important place for an artist to be or at least have a window to, I’m not terribly interested in living here. I think it’s difficult to have a high quality of life in London especially as an artist. So as long as I can show here and have contacts here then I’d prefer to keep moving around the world and making new work. That’s the goal.

Other than your background and history are there are any artists or collectives that have inspired the way you’re painting?

In terms of inspiration, I think I’m more inspired by lifestyle and life choices. However, there’s an American expat artist who lives in Bali named Ashley Bickerton who I’ve met a couple of times in Indonesia and New York. He is fantastically inspirational to me because he went to all the right schools and did all the right things but then decided to move to Indonesia to make some of the wackiest work in western contemporary art.

HOW TO

WANT A STANDING OVATION? TIME FOR INNOVATION

Whether you’re a student preparing for a classroom speech, an architect unveiling a new design or a salesperson making your pitch, you have one goal in common: making your presentation memorable.

Try these three tips for inspiring presentations using your tablet.

1. Escape from PowerPoint s e iv c

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If you’re presenting one-on-one, try sharing content with a more interactive approach. PREZI for the iPad brings the power of storytelling from your desktop to your tablet. Walk your viewers through a fluid presentation that enables multi-dimensional zooming and content rotation.

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Break away from traditional slideshow templates and work with tablets and smartphones to visually showcase your work. With hundreds of presentation applications available, sharing information in a creative way is easier than ever.

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Sharing information with a group? Turn on AirPlay to wirelessly broadcast your tablet’s screen to any connected monitor, projector or screen. If your viewers want to follow along on their own tablets, project your presentation on their mobile devices with apps like 2Screens for a more personal touch.

2. Put the audience in control Sitting through long presentations for hours on end doesn’t sound like an ideal day for anyone. To keep viewers from dozing off, put them in control and encourage real-time collaboration.

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Speaking at a conference? SMS surveys, like SMSPoll, can keep your audience focused and ready to engage. Capture live data on what your audience thinks, feels, and wants via a simple text message. In turn, you’ll have contact information to follow-up with after your time is up.

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Working with a smaller group? Use collaboration applications, like iBrainstorm, accessible on smartphones and tablets, to share ideas, jot down group notes and brainstorm big plans that are instantly saved in the cloud. Then turn your crowd-sourced drawings and doodles into sophisticated charts and graphics, with tools like OmniGraffle, to save for your next presentation.

3. Add bells and whistles Take advantage of the latest technology not traditionally used with slideshows. With the power of built-in cameras, mobile devices like tablets and smartphones can make presentations fun. Get audience members to interact with augmented reality elements or use QR codes to give them access to side references that don’t necessarily have a place in your presentation.

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Presentations don’t have to be flat Tablets, touchscreens and mobile technology can help you engage, collaborate and connect with your audience on new levels. Don’t be afraid to break out of the mold and try something different the next time you get up on stage.

OVERVIEW

Connecting the creative arts with communications

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he world is waking up to the importance of creativity. No longer seen as a gift, bestowed at birth on a few individuals, creativity is needed everywhere, at every level.

Kupambana engages in three major activities: Funding research into creative communications through partnerships with academic institutions Showcasing and promoting emerging

But it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It has to be nurtured, understood and trained.

Kupambana was created to do just that for the communications industry.

It aims to research, promote and inspire creativity and is funded by, digital communications agency, LEWIS PR.

artistic talent Providing training in creative techniques for professional communicators

Visit the Kupambana website or follow on Twitter for more information.

Kupambana’s first academic partner is Chelsea College of Art and Design, part of the University of the Arts, London. Kupambana is the sponsor of the 2012 MA Catalogue, which showcases the brilliant work from the MA Class of 2012’s final exhibition. Click here for examples of the work.