#the50 things every creative should know

I love Twitter. It allows people to be really creative with the information that fills their heads. Not only can you share links but, and a nice big but, people have created specific ‘tweetable’ websites. How good an idea is this?

#the50 is the first fully-Tweetable primer for graduating creatives.

London-based Designer Jamie Wieck decided to write #The50 Things Every Creative Should Know when he realised he was not the first, nor the last student to fear the leap between art college and the creative industry. I recall the moment very well and actually ended up avoiding the ridicule of trying to be a designer in the traditional way.

Each piece of advice has been written within 140 characters and features a consistent hash-tag, making them easy to share across Twitter.

I love ‘there is always someone better’. I held myself back for this very reason so many times. It is a fact that you can always find someone better than you, be it because you lack confidence or because someone has spent far longer in the industry than you have. Get over it and get on with working.

Another fab one is ‘Never stop editing your portfolio. Three strong pieces are better than ten weak ones – nobody looks for quantity, just quality.’ I only realised this when I started to have people pitch to me… it’s the same as CVs, nobody reads them – they just look at your past experience and education. If that is good, I’ll read more but to this day I have never read a CV in full.

And with over 1,000,000 visits and counting, #the50 has struck a chord with both students and established creatives across the world, inspiring many to submit their own advice for #the100 — an expansion of #the50.

Top 10 Twitter profile logos

Individuals have taken to the concept of branding their own personalities with gusto. Along came Twitter and Facebook and blogs, where people were kings and queens, not companies. Mimicking the successful marketing of companies, people have begun to brand themselves.

So, to help guide you through creating a little square icon here are my Top 10 Twitter icons from some well known companies to some lesser know real life human beings. See if you can spot the difference… and of course, leave a comment with your favourite icon.

Frank Stella

Frank Stella first came onto my radar whilst I was studying at university. I had experimented a lot with graphic arts and was certainly drawn to abstract work and bold images.

During one critique, my tutor recommended that I took a closer look at the work of Frank Stella and Morris Louis. Once I opened the book on Stella’s work it was love at first sight.

Image taken from www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=13816&tabview…

Born May 12 1936, Stella is an American painter and printmaker and a significant figure in minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.

Stella produced a series of prints during the late 1960s starting with a print called Quathlamba I in 1968. Stella’s abstract prints in lithography, screen-printing, etching and offset lithography had a strong impact upon printmaking as an art.

Image appropriated from www.c4gallery.com/artist/database/frank-stella/frank-stel…

Image appropriated from www.araks.com/blog/2009/07/frank-stella.html

His work has influenced me over the years, with the use of colour and the composition of his work, encouraging me to push a little further… obviously I am also influenced by a much cleaner design aesthetic also, but colour has been a strong part of my education as a fascination with how it affects us all in different ways.

Below is a 10-minute film talking with Stella during the 70s when he was in his mid-30s, so for a much more intelligent conversation, do sit back and take it all in…