Sep 23, 2016Balancing Search, Social, and Editorial for Mobile MarketersIf you’re reading this, and don’t live under a rock, you know that mobile is becoming the dominant content platform for human attention. (Benedict Evans of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz says “mobile is eating the world.”) We used to talk about mobile as our “second screen” but the pyramid has…Advertising5 min readAdvertising5 min read
Sep 8, 2016Better mobile ad formats can save the free web.Imagine you picked up a magazine about running that never mentioned shoes or sports nutrition. Or a fashion publication void of beautiful photos spotlighting the latest pieces of haute couture. Or a home audio journal without gear. Publishers exist to create content and dialogue to serve a tribe. These tribes…Advertising4 min readAdvertising4 min read
Jun 30, 2016The Machine and the Garden (or The Power of Freedom and Constraints)Ben Horowitz, an entrepreneur and founding partner of famed Sand Hill Road venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz wrote a book called “The Hard Thing About Hard Things.” In the opening pages, he cautions readers, saying that the book has no recipes for success. No simple steps for building winning companies…Design7 min readDesign7 min read
Apr 17, 2016Serious Play: Design is an Act of Inquiry“Without play, there is no experimentation. Experimentation is the quest for answers.” -Paul Rand: The Play Instinct, 1991 Design is an act of inquiry. Matt Kahn, one of my professors at Stanford University, used to say “Design is the art form that is incomplete until it is engaged.” A book…Design2 min readDesign2 min read
Jan 27, 2016To Design is To Ask Bigger Questions Through Your CraftThe act of Design is identifying preferred behaviors and creating a means for achieving those behaviors. Nobel laureate Herbert Simon once wrote “everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” In this vein, the purpose of Design is to propose interventions and to…Design2 min readDesign2 min read
Jan 2, 2016Design Thinking in 1924Needed to share this wonderful passage from the Surrealist Manifesto penned by André Breton in 1924: If the depths of our minds conceal strange forces capable of augmenting or conquering those on the surface, it is in our greatest interest to capture them; first to capture them and later to…Design1 min readDesign1 min read
Published in Bytesized Treats·Mar 22, 2015A Baker’s Dozen for Design Entrepreneurs13 essential sensibilities for Design Entrepreneurs — For a long time, “Design” has always been burdened by its prefixes. Graphic Design, Product Design, Interior Design, Business Design, and so forth. Fortunately, the last few years or so has defined a Designer not by their toolkits but by their sensibilities. We’re seeing the greatest organizations of our time…12 min read12 min read
