#john bielenberg

FUTURE

John's company is Future, which describes itself as a group of people who are "Designers. Teachers. Actors. Disruptors. Artists. Leaders. Storytellers. Improvisers. Strategists. Coaches. Writers. Cajolers. We use this expertise to lead Future Blitzes that quickly unlock the genius of your people to solve your most daunting challenges." (Future Partners, 2014)

The Make-lab Bamboo bike. (Future Partners, 2014)

John told us that it is important to:

"Be bold Get out Think wrong Make stuff Bet small Move fast"

This thinking is based on his company which finds solutions to problems; think social issues, and apply design and creativity to the problem solving process. He believes that "rapid ingenuity are in the uncertain realm of challenges and unknown realm of solutions", which reflects his point about thinking wrong; stop thinking the way you would any other day about any other issue, you won't get anywhere. Start thinking about future solutions, be innovative and stop looking at the existing ideas for a final outcome.

Go visit the Future website and look into the innovations that John has been part of; you will be inspired.

Tonight I had the absolute pleasure of listening to KU's Hallmark Symposium speaker of the night, John Bielenberg.

At first, I really had no interest in going. I had just finished 3 hours of stat and studio homework after a class filled morning and the last thing I wanted to do was block out 2 hours for someone I wasn't familiar with. However, attendance is mandatory for the "class" grade so I got up and went.

I left feeling so secure in my decision to go into design, I felt inspired, enlightened and impressed. There are so many avenues and facets of design and to see so many of them being combined in ways to benefit the world and create change in places that need it was a great thing to witness.

One of the key projects he discussed was one in Greensboro, Alabama where they're working on making bamboo (a highly sustainable crop) a main agricultural staple. How so? By making bikes of all things. I had heard about this a little bit on the internet, but actually hearing how this company grew into what it is today was amazing. He also happened to work with an industrial design professor at KU, Lance Rake. If you're interested in some more of the story or pictures, click here. 

It's a pretty busy week this week—which is good because the faster Thursday gets here, the better. 

Lots of new client work: logos, stationery, patterns, Oh my! 

My students are in the final weeks of classes, meaning they should be wrapping up their projects. This also means that there will be a split in personalities. Some will have it totally under control. Some will be in "panic & freak out" mode. I'll be walking the line between therapist & instructor. 

My favorite seminar from when I was a student is being held at Portfolio Center this week. It's called, "How to Build a Grenade" and is taught by John Bielenberg and Rich Binell. It's about using design and copywriting as a medium to effectively and quickly communicate and it's amazing. I hope that I get to sit in on part of the workshop again. 

Best of all... College friend reunion in FLORIDA! We'll be missing quite a few of my favorites, but it will be wonderful to see the ones that can make it. It's always a good time to be with this crew of people, so apologies in advance if I post an excessive amount of photos. I'll try to keep it to a minimum. 

I designed a super quick event flyer for a MASD-sponsored event featuring John Bielenberg and Greg Galle of Future Partners (futurepartners.is). I almost never use Helvetica, and I think for once it looks pretty good (for me, that is. Mostly everyone else in the world can make Helvetica look sweet). The image above is from the jpeg flyer that is going out via email.

“You want to achieve fairness and a place of equality on earth, how would you do that? … A big part of it was impact entrepreneurs. And design thinking and designers. Designers being a different kind of person that have some special capabilities. And we thought if we can enable designers to realize: hey, you're more than you might think in terms of someone who can make great posters, you're actually a person you can design great companies. 

… I hope [in the future] that the idea of making a company that doesn't have a social impact aspect of it is just lame. It just doesn't even make sense. Why would you do that?”

—Alex Bogusky and John Bielenberg on Debbie Millman’s Design Matters Interview on September 30th.  

"I recently read an article in The New Yorker magazine called 'The Aha Moment' that tried to explain why new ideas often come when people are doing things such as taking showers or walking on the beach. They discovered that big new ideas often occur when you parkl a problem to be solved in your brain and then stop actively trying to solve it. When you engage in a 'mindless' activity such as running, your brain is actually still processing between hemispheres, making connections that would not happen while you're sitting at a desk concentrating. I find this to be true for me, too."