Jordan Wollman Creative Direction

I stumbled across a brilliant video today. It’s the history of the sports brand Asics. It’s heart-felt, well-timed, and incredibly smart.

Do yourself a favor and give it a watch.

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

I just spent the weekend in Denver. I left my house at 4:30am on Friday, arrived in Denver at 9:30am local time. I tried to document the entire trip over at Pownce, but didn’t get much past Friday.

During the trip, I learned a lot of things. Some about travel, and some about other things that just happened to come up. Here’s my list of things I learned on my trip to Denver, CO… in no certain order:

1. Always bring a jacket – I left Dallas and it was about 80 degrees. I got to Denver and it was 41 degrees. That’s a 39 degree difference… which your body doesn’t quite understand at first.
2. Make sure the flight you are booking is non-stop. I didn’t even realize we had a layover in Austin. The flight to which is only 30ish minutes. We only reached a cruising altitude of 15k feet. On top of that, the layover was kind of a let down. We didn’t even disembark the plane!
3. If you’re going to document your trip on a social network like Pownce, make sure you have alternate ways to document than just your iPhone. I couldn’t get much service in a few places, and lost a lot of cool spur-of-the-moment photos or thoughts – which of course are lost when new ones jump through your mind.
4. If you have the opportunity to get a book you love signed by the author, do it. I got a new book (not sure if it’s released publicly or not yet) by Rick Green of WallBuilders signed, and now that copy (I have two) is more than just the information on the pages. It’s more personal now.
5. It’s expensive to eat when traveling. I’m sure it doesn’t have to be, but we wanted to experience the local cuisine, and I must say, downtown, it was expensive!
6. The trip means nothing if you’re not able to share it. Pictures are great, but being there with the ones you love makes it a lot more enjoyable.

I just read a beautifully written and insightful quick article by David over at 37signals Blog. It was in response to an article written comparing the MacBook Air and some IBM laptop.

I could not agree with David more. Aesthetic is not about popularity, vanity, or self-promotion, on its own. It is of course blazingly apparent that Jonathan Ive and Steve Jobs design their products with the intent of providing their clientele with a product that expresses, through aesthetic value, a certain personality-by-choice.

I think you’ve fundamentally misunderstood why people buy beautiful products, if you think it’s all about projection. While there’s certainly something to that (and I see absolutely no shame in that either!), it’s at the core about people feeling good about that which is pretty. That doesn’t make us shallow, that just makes us human.

In any case, give the aforementioned article a read.