Like many who have seen his TED talk, I’ve been incredibly inspired by Sir Ken Robinson. He’s shone a bright light on a huge problem we face as a nation: our education system and how it’s failing our next generation. We’ve lost creativity in our current systems. Other nations are leaping over us in creative thinking and expression (as this recent Newsweek article describes). States keep cutting and cutting, slashing programs from second languages to art to music (one of the early casualties), in lieu of a focus on learning how to take standardized tests. Huh?

I have the highest respect for teachers. They are the cornerstone of modern society. They are creating the next generation and the amazing teachers out there aren’t nearly compensated for all the work they do. The system has failed them (the good ones). Like too many things today, it’s become robotic and formulaic, which is in turn sucking the creative juices from our kids. Some argue that technology is pushing us there. That’s simply a cop out. As we’ve learned in Cognitive Surplus (Shirky’s awesome book), modern technology has given way to an excess in time and energy–alluding to MORE time for creation. Instead of focusing on how “silly and trite” LOLCats are (which they aren’t…what would we do without our cyber feline friends?), could we encourage our next gen to play with arduinos and learn how to create the next awesome gizmo instead? Be creatively productive?

Personally, I don’t think I could do what I do now without some awesome opportunities in the arts. I still remember my favorite class in elementary school,”Creative Expression”. It was a class of a brave teachers creation–loosely built on the traditional art class (which I also had) but focusing less on skills and more on making stuff you loved. A little crafty, a lot of freedom for a 10 year old. I undoubtedly believe it contributed to my appreciation for the arts now and helped lead me to my home in the creative industry.

We are so “skill centric” today that sometimes we miss the less overt learning that can occur in exploration and discovery. We all have a responsibility to cast a critical eye on our education system (if you have kids or not!) and support a higher order learning. Selfishly, I want the next generation to have ALL of the creative outlets as possible, if for nothing else, my own gain. Who will entertain? Who will innovate the next technology to save lives? Who will design the most amazingly beautiful structures? If the answer is no one, we’re in a whole lot of trouble…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Robinson’s book, The Element is a must-read for all. It’s not about the industry or even communication systems specifically. It advocates diversity in our education system to make a dynamic, innovative and inspired next generation. It also does an amazing job of demonstrating through sound examples of the GREAT stories of fostering creativity early on.

Image via Behance: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Creative-Truths/263281 Shirley-Ann Dick

Now that we’ve been grounded in what this amazing period was about, it’s time to start connecting it to what’s going on right now. I believe the greater learning in studying the Bauhaus is rooted in the notion explored in 1923 by Walter Groupius: “Art and technology: A new unity“. This takes on a whole new meaning in the world we live in today, yet is just as profound and “new” a concept today as it was in 1923. This incredible convergence of these two massively impact filled worlds is yet again, changing the consumer world.

There is a growing desire to maximize this bond-fuse into something spectacular that yes, perhaps even is commercial. Commercial has the opportunity to find it’s way OUT of being a dirty word if it’s done RIGHT. Coming back to some planning language, this is contingent on what is core to being a MODERN BRAND. Modern brands will live at this intersection of art and technology and still have expansive commercial appeal. It IS possible. Great examples exist with brands like Method, Uniqlo and IKEA.

In a very simple and tangible example of Bauhaus influence is with IKEA. Mats Nilsson, IKEA’s design strategist, had mentioned in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, that the  company’s ideology is inspired by the Bauhaus, especially the idea that high-design objects could be affordable to the masses. According to Nilsson, “this was Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius’s ground-breaking idea, while the machine aesthetic he worked with in his days was a bit hard for many to like and accept.” The modern styling and mass creation is reflective of the Bauhaus clean, simple style and ethos is definitely defining to IKEA, but stopping to say that IKEA = Bauhaus would be an unfair assumption.

So many other influences of the Bauhaus exist to this day, many architecture and design as the Bauhaus faculty and graduates fled Nazi Germany, Groupius teaching at Harvard and spreading the ideals of Bauhaus to North America. Ideals of simple modern design are still prevalent in many of the most famous buildings in the world, as well as typographical impacts and the profound impact on the “fine art” world as well (still some of the most revered artists of our time came from the Bauhaus). The ideals of Bauhaus will live on forever, but the impacts should be taken in by ALL of us, not just our design counterparts. There is so much to learn and uncover for the future of great products and great thinking to come.

My knowledge of the Bauhaus prior to my recent visit to the MoMA was incredibly limited–I was vaguely familiar with it relative to some connections to IKEA and how they had “Bauhaus inspired” design/ethos (which I’ll discuss more in the next post), but further from that I was very much in the dark. My experience at the Bauhaus exhibit was incredible–I went twice, feeling like I must  have missed things the first round. Totally and completely awe-inspiring.  And I still feel like I’m only scratching the surface of truly understanding what this school/icon/movement meant to all of us, especially those of us in the advertising/design world. As a part one of a two part post, I’ll quickly overview the history of the Bauhaus and follow up with a perspective of what this can mean to us today and beyond.

The Bauhaus (1919-1933) was one of the very first colleges of design, coming out of the merger of the Weimar Academy of Arts and the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts. While the name lends itself to architecture (the term Bauhaus as an inversion of ‘Hausbau’ – house construction), founded by architect Walter Groupius, it was created on the premise of being able to create “total” work of art-art, architecture, graphic design, interior/industrial design, typography. At its heart, Bauhaus aimed to find the intersection of the aesthetics of great design and the mass commercial demands of the industrialized world.

Bauhaus is typically broken into three key stages, which are consistent with the three German cities it resided in. Weimar (1919-1925), Dessau (1925-30) and Berlin (1930-33). Weimar period saw the rise of the thought “Art and Technology: A new unity” (Groupius, director 1923) as the Dessau period forged forward, the notion of rebirth in knowledge “we are seeing the world through completely different eyes”. The final period was met with the avant garde movement in the Berlin arts scene, juxtaposed against the mounting feelings of nationalism as the Nazi regime ultimately closed the Bauhaus in 1933.

Now this was no run of the mill “art school”-quite the contrary. Fine artists such as masters like Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Oskar Schlemmer were faculty (can you imagine a color theory class with Paul Klee and Kandinsky? Well, if you were at Bauhaus in 1923, they would have been teaching!) While they never outwardly rejected the ideals of Expressionism that had dominated the fine art scene-director Groupius  felt a new period of history had begun with the end of the war and he wanted to create a new architectural style to reflect this new era. His style in architecture and consumer goods was to be functional, cheap and consistent with mass production (is this starting to sound familiar?)

The next post will talk more about the impact of this astounding movement…

I encourage you to learn more and explore the fabulous site MoMA has put together for the exhibit if you can’t make it to NYC to see it in person.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/bauhaus/Main.html#

Images via: Moma.org,

Enter: publisher Penguin. They continue to innovate and create incredible online interactive story-telling experiences.  The “grown up” version is “We Tell Stories”, while the new kid friendly (and gorgeous interface!) “We make stories” opens a whole new world to kids. An amazing hybrid of creativity and marketing for the publishing giant. In a time where some feel the written word is being denegrated to nothingsness, this gives me hope.

Have fun with the site. Tell your own stories. I did. And if I like you enough I just might share it with you…

http://wetellstories.co.uk/

The Adventures of Tin Tin was a fascinating and beautiful comic strip from 1930’s, created by Belgian artist Herge. Following the adventures of a young Belgian reporter, the many antics of Tin Tin have enthralled audiences for generations. The simple, gorgeous illustrations have have inspired many,  admired for its clean, expressive drawings, his own ligne claire style. This aesthetic has inspired so many in fact, that the Herge museum has finally been completed. A true work of art in and of itself. Needless to say, added to the list of personal “must-sees”. All this stemming from a seemingly benign comic strip about a clean-living man and his dog.  A lovely write up in the Economist helped to shed some light on this beautiful new museum with the world.

The brainchild of Hergé’s second wife, Fanny Rodwell, who set up the Hergé Foundation in 1987, the museum shows off a rotating collection of original artwork and source materials, laying bare the hard work that Hergé put into his comics, with each speeding car, cityscape or policeman’s uniform inspired by archived photographs and research trips in the field. Back in his Brussels studios, Hergé would spend long hours posing as each character while assistants sketched him as a reference guide for the final drawings. (Economist, June 2, 2009 )

(Images via:Atelier Christian de Portzamparc )

Thankfully, the era of faux-green is starting to fade away as the economy sinks lower and those who had the extra cash to, ahem, “care” are now finding themselves (gasp!) cutting coupons, we are getting back to the roots of sustainability. Sustainability is inherently linked to creative thought, whether it’s recycling/reusing things in innovative new ways or creating new ways to power the nation-sustainability is about being smarter, not flashier.

So what is the next big green? We’ve recycled, it’s time for reuse. In interesting MEANINGFUL ways. Like this amazing tape deconstruction. Symbolic and (in a small way) being sustainable. Other things like services that create teddy bears out of your old treasured sweaters. Brilliant. There are things we don’t ever want to let go of, because they mean so much more. And now is the time to express it.

Barcelona’s Vaho create furniture out of items like shopping carts and oil drums and bags out of banner advertisements and tires. Creating newly coveted “trashion” items that are even used in promotional advertising. Genius! (Source: PSFK)

At the end of the day who really cares about Anya Hindmarch’s reusable grocery bag “I’m not a plastic bag”? (sorry if you got one…) Is it surprising that these have now found their way to the bottom of the bargain bin? Not really. It’s what happens when we marginalize social movements to trends. At the end of the day only the real innovators and creators will prevail.

(Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iri5/); PSFK.com