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thebatmarino · 5 years

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The DCEU’s next Batman should be played by Dick Grayson

Batman and Robin. Words that have gone together like Peanut Butter and Jelly for around 80 years. Everybody in the world knows that Batman’s younger sidekick is Robin. Many know that Robin is Dick Grayson, fewer know that Dick grew up to become Nightwing, and even fewer still that he has spent time as Batman. With the recent activity in DC film, I want to talk about my favorite superhero, what makes him great, and most importantly, why I believe Dick Grayson is the answer to the DCEU’s Bat situation. To start, we’re going to rewind to 1940, when Robin was introduced to the world in Detective Comics #38.

Batman was created in 1939. A grim figure of the night, Batman spoke very little, a trait that has held through to this day. At the time however, legend has it that Bill Finger and Bob Kane were tired of drawing thought bubbles for him, so they needed to give him someone to talk to. But who? Well, Batman was a Sherlock Holmesian figure, it was Detective Comics after all, so they needed to give him a Watson. A character who’s intelligent, capable, and a proxy for the readership so they can join Batman on his adventures. The readership at the time (target readership, we know girls love and read comics too, but this was 1940) was 12 year old boys, and who might they look up to? Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn came out in 1938, he seems pretty cool. And a Robin keeps up the motif of flying animal that Batman started. And there you have it, Robin the Boy Wonder was born.

The creation of Robin is also the birth of the Teenage Sidekick. Since then, every teen sidekick from Bucky to Kid Flash owes a debt to the creation of Robin. As more and more sidekick characters populated the comic scene, something happened at DC Comics in particular that is one of my favorite things about the brand: the idea of Legacy Characters.

Consider the Justice League for a moment. Let’s look at the big 6: Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Aquaman. These characters are the Greek Gods reborn. They are iconic, they are mythological. Each one of them proudly displays a symbol that they adhere to. “I believe in love and equality”, “There is hope for everyone”, “I will drag myself through Hell for justice”, “by force of will, I will overcome all fear to save the world”, “I will always make time to help people”, “I will be the great uniter of disparate people”, or whatever you interpret the thesis of these characters to be. They are perfect embodiments. The problem with perfection is that real people can’t attain that. We can try. We can stumble and fall. And that is exactly what the Legacy Characters attempt to be. These characters are absolute representations in ways that humans are generally not. They are aspirational. That’s why there’s merchandise out the wazzu (do people still say that?), so you can see a person on the street with that Green Lantern symbol and know that person wants to overcome fear.

Dick Grayson was the first. For many years Dick was happily Robin, going on strange adventures with Batman and friends, whupping ass in green short pants. He even formed a team of sidekicks, known as the Teen Titans along with Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Speedy. All teenagers struggling to live up to their “parents”. These perfect people who’s symbols they have taken as their own and sworn to uphold. Then something interesting happened. In 1984, in Tales of the Teen Titans #44, Dick Grayson debuted his Nightwing persona.

Dick Grayson had been growing up. Which is a thing yet again, never done in comics before. For some time now, a rift had been growing between the Dark Knight and his Squire. Dick had gone off to college, formed his own super-team, and was going through the typical growing pains of a young person trying to step out on their own. No longer feeling the identity of his 12 year old fancies were fitting, he picked an adult, darker name that still reflected and honored where where he came from (the origins of this name are toyed with and retconned, but the connections between Bats and Wings of the Night cannot be denied).

As Nightwing, Dick Grayson was his own man, ran his life and heroics how he saw fit, and most importantly, didn’t answer to Batman. Until Knightfall happened. In the events of this story, Bane broke Bruce’s spine, resulting in Bruce choosing a man named Jean-Paul Valley as the new Batman. Jean-Paul went nutso and nearly killed Bane and begun a reign of hyper-vigilante terror in Gotham, so Bruce badassed his way back to walking because comic books, and whupped his ass. Before restoring himself as the one true Batman, Bruce asked the one man qualified in all the world to take up the mantle to do so: Dick Grayson. Yet again, we have a comic book first: a legacy character fulfilling their legacy. This didn’t last long however, Bruce did what he had to do, and Dick dutifully (and reluctantly) filled in as long as required.

Nightwing then got a brilliant solo series by Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel, which to this day is probably the most influential run on the character. Before we move on in his publication history though, I think it’s important to understand WHO Dick is, and WHY he is. After all, what makes this 12 year old boy so special that he becomes Batman’s right hand man in a war on crime?

Richard John Grayson, aka Dick, was born to John and Mary Grayson of the legendary Flying Graysons of Haly’s Circus. The reason they were legendary was because they flew without the safety of a net. Dick grew up on the trapeze with no net. No fear, no cares in the world, except being a child star performer. After a mob boss tries to unsuccessfully extort money from the circus, they murder the Graysons by tampering with the trapeze before Dick’s very eyes. The young orphan was observed by another orphan in the crowd, Bruce Wayne, who took him in. It wasn’t really successfully explained why a 12 year old seemed okay to take out fighting crime until the two part episode of Batman: The Animated Series, Robin’s Reckoning. Like a young Bruce, Dick was consumed with his parents’ murder. Each night, unfulfilled by the guardianship of an absentee Bruce Wayne, Dick would sneak out and try to track down leads on his parents’ killer. Eventually he got in over his head and Batman bailed him out and returned him to the Batcave. This boy knew no fear. He would return to the streets night after night. He would get himself killed. Unless he was trained how to not die by a certain… bat themed expert at not-getting-killed-by-criminal-scum. Bruce revealed his identity to Dick, which also explained why he was busy so much of the time, and in the Batcave, Dick swore an oath by candlelight to uphold justice and everything Batman stood for. The training was gruelling. Probably inhumane. But eventually Dick was allowed to accompany Batman on the streets as his sidekick.

Dick Grayson was saved by Bruce Wayne. Where Bruce was in uncharted territory sorting his rage, vengeance, and pain, Dick Grayson had a guide. A Mentor. Someone who had been exactly where he was, and could keep him from being consumed by darkness. And that’s reflected in their uniforms. The bright boy and the dark man. Adding to that, the Wayne’s murderer got away. There will be no vengeance or justice for Batman, just a gaping wound. Dick got justice for his parents. He saw that what they did worked, and that he could keep doing it for other people. Whereas Batman is driven by a desire to hurt those who hurt others, Dick is here to help. That’s something Tom King wrote into his character over and over during his run, the words “how can I help”. And if you look at the jobs he’s held down since striking out on his own: Police Officer, Guidance Counselor, Personal trainer, even bartending at a cop bar where he could give these guys relief (as well as pick up some leads) are all acts of service towards others. Which when the time came, made him a very different Batman.

The time eventually came. Bruce Wayne was “dead” (as dead as anyone is in comics), and Gotham City was in chaos. Initially Bruce left instructions for Dick not to become Batman. Because Nightwing was strong enough. He was his own man and Bruce believed in what he was doing. However, Gotham needs Batman, the symbol. And for the first time truly, not just putting on the cape and cowl, but deep in his bones, Dick Grayson became Batman. Fulfilling the legacy. He is not Bruce Wayne, just like we cannot be Bruce Wayne, but he can do his best to live up to what the symbol of The Batman means to him, just like us. Which brings me to where Dick Grayson is the future of the cinematic Batman franchise.

Over the last few years, we are experiencing a massive shift in how our male heroes are percieved. In the 80s which gave birth to Dark Knight Returns, a huge influence on the DCEU Batman, we saw a trend of hypermasculinity in our heroes. They were JACKED, strong, fearless, .50 Cal from the hip, Macho Men, stoic badasses that were too busy punching out teeth and blowing shit up to feel sissy-ass feelings. And that is where Batman has lived for years in comic continuity. He doesn’t say I love you, he doesn’t hug, he doesn’t feel feelings, he’s a rage-powered badass dressed all in black that kicks in criminals’ kneecaps because he probably kind of likes it. At the end of the day, you read enough of these comics and question whether or not Batman is actually a good man. Is he doing this to save the day, or inflict pain? Probably some of both.

As we survey the current landscape of masculinity, of heroism, of feminism, it’s important to question our heroes. It’s important to question, is this the ideal that we want people to strive for? In Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, we saw that Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns in all his glory. In my opinion, Ben Affleck’s portrayal of Batman was my favorite thing about that film. He was deliciously brutal, he was stubborn in his righteousness, he was extreme in his methodology, he was....murdering people? He was losing himself. He was so caught up in his need for violence, his need for war that he attempted to murder superman with a freaking spear. I suspect Justice League was intended to have a more redemptive arc for the demon he had become, but in any case, he has still become a monster. He has dwelled in hell so long that he has become the very type of devil he sought to destroy.

The best thing for Bruce Wayne would be to leave this life behind somehow. Pass the cowl on to the man who he trained for this very purpose. A hero that exemplifies modern healthy masculinity. Who can say “I love you”, who wants to seek justice more than vengeance, who can maintain healthy friendships and relationships, who believes in kindness, friendship, and laughter. I think it is time for Dick Grayson to take his place in cinematic history as Batman.

That doesn’t even touch upon the fact that the DCEU Batman is around 45 years old. While incredible and imaginative, they’ve set him at a natural age to retire from jumping off rooftops and withstanding repeated head trauma. If you look at Batman as a pro athlete, you simply do not see them at his age and doing tremendously well. Which when your sport is dodging gunfire and acting as bait for super aliens so other super aliens can clobber them, is not great. I think DC Entertainment is looking for ways to have a more youthful Batman, and I believe Dick Grayson is part of that natural path.

And that doesn’t mean we won’t have Bruce Wayne stories. As the news has just dropped, Matt Reeves is telling his own young Bruce tales. But as far as the Batman that stands shoulder to shoulder with Wonder Woman, and Superman? Here we have a young man in Dick Grayson coming into his own as a hero on the world’s stage, just like Diana and Clark. A young man with the strategic mind of Batman, the physical training, the gadgets, resources, but without the blinding rage, pain, and cynicism. A superhero that looks at the world and wants to genuinely help people. Not out of a deep psychological need to harm those who harmed him, but because he was broken and then saved, and he can do that for other people. Being a good person is all the superpower you need. As a culture, I believe those are the heroes we need right now. And as for Dick Grayson, he’s a born showman, and I think it’s time for him to take the stage.

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aidenjaxwrites · 5 years

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Character Creation tag

Tagged by @ghostwriteblr Thanks a lot for tagging me!!

I’m going to do this for Pike, My lovely death baby!

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory etc…): oof damn I’m not even sure anymore. Whenever I think of characters so many things come at once and I have to scramble to get them down. I think the first thing that came to mind was a quote of theirs, about the many faces of death.

2. Did you design them with any other characters/OCs from their universe in mind?: Yes! Some of Pike’s design was created with Ala in mind, as they’re kind of supposed to have a bit of an opposites attract feel about them. In the end though, they’re much more similar than either of them expected, though I can’t share why yet.

3. How did you choose their name?: Im going to share this in a post about naming characters soon but I have a method I’ve come up with that is pretty common but I feel like I out my own twist on.

4. In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts?: I think the thing that most influenced pike would be the dark and depressing nature of the underworld. They grew up in a very toxic environment with only a few glances into the outside world, before they grew into a full god and started travelling on their own.

5. Is there any significance behind their hair color?: you guys don’t know their hair colour yet but yessss

6. Is there any significance behind their eye color?: possibly

7. Is there any significance behind their height?: their height changes constantly when they’re changing form, but more people would be surprised by their actual height.

8. What (if anything) do you relate to within their character/story?: toxic families, man.

9. Are they based off of you, in some way?: Nope. I just wanted to create a death character I would love with all my heart.

10. Did you know what the OC’s sexuality would be at the time of their creation?: Oh yeah. I created them in part to be this super panromantic polyamorous death god who was super sex positive and kind. Of course i knew they’d have lovers of all genders.

11. What have you found to be the most difficult about creating art for your OC (any form of art: writing, drawing, edits etc…): My art style is very inconsistent right now, so I struggle to have my characters look the same each time I draw them. That’s why I haven’t really posted any art of them yet.

12. How far past the canon events that take place in their world have you extended their story, if at all?: Oh damn. Well After the first book there’s at least another three, spanning through the next few years of the war. I haven’t decided much of their lives past that, but there’s a super high possibility of more books.

13. If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be?: It’s a must for people to know that Pike isn’t as mean as they seem, and also that they’re actually super smart.

14. What is something about your OC that can make you laugh?: the fact that she never stops flirting with ala honestly

15. What is something about your OC that can make you cry?: Their emotional vulnerability and discomfort with people seeing what they really look like.

16. Is there some element you regret adding to your OC or their story?: Nope.

17. What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC?: That they aren’t the cause of death. They are just the one who leads the deceased into the underworld once they pass.

18. What is your favorite fact about your OC?: How much they really care. Pike is such an amazing character and they care so much about everybody, whether they are human or god or monster. They aim to lead everybody into the underworld with a kind hand.

I’ll tag @illiteracy-is-for-woozles @incandescent-creativity @knox-novels @sancta-silje and @writings-of-a-narwhal

#godly #pike #ala #original characters #ocs #my ocs #wip #my wip #writeblr #work in progress #writing #am writing

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pumpkincentaur · 6 years

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Character Question Tag

I was tagged by @adiwritings! Thanks for the tag! I totally didn’t forget about this for ages. That doesn’t sound like me.

Rules: Answer the following questions for one of your characters and then tag ten people! I won’t actually be tagging people because that’s not a thing I do, but whatever. Rules were made to be broken.

I’ll be answering these questions for Lily Kayani from The Bodies Beneath, because she’s actually my oldest OC ever and she doesn’t get enough attention. Seriously, she’s like ten years old, which makes her more than half as old as I am at this point. She wasn’t always what she is now, though, that’s for sure.

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)? Because Lily is so ancient, answering this one is hard, but it was probably her backstory. She was inspired by a series of novels I really loved as a kid, so I gave her a suitably weird and magical backstory to fit in with that sort of universe. Now, her backstory is nowhere near what it was when she was first conceived. In TBB it’s just the fact that her mom is dead and her dad is neglectful. Also, she can control the weather. That part never changed.

2. Did you design them with any other characters/OCs from their universe in mind? Yes! I created Lily and Gabriel at the same time, so they’ve pretty much always influenced each other. Lily was always intended to be reckless where Gabriel was cautious and hot-headed where he was calm and rational. In their current iterations, they’re not opposites in that sort of way, but Lily has a certain naivety about the world that Gabriel lacks and is very much a “big picture” person, whereas he focuses on the little details.

3. How did you choose their name? I don’t remember. All I know is that her name used to be Luna. I don’t remember how I chose her last name, either, but she wasn’t always Lily Kayani. She was white once. That was a long time ago.

4. In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts? The tone of TBB played a big role in Lily’s rather grim family situation, as did the recurring theme of dysfunctional family relationships (seriously, no one in this book has a decent family life). As for her ability to control the weather, the fact that magic exists in a certain form in this universe but isn’t publicly acknowledged was huge–in her current iteration, Lily has no idea that she’s controlling the weather. As far as she knows, she has a knack for predicting it, but that’s not true. She’s deciding it, not predicting it. Magical gifts running in families as a mechanic in TBB plays a huge role in Lily’s lack of knowledge, because the relative she got her gift from is someone she’s never met.

5. Is there any significance behind their hair colour? Lily has red hair, like her late mother. There’s no real significance other than people thinking she really looks like Lenore because of it. Also, red hair is uncommon.

6. Is there any significance behind their eye colour? Her eyes are green, also like her mom’s. There’s no significance other than people thinking she looks like Lenore. Also, she has a blank stare that kind of creeps people out but that’s not really about her eye colour. She’d have that blank stare no matter what colour her eyes were.

7. Is there any significance behind their height? Not really. She’s super tiny, but so was Lenore, and Amar isn’t very tall, either. Mostly it just means Gabriel is gigantic compared to her.

8. What (if anything) do you relate to within their character/story? Not much about her story is very relatable, because I can’t control the weather, both my parents are alive, and I don’t have a twin brother who has capital P Problems, but some of her character is. Lily doesn’t understand people at all. That’s relatable as heck.

9. Are they based off of you, in some way? Because I was so little when I first created her, probably. It doesn’t feel as pronounced now. If anything, her introversion is slightly based off of me. She’s worlds apart from what she was when I first created her. Even since I first started writing she’s become a different person.

10. Did you know what their sexuality would be at the time of their creation? I was ten, so no. Eventually I decided I wanted her to fall in love with Gabriel, so I guess eventually I figured out she was straight. That changed a little bit over the years, but as of now she’s straight again. It doesn’t really count when I talk about Lily, though… in her current form she and Gabe have pretty much been married since kindergarten.

11. What have you found to be most difficult about creating art for your OC (any form of art: writing, drawing, edits, etc.)? None of it is really difficult. I don’t draw much anymore, but I never found her difficult to draw, and I have such a defined voice/feeling for her in writing that it isn’t a problem at all. She just has a certain way of saying and doing things and I know it very well.

12. How far past the canon events that take place in their world have you expanded their story, if at all? I actually have a concept for a follow-up novel that would function as something of a companion to TBB that involves Lily a fair bit. I wouldn’t call it a sequel, because it doesn’t follow up on most of the characters in detail, but it would take place after TBB and provide a story extension for a few key characters, Lily being one of them. I can’t say anything else because of spoilers.

13. If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be? One, the distinct voice I mentioned earlier. She has a way of talking and thinking that I have to keep in mind when I write her, or else it doesn’t feel like her. Two, she’s not likely to assume the worst and has a rather simple way of looking at things that colours the way she interacts with everything around her.

14. What is something about your OC that can make you laugh? When I think about how comical the height difference between her and Gabriel is (she’s 5′0″ and he’s 6′7″) I sometimes get a bit of a laugh.

15. What is something about your OC that can make you cry? Spoilers. It’s all [REDACTED].

16. Is there some element you regret adding to your OC or their story? Not really. She used to be a much different person, but she had to go through that to get to what she is now.

17. What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC? Lily’s story is set in stone (during the events of TBB, anyway), so there’s not much to discover about her anymore. Recently I’ve wondered what she’d look like with short hair, though. Right now she has incredibly long hair and short hair might suit her more?

18. What is your favorite fact about your OC? Lily is pretty much the antithesis of what everybody expected from her. Her mother was one of the children of the richest family in town, after all... I don’t know what people expected, but it sure wasn’t what they got, and Lily doesn’t care. She’s so rebellious that rebellion isn’t even rebellion for her. She doesn’t think of it as rebellion because she’s never considered conforming, and never really got the memo about what was expected of her in the first place.

As per usual, I’m tagging whoever sees this and wants to do it. This was a long one, but oh well! I haven’t talked about Lily in detail in... forever, and I certainly haven’t talked about her on this blog.

#long post #tag games #my writing #lily kayani

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midwifemilktrails · 7 years

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The Power of Suggestion

“Women deliver their own babies alone on the floor of small living rooms everyday...I felt like if they can do that why couldn't I?” In the months leading up to giving birth, Paula practiced Hypnobirthing affirmations and listened to guided visualizations to help her stay calm and focused during labor. She also planned to deliver in a hospital with midwives. As her due date approached, Paula’s skepticism of her achieving her desired birth experience in a hospital setting grew. After following her doula’s suggestion of switching to a birth center, Paula had almost exactly the birth experience she had known was possible - supported yet unassisted on the floor (at the birth center).

What had you known about childbirth prior to your own experience?

I was born and raised in the UK where mostly midwifery care and assisted births is the norm. Even in a hospital, the set up feels slightly less "medical" than it does in the US.

Oddly, in my teens I was very much of the mindset that giving birth sounded horrific and if I ever had a child I wanted all the drugs. But I think that was mostly due to the experience of my one 16-year-old friend who ended up with what seemed like a million stitches and a lot of screaming similar to what I had seen in the Hollywood films.

What was important to you in having a natural birth?

Once I was pregnant I became a crazed, birth research, junky and the more and more I learned the more an un-medicated birth seemed like the most stress-free, healthy and in terms of recovery (perhaps this sounds insane) the most likely pain-free option for both myself and the baby.

Talking to my mother who had both my sister and I naturally, it seemed obvious I would be able have a natural birth. By the third trimester there was no question of my capability and in my mind, an epidural or C-section was truly reserved for a medical emergency.

If I am being honest, I think this persistence of wanting a natural birth was mostly out of stubbornness. I felt like the more I learned about it all the more I perceived this pervasive fear of birth as really some crazy construct aimed at up-selling women's anxiety – and well I was like, ‘No, no, no!’

You were planning on giving birth at UCLA hospital with the midwives up until 35 weeks pregnant, what made you decide to have your baby outside of the hospital 'last minute'?

As I mentioned previously, in the U.K. hospital births tend to be a little less intense than those in the U.S. And in my opinion, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact the U.S system is for profit and the U.K. wants to keep costs down as it's part of universal healthcare.

So with this in mind, I felt like the hospital system would be fine. While I had great prenatal care with the UCLA midwives, as my due date loomed and I found out I couldn't give birth in water, I would need an IV (just because) and would be constantly monitored I felt more and more uneasy that I would be able to have anything close to the birth I wanted.

The last straw came when the suggestion was presented to schedule an induction at 39 weeks seemly for convenience. This made me high tail it outta' there and thankfully to Del Mar on the suggestion of my doula, Emma!

You chose to do Hypnobirthing for childbirth preparation. What was inspiring to you about a specific childbirth method like Hypnobirthing?

Hypnobirthing just seemed to make the most sense to me given that really most of labor (from what I had read) is about managing your anxiety and your breathing – two things at the core of Hypnobirthing.

Did you utilize the Hypnobirthing techniques in your labor and birth?

I'm not sure I managed to disappear into ‘a changing colored cloud of love’ [Hypnobirthing’s guided visualization of the colors of the rainbow to help with relaxation and calm], but as soon as my water broke I was very calm, and at no point was I scared.

Did you have any fears around giving birth?

Yes – the obvious fear of the unknown and the slight fear that something might go medically wrong. I was also a little scared of tearing, which reflecting back on it now, once the time came to do the repair after the birth I didn't really care about the stitches in my vagina at all!

You are originally from England and as a writer, you have traveled around the world quite a bit. Do you feel that fear around childbirth is a country specific cultural issue or deeply systemic to human kind – this fear of the great unknown?

I think being from the UK certainly gave me an advantage in trusting midwives and natural birth overall. I also think traveling to developing nations helped me gain some perspective of different cultural practices depending on what’s available to them.

Women deliver their own babies alone on the floor of small living rooms everyday and then pick up and go feed the family. I felt like if they can do that why couldn't I in the ideal environment?

We are very lucky in the Western world but I also think that birth is over-medicalized in many ways. A pregnant woman isn’t sick – she is giving life!

Can you tell me about your birth?

Haha! My birth was a little surreal. Before I gave birth, I read on some dumb blog if you stood naked under a full moon and rubbed your belly it would induce labor.

At 38 weeks there was a full moon, so I decided to give it a go. Afterwards, I went to bed to read a book and 10 minutes later my water broke. I called Del Mar and at that time, around 12:30 am, I was having mild cramping every 10 minutes or so. Jen, the midwife, told me to call back when the contractions were strong and coming every 4 minutes for at least an hour.

Within 30 minutes the contractions felt pretty intense. I wasn't sure if I was just being wimpy, but all I could do was ball up every time a contraction came on. An hour later, the contractions were every 3-5 minutes and I felt I needed to go in.

I arrived at Del Mar around 3:30 am. Jen checked my cervix (I was 6 cm dilated), ran me a bath and checked the baby’s heart rate. My boyfriend turned on my Hawaiian lullaby music and a few minutes later Emma, my doula, arrived.

If I'm honest, once Emma got there everyone but her disappeared from my consciousness. I was in the tub at that point, but then had to get out as the baby's heart rate was a little high, possibly from me overheating. So I moved to the floor with my elbows leaning on the edge of the bed.

At this point, I had a little gas and air [nitrous oxide] to cope with the contractions and was feeling pretty hazy. I just remember Emma in front of me, holding my hand, reminding me of my breathing. At this point, all was very calm.

Jen checked in with me about what I was feeling and how I was doing and popped out for a minute to check in on another mother. My boyfriend went to the car to warm up as the birth room was freezing (apparently) as everyone thought I had hours to go before birth as I hadn't even started to feel the urge to push yet.

However, as everyone left Emma looked at me and gently said, “It's just us now. You can relax.” As she said this, I can only liken the feeling to suddenly needing to poop. So I just followed my body and one push was the baby’s head and the second was her body and ta da! Emma ran around behind me and picked up this naked human – my newborn baby – off the floor. (It was certainly a bonding experience as she is also a close friend and the first person our daughter, Luna, ever saw!)

On hearing my baby cry, Jen raced in and she and another midwife moved me onto the bed and placed Luna on my chest. Emma went outside and knocked on the car window to let my boyfriend know he was now a father!

That is a very fast labor (under 5 hours) and to go to from 6 cm to birth in less than 2 hours! What was your mental state like in labor?

I was just super internal.

I apparently thanked everybody for coming and asked if they were hungry, but I really didn't have a sense of time or what was happening outside of my body. I was just breathing through each new contraction.

How did you best cope with the contractions?

Really deep, low breathing. Once I arrived at Del Mar and Jen suggested I hum to keep my breathing sounds low everything just seemed to click into place. I literally hummed through my whole labor.

There were a few times I slightly panicked and caught my breath but Emma just helped me through the next breath and then I'd be back on track.

What do you think contributed to your fast labor and birth?

I followed ALL of the advice: raspberry leaf tea, 6 dates a day, walked and walked. I also went to a chiropractor to make sure the baby and I were in the best possible alignment.

You basically had the most natural birth one can have - hands off and unassisted except with the help of your friend/doula who scooped your baby up moments after she was born. How do you feel after experiencing something like that?

It was sort of magical! It was the most accomplished I think I've ever felt and the most at peace – like everything was where it was meant to be.

What can you compare the experience of giving birth to?

Um, it's hard. But I guess similar to period cramps in so much as you know it hurts but it's not bad for you. But it was also euphoric and spiritual in a way I hadn't quite expected it to be.

Do you feel there were other events in your life that properly prepared you for the journey that is giving birth?

I'd say on the whole I'm pretty fearless of the big stuff (I'll worry about the small things, like saying the right thing or not being perceived in the right way.) But I lost my dad when I was 20-years-old and had quite a turbulent childhood – I moved to different countries, lived in 5 different cities and got married and divorced before 30. So I feel I'm ready for what the universe wants to throw at me!

Has your birth experience been influential within your community of women and expectant mothers?

Yes! I feel like I'm a little evangelical now in so much as I want to encourage all my peers to be less fearful and more positive in anticipating their experience giving birth. I've also become a resource on natural birth for lots of friends of friends and that feels really special to be able to help them make informed choices.

Some would say that giving birth is also a rebirth for the woman. How has giving birth changed or affected you?

It's made me feel stronger and braver for sure. Also, more in touch with my body as a thing rather than just for looks!

What would be your sage advice or wisdom to impart on other women and mothers?

We are made to do this and you are so much more powerful than you give yourself credit for.

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niamhhannaho-blog · 7 years

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Interviews

WILL F Tell me about yourself?

Having grown up in an ex-pat family, I had the opportunity to live in Asia and Europe. I have always been creative whether its art, music, film or fashion. After failing handsomely at school and barely making it into University I realised education wasn’t for me, after dropping out of University and having the opportunity to work in advertisement and film for some time I decided to co-found a creative agency. Since then I have had the opportunity to work with some the UK’s most influential people and brands, aiming to share my thoughts and knowledge with other millennial and the older demographic.

In your opinion what are the stereotypes of millennials?

I think my understanding of the millennial stereotype is that millennials have created a new culture and behaviour that has not been recognised before. I think we are categorised as a dysfunctional, unmotivated and unwilling generation that is incredibly selfish.

I do believe that is a statement that targets millennials collectively however I feel its only a certain categorisation off that generation who live up to the stereotype. I do feel with the move in the digital world millennial's are creating new and imaginative ways to work, In a lot of peoples eyes I think due to it being unconventional, its seen as wrong.

What does it mean to be a millennial?

I think there are many answers to this question, although “millennial” is a term for the generation born in between the 80’s and early 2000’s. Its seen today as more of a categorisation of the “future”. Being the most connected generation, I feel we are the most progressive out of any other previous generation. Having more opportunities, more freedom and defiantly more of a creative mindset I think that Millennial’s have recently started to disrupt and question convention which in my mind is progress for the future to come. We’ve always been told to be unique however convention tells us not to, I feel we are the first generation that has done exactly that.

What inspires you?

People. A lot of people will generically say art, fashion, music or culture. Which is all great, but I believe that the source of those mediums are the most inspirational subjects. To me a persons story is the most valuable knowledge or inspiration you can obtain, because unless they write a book about their life you will never have the chance again to hear it.

If you could impact something significantly within society what would it be?

I believe the biggest fault in society today is people not listening to one another, especially between young and old generations. I would love to see more members of the younger generation being able to make decisions that can impact our societies.

If you had one piece of advice to give to other millennial what would it be?

A really important word to me is self-awareness, I think so many people lie to themselves about who they are. Until that person understands who they are as a person and acknowledges their identity and values, they won’t be happy with anything they do.

Do you think you fit the stereotype of millennial’s?

Absolutely!

Why?

I believe being unconventional and creative is exactly what it is to be a millennial, I like to think I do exactly that every day. LIZZIE

Give a bit of an intro about yourself (not part of the question but literally talk about anything uni school travelling your freelance illustration)

I’m Lizzie, I’m 23 and I’m currently living and working in Wellington, New Zealand. I had an idyllic upbringing and was always academically bright, but way more interested in art. My family were always super supportive but I felt a lot of pressure growing up to achieve and be perfect. I went to Uni to study graphic design, but got very disillusioned and ended up dropping out in my 3rd year. I moved to New Zealand and converted a van which I travelled and lived in for 6 months, it was pure freedom. I’ve recently got back into illustration and won a poster competition for the street art collective Vivid Wellington, I’ve met a bunch of local artists and it’s been so inspiring. I’ll be moving back to England in July to study as a tattoo apprentice.

What does it mean to you to be a millennial?

I think we’re in this weird transitional generation, we’re the first kids to grow up with technology dominating our lives, we’re at the forefront of unexplored territory and we’re just trying to figure it out. The truth is that the world is entirely run by the post-war generations, they’ve had an incredible impact on the world physically and economically, it was all about this ethic of working hard your whole life, contributing to society, everything has to be bigger, better, newer. As a generation I think we’re questioning this, we’re less motivated by money, more creative and forward thinking, and in a growth driven society this can be easily misinterpreted as being ‘lazy’. I think in general we’re tolerant, emotionally intelligent and amazingly bright. We’re opening up about sexuality, race, gender, mental health…we have all these great ideas we’re just struggling to find a platform for our ideas to be heard.

What inspires you?

Mostly people, I find people fascinating. I try not to rely on inspiration when I’m drawing, you can end up staring at a blank page for a long time if you do. Inspiration comes from practice, trying everything - new ideas come from that. It took me a long time to realise! I’m definitely inspired by self-makers, that DIY aesthetic and attitude. Counter-culture, punk, hip-hop, ravers, street art, drag queens, comics, nature…oh and smut - Lots of smut.

If you could impact something significantly within society what would it be?

That’s a tough one. I’d like to get people to question what’s going on around them, not just accept the way things are. That’s the first step to changing things. We’ve thought the same way for so long, we need a new perspective. I’d love to see women’s ideas come into consideration, I think we could really use a feminine approach.

If you had one piece of advice to give to other millennials what would it be?

Be yourself! It’s cheesy but I think it’s so important to do your own thing when everybody around you is trying to make you into something else. Lead by example. And love yourself, that’s very important.

Do you think you fit the stereotype of millennials and why yes or no

I’m going to be annoying and say yes and no, I’ve definitely been guilty of feeling entitled, I’ve only recently started to understand the value of hard work, and working hard for yourself too. I try and keep away from the trappings of social media…most people I know don’t seem to fit the stereotype. It’s going to be harder for us to coast through life with wages and housing prices being what they are. I could definitely work harder though.

SOPHIE RISCH

Give a bit of an intro about yourself?

My name is Sophie Rischmiller, I am 18 years old. I am a full time student at Bournemouth University, an Affiliate Marketer taking my foundation certificate in marketing at The Chartered Institute of Marketing and the owner of a startup marketing agency called Social Zest.

In your opinion what are the stereotypes of millennials?

Millennials are constantly stereotyped as not really experiencing life because they are always looking at social media or things online. We have been bought up in the digital era so everyone assumes we don’t really know how to communicate, which isn’t the case. Because we spend time online older people thing we are lazy, under motivated and introverted.

What inspires you?

I am inspired by young entreprenuers documenting their life online and giving valuable advice to younger people or people they same age as them - other millennials! They inspire me to be motivated and better myself in everything that I do.

What does it mean to you to be a millennial?

Being a millennial means being at the forefront of the digital era, we have the power to create communities and influence people like never before. If we use the tools we have been given, growing up in a smarter society, I think we can really make a positive difference.

If you could impact something significantly within society what would it be? In other words what is an issue that is close to your heart?

One thing I would choose to impact would be mental health in young people, there are so many amazing charities working hard to correct mistakes that previous generations made - for example making it difficult for people to talk about their sexuality or for men to talk about their feelings openly. I think that this new generation is far more advanced and accepting of everyone so we have the ability to encourage those with mental health issues to feel they have a voice and that they are not alone.

If you had one piece of advice for other millennials what would it be?

My advice for millennials would be to say yes to every opportunity you are given, we have all the resources to succeed given to us by this new digital age so it would be wrong of us not to utilise them.

MARIE

Tell me about yourself?

Okay, so my names Marie, Marie La - Anyane. I’m not French, even though my name sounds French. Im 100% Ghanaian. I am an abstract artist and I run a fashion blog. And thats pretty much it, I just paint during my free time, do some artwork. I edit a lot of photos and I have a little taste for photography. I don't take all of the photos for my blog myself, but I do edit them. I just quit my job of three or four years. Im hoping to get an internship within fashion. I don't want to settle for something which isn't related to what I want for my future which is get a career within the fashion industry. So if its not something thats not dear to my heart I'm not going to settle and just do that to kill time.

What does it mean to you to be a millennial?

I mean we are the generation that made money out of youtube, theres people making thousands on instagram every single day and back in the day our parents probably thought we were crazy for just being on platforms like Facebook. And now people are getting paid just to post a photo and just to advertise. So I mean we should be proud of that, and we are making so many changes in the world. We have had some of the biggest protests and marches in history and thats just us!

What inspires you?

My culture and my play on colours. I think my background inspires me, being Ghanaian using colours in our everyday life and all celebrations use a lot of colour so thats really where I get my inspiration. I have never been able to draw certain things and so because of that I often take an abstract stance, because thats what works for me.

If you could impact something significantly within society what would it be? In other words what is an issue that is close to your heart?

I don’t think I can personally impact society as a whole, but I can work with people to make changes. Going to protests and letting the government hear what we have to say, because I cant do that on my own.

If you had one piece of advice for other millennials what would it be?

I think we shouldn't let the negative comments and negative views by previous generations affect us, because we have achieved a lot, we are going to achieve a lot. I know its the social media age but we have achieved so much just through that. Its crazy you don't even have to go and watch the news anymore you just have to go on twitter! I mean Donald Trump is tweeting and he's probably part of the generation that thinks that we are not doing anything with our lives and all we know is social media. So I think we should just look at it as a positive thing, we have done so much for ourselves and we should be proud!

DANIEL BOOTH

Tell me about yourself?

Okay so my names Daniel Booth, I run MPR Communications which is a PR and social media company. We handle, publicity and brand relations for celebrities, influences, professional athletes, high profile individuals. We also do PR for brands and we do social media for brands as well. I started it four years ago, and yeah its going well. We work with musicians, athletes, models, presenters, footballers, rugby players, golfers. So I have been working in the industry for probably about seven or eight years now. So I started out in fashion PR and beauty, peddling Chanel lipstick, Champneys and stuff like that. And then I did whats called agency hopping, so each six months to a year id move to a different agency, and slowly worked from beauty to fashion. Ive worked numerous London fashion weeks, which is stressful to say the least. And then from there I hopped into entertainment and sports. As I say yeah about four years ago I was made redundant from my last agency. I came into work one morning, by 9:15 I was in the boss’ office and he basically just said sorry we have no money this will be your last day. They couldn't even afford to pay me for the rest of that day. So the second I stepped out of the front door I was wondering round London on my phone sending emails, texts and phone calls to see if anyone had a job for me. And it was happening to everybody, because it was around the time the financial crash hit and businesses sort of panicked. So I moped around for about a week, I was super stressed out because I had never been out of work. I never went to university and I sort of lounged around the house for a week wondering what to do. And my problem was that I wasn't good at anything else, the reason I got into PR was because I'm good with people. I can talk to anybody. So my girlfriend said to me you just need to get up and go back out there, so I did. And for the last sort of two years of my agency career I saw how they didn’t really care about the clients. It was just the case of how much money you pay us defines how much time and attention we will give you. I didn’t like that because I mean we had clients for instance that were paying close to £10,000 per month and then you had a little designer that was absolutely phenomenal but all she could afford was £1,500 per month and she would get nothing. And like that is still money, that that person is paying out of their own pocket but just because its not big enough for the agency, they don't get anything. So I decided to make that my mantra, that we were going to work with everybody and anybody, if they were talented of course. And it didn’t matter what their budget was, we would make it work. So far its going alright.

In your opinion what are the stereotypes of millennials?

Well ever since you reached out to me I've had all these articles, about millennials and to be honest its all the same. They are self entitled, they don't want to work, they are narcissistic,all they care about is what their instagram looks like and all that sort of thing. But to a certain extent theres a minority that are exactly like that. But i think for the grand scale of millennials, its completely wrong. I mean I meet people everyday who are your age, my age and they are driven people. I mean the thing is millennials face so many issues that no other generation has had to face, I mean today you can at 21 years old you can be a millionaire. You can create an app and it can get picked up overnight and all of sudden your a millionaire and theres so many different opportunities and avenues that people can go down and its confusing for a lot of people. I mean my younger brother is 21 and he's in uni studying fine art and if you ask him what he wants to do he has got no idea. He just wants to do something in art because thats what he likes, and its not because he's lazy, its not because he cant be bothered, its because there are so many options and its one of those things i mean when i was at school like forever ago now, when it came to career day they said be electricians, be plumbers, be carpenters, be a fireman, a police officer because all those are in need at the minute. And the thing is, everybody went after those jobs and now they are over planned. Millennials have come to a realisation that you know what you don't have to break your back to earn a decent living. I mean me, if you ask any of my family what I do, they have no idea, they literally don't have a clue. Millennials i think are misunderstood massively, they get the raw end of the deal i think. I mean theres a lot of stuff they have to put up with and get through, I mean most people wont ever own their own house and all that sort of thing. I read an interesting article the other day where the title was the 20k somethings and it basically said that millennials are the generation that are happy to earn 25 - 27k for the rest of their life as long as they have experiences. So they get to go travelling, they get to swim with dolphins they get to go look for humpback whales and all that sort of thing. They would rather have these big experiences in life than have massive amounts of money. Now my question is why is that such a bad thing? Theres people that get by on less than 25 grand a year, i mean a lot of them do struggle but you can make it work! I mean I know somebody, who him and his other half, between them earn 45,000 a year, they are happy. They’ve got a house, they have a car, they go on eight holidays a year but the thing is they both work remotely and they both work remotely so they can have that life because they are able to do that. I don't see what the big deal is. I mean my mum when I was younger she was like don't get tied down too young, go travelling, go see the world. I mean my mum had me when she was 22 years old, she was married when she was like 21 so her whole thing for me and my brother and my sister was go see the world don't get stuck into your career or anything. I mean I slightly ignored her. Its the way it is.

What inspires you?

Potentially failing, I don't like to loose, ever. I am one of the most competitive people ever. I don't let it show too often but if i loose inside me its like argh, i hate it. So yeah I think failing, theres a constant drive there to prove that you can do it.

If you could impact something significantly within society what would it be? In other words what is an issue that is close to your heart?

For me, i mean I started working with women football players when i first started working for myself. Because it was an up and coming game. And I was lucky enough to get one client at chelsea football club and the ladies train at the same place as the mens football team and on my second visit, when I went down to the training ground. but i think one thing I'm passionate about is helping women sport. The thing is in all sports the women train as hard if not harder than the men because they have to. They are constantly fighting against society saying. Footballs a mans game, women shouldn't be playing rugby, women that play sports look like lesbians, i mean what does a lesbian look like? So I think it would definitely be womens sport, I think there needs to be more understanding about it, there needs to be more promotion for it. There needs to be more commercial drive behind it. I mean the thing is a bit of insight the top top england womens football players in salary a year, not a week, a year get paid £30,000 per year. Now I've got players that i work with that are 17 years old that get that a week, so i mean now its becoming that they can earn more from commercial deals and that sort of thing but even then, brands aren't willing to pay that kind of money. One of the girls I work with was on the same campaign as joe hart the goalkeeper, she got paid i think it was like 6% of what he got paid, it was minuscule. And it needs to be a lot fairer, it needs to be on the same level for men and women. Women sport is massive and its growing every year. I mean i like to think that I'm helping but I'm still not having the impact that i want to have, thats definitely where I would go.

If you had one piece of advice for other millennials what would it be?

Do the grunt work. The thing is, this is no joke, i get about 30 emails a day requesting jobs, internships from people my age and younger. And occasionally when I'm feeling generous, ill go and meet them see what they are about, see how they fit. I mean I've only ever met one person who has been happy to do the back breaking work, to go grab coffee and this sort of thing. And unfortunately she's moved back to the states and she worked with me for 6 months. She was studying law and came over here as part of her degree and she just wanted an insight into the sports world, she's passionate about sport she loves football. So i met with her and straight away you could tell, you know what this girl has got something special about her, she is willing to go the extra mile and honest to god when she left it felt like I had lost my left arm because she was there and she preempted anything that I ever could have needed. Im still in contact with her now, I consider her a friend. But I meet people every day that literally just want to walk into a job, they have come straight out of uni and they have gone right okay I want 30,000 a year I want my own office and I want 5 projects a year to work on.Its like, the world doesn't work like that, and this is where i feel millennials as a whole get a bad name because of some of the people that are like that. I mean for me I interned in fashion and beauty PR for almost a year. I wasn't paid, I was working 16 hour days, I was working for fashion week, when id finished work I was asking if I could go to the events with the PR managers and they would party till like 3 - 4 o clock in the morning. And id stay out with them, id meet people. But as i say as up till now after 4 years I've only ever met one person that was willing to do that. I mean one kid i actually met he came to me and was like, I want 45,000 a year, and i want to work from anywhere in the world. And I just looked at him and was like mate, really? Like thats the first thing your gonna say to me? And he was from a very privalliged background and he had it installed in him that that is the way it is. You walk in and demand what you want and somebody will give it to you. And its like i said to him, you have no position you've just come straight out of uni. I think he had studied something like talent management. Some obscure degree that in the grand scheme of things doesn't mean a lot. And I said to him right, name me five people right now that you could call and you could get one of my clients into this event, that event or on that tv show. And he said well I don't have any. So I said well then come back to me when you do. Because thats what it is in my job and in a lot of jobs its about the connections that you have with people. The relationships that you have. Its being able to call on those people at a moments notice you know you can pick up that phone and say I need help and them say okay what can i do. And thats what its about and you get that from doing the interning, the working for free, the making coffee and all that sort of thing. It sounds degrading, but you learn a lot from it. Its the one time in your life when you can actually just sit there and soak up everything. I learnt more in my first two weeks interning, than I did in my entire school life. The thing is I wasn't academic, i never have been, i didnt like the thought of having to study. Now I read more books than i ever did when i was in school. Im always reading I'm always learning I'm always trying to better my knowledge of PR, social media, the digital landscape, marketing, everything. But its because I'm studying something i love and its completely different. When you start reaserching things about something you really love it becomes addictive. If you work in something like design, or digital or something like that because it grows so rapidly that you cant keep up. I think thats the advice that i would give to anybody. Just do that work, be a sponge. If you can get 5 minutes with i don't know if you wanted to be a football agent for instance, if you can get even five minutes with a professional football agent that has been in the industry. Just sit and listen to them for five minutes. Just ask them one question and then just sit and listen because you will learn so so much. So that a the advice.

Do you think you fit the stereotype of a millennial?

Well my jacket and hightop converse would say yes. I would probably say yeah. I mean if you had said to me when i was 15/16 years old, you will be working for yourself, you'll be working with the England rugby team all these cool people. I mean i would have laughed in your face. You say am I a millennial stereotype i mean yeah because in the grand scheme of things millennials have this mind set that they can do absolutely anything and yeah thats me.

GENEVIEVE SWEENY

Tell me about yourself?

I have been knitting since i was 5 and I used to live in Europe with my parents, I sort of followed them around with work so I used to sit in the back of the car knitting all the time because my nan taught me to hand knit. So i did that, I hand knitted all the time sort of secretly for like 11 years, until i met a girl at Nottingham trent who was doing a degree in knitwear and i was like omg this is amazing. So that then kind of really started my path. Because I was doing this thing that i loved doing but i didn’t really know how to apply it. Then I did a four year degree at Nottingham trent which was amazing we learnt about the machinery and actually how to make something which was really cool. And i did a year in industry in my third year, so i went to work with a really creative consultancy that did kind of swatches, which back then in the 90’s were really big. So companies like m&s would buy like 20 of them and it would cost like £600 for a swatch which was like crazy money. Then after the recession hit that kind of industry died a bit. So yeah I worked for them which was amazing like really creative and explorative and we did loads of exhibitions like in Shang Hai and florence and things which was amazing. And they also gave me sponsorship for my final collection, so i had like cashmere to knit with for my final collection, which was crazy! and i didnt even think about it too much then i was just like yeah ill have all the colours, now I'm like wow that was like the most luxurious collection in the world. After that I went to work for m&s and new look which was like just three months in each but it was amazing to see a real high street but fashion thats run from figures. To me being at uni and being in this creative world i was like what the hell, it was a real eye opener but a kind of good understanding of the connectivity. So yeah finished my degree, got a first which was cool. I specialised in menswear, so then i was selected to go to a trade show in Shang Hai to show my collection and also to do some work for wgsn to do some swatches and things. And there i met kind of randomly all the people id end up working for in the future which was really weird. I met a gentlemen who was an agent for rag and bone and he said they were looking for a menswear designer, so literally as soon as i got back i called them up and was like do you fancy interviewing me. Then a month later I was on a flight. So the march after graduating i went out and was the menswear assistant. The role kind of ended up changing and i was doing menswear and womenswear but it was amazing working for a really creative, contemporary brand. And it was before they had this recent investment, so there was kind of no budget, an endless amount of money and no restrictions. So yeah it was crazy you could find like three hundred pieces for spring, just for knitwear and I think only like eight went on the catwalk so it was a crazy amount of work. And then i got head hunted by Hugo Boss and i was offered a job in switzerland which was a lot more technical, kind of more the development, production side. But i always wanted to do my own thing, but i kind of never really, knew what wholesale price was, how would i actually manufacture something and do kind of quality control. So I took the job because i felt it was the next step to me building up my knowledge and working on something that i didnt really know anything about. So I lived in Italy and commuted to switzerland every day, and it was just an incredible job, I literally did everything from sketch to production. So I would work with a freelance designer who was based in london and she would give me all her concepts and i would go and work in this like knit lab, where they had all this machinery that they taught me to programme. So id kind of come up with ideas for her and then i would look after the product all the way through photo sampling production. I spent a lot of time in Turkey, in factories testing out lots on things. So i did a lot of travelling it was amazing, it was such a broad view of the industry. Since then different roles I've had are very split you would have like 8 people doing that one job. So that was the kind of main thing. But i looked after the Boss green, which was sports knitwear, so it was quite small only about 40 pieces per collection. So for my second job it was quite manageable. Then i got engaged and felt like I had to move back to England so i did a quick stint at burberry kids wear. That was mainly computer work so i didn’t really last long there. And then I went to Lyle and Scott to work on there scottish programme they wanted to bring the knitwear back to scotland, my role was to look after the knitwear team and build back the relationship with scotland. So as i moved back to England I decided i wanted to get my studio back and kind of wherever i went I had like a car full of yarn and i wanted the big machines. So i went on eBay and bought these really old machines that were up in scotland and drove up there and met this amazing old man who was in his 80s. I got chatting to him and found out that his nephew was a hand tartan knitter but lost his job in the 80s and actually all his family members used to work in the mills. So we went to th pub and i met a few other people and i met some people with more machines. That sort of really started the beginning of my brand, I just felt so awful that there were all these amazingly skilled people that were now like bus drivers. They were cutting lengths of this imported woollen fabric and then calling it scottish fabric. It just felt really awful. So i decided to do a couple of projects with them because there style was like really 80s so I said if you want to work with new brands you need a bit of an update. So yeah we were working on a design and we ended up having like 5 pieces by the end of it and i was like gosh this is the start of my collection, but that was all happening whilst i was working for lyle and scott which ended up using no scottish knitwear because they couldn't afford it and ended up doing a lot more stuff in Italy. And then Ian got made redundant and I got really jealous so i quit my job as well and took the plunge. So it kind of felt like everything had come into piece but it did take about 18 months to find the right supplier and just get an understanding of where i wanted my work to be in the market and if there was a market for it. But actually a lot of the manufacturers in the midlands wouldn't work with me because they wanted like 400 pieces. But like even at lyle and scott we wouldn't order 400 pieces for some like fashion pieces. So even in scotland I could find people to knit it but not to put it together. So i had to go through this like interview process with one of the manufacturers but i think he had been so screwed over by young designers in the past that he was just like over cautious. So i literally drove up there and met him and he was like okay we can work together and then i drove back again. Yeah so it took a while but it kind of worked out. So i launched in september 2015 and worked with a really amazing range of manufacturers, so id design everything here in house and then often hire a machine to test out ideas for patterns and things and then gove the production to them. They are such an amazing manufacturer they are all kind of like family run. I feel like they are more invested in what your doing and kind of look after you more, where as the factories and especially when i worked in factories abroad its just all about numbers and margins and your killing yourself over 10p. Where as I've got more of an understanding of how much they do and how much stuff costs so I'm quite like, I see the value in what they do and vice versa.

In your opinion what are the stereotypes of millennials?

I feel like it changes every five or ten years. Like a lot of the younger millennials don't drive at the moment which i find crazy. But i don't know if its because now things are a lot more accessible, like when i was 17 i learnt to drive because it was the only way i would be able to get out and do something. So i don't know maybe with the internet changing its more accessible now.

What inspires you?

Inspiration comes a lot from archetecture, so could be the structure or patterns in plaster. It seems to be a lot from archetecture or sometimes ariel views or kind of natural patterns. Its definitely always something that breaks and repeats, thats sort of always the theme.

If you could impact something significantly within society what would it be? In other words what is an issue that is close to your heart?

For me its the whole made in britian, sustainability and slow fashion. So i support made in Britain because it brings jobs to the area. We have got this amazing skill set thats really dying out. So the hand knitter i work with he's the youngest that we both know and he's 52 years old. So for me its really important to keep these skills going. And theres a lot of factories that have started employing people from China and stuff which is fine but also their way of linking and construction is different to the scottish way. So slight things, and like how you wash a jumper. Its really done by learning and its not just a program you put in its kind of like a sixth sense so those parts of the made in britain i really want to keep going and support. And then also on the other side the slow fashion is a really important issue. So not having fast fashion like in the last couple of months but having something that will last 10-15 years and will reduce the environmental impacts.

If you had one piece of advice for other millennials what would it be?

I think networking is really important, reaching out to other people weather its more mentors and people that you aspire to. Or even just like peers, people in the same situation or going through the same things, i find it so helpful to talk to other designers.

What does it mean to you to be a millennial?

I guess the opportunity that you've got from technology, I feel very lucky to have that. To be able to have a business that reaches america and hong kong, thats amazing. I cant imagine how i would really be able to do something without it just being local.

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goodra-king · 5 years

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Transcript of Developing Habits to Become a Master Influencer

Transcript of Developing Habits to Become a Master Influencer written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jason Harris. He is the CEO of award-winning creative agency Mekanism and the co-founder of the Creative Alliance. But he’s also the author of a book we’re going to talk about today called The Soulful Art of Persuasion: The 11 Habits That Will Make Anyone a Master Influencer. So Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason Harris: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

John Jantsch: When I first got sent this book, I was a little nervous because if I’m going to develop 11 new habits, how many habits am I going to have to break?

Jason Harris: Well, you know, some of those habits-

John Jantsch: I mean bad habits. I mean, of course.

Jason Harris: Of course bad habits, but some of those habits you’re already going to naturally be good at. So yeah, hopefully it’s not too taxing.

John Jantsch: So, let’s define… you and I were talking before we started the show, especially in the context of the way business is done today. What actually is a master influencer?

Jason Harris: So you know, I define master influencer… it’s a great question because you typically, sometimes when you hear the word word influencer in the marketing advertising sector, you think of someone on YouTube or someone using social media to make a point or build an audience. But to me, we’re all influencers in our own way and every day we have these micro inflection points of persuasion, whether it’s at work and you’re getting someone to buy off on your idea or an interview where you’re landing a job. Or you’re trying to convince your significant other to take a vacation you want to take, or your kids to get ready for school, or your teacher to take your assignment late.

Jason Harris: Whatever it might be, in all walks of life we’re all sort of having these micro moments of persuasion all day long. And to me the idea is that any one of us can get better at influencing the people we’re trying to win over by these learned behaviors or habits. And so to me, an influencer, all of us are influencers in one way or another. All of us are persuading all day long and we can be better or worse depending on our viewpoint.

John Jantsch: So I like that you use habits because I think a lot of people think about influence and they quickly go to techniques and tricks and tips even. But let me ask you this, so while I like the idea of habits, I think some people might question what is soul got to do with it?

Jason Harris: So soul to me is the crux of the whole book, but to me it’s the foundation of how you move through influence and how you move through these habits because soul to me is the idea that you’re coming at it from a place of authenticity and from your true core and from your belief system, and you’re being a true persuader by building trust. And to me, soul is all about your character and what you stand for, and without that persuasion and these habits could come across as sales gimmicks. But if it’s coming from who you are as a core, that soulful piece is the piece that makes it different.

John Jantsch: So sometimes people learn better this way. What would you say the soulful art of persuasion is not?

Jason Harris: It is not? I don’t think it’s that… it’s not a book on how to close a quick deal or make a quick sale. It’s not an always be closing book. That’s what it’s not.

John Jantsch: All right, so let’s dig into a couple of them. You break the 11 habits into four practices or behaviors. I’m forgetting-

Jason Harris: I call them principles.

John Jantsch: Principles, right. So the first one, be original, which of course is not an original thought necessarily, right? I mean everybody kind of gets that. But I think what I love about the way you’ve broken it down is it’s one of those things that it’s such a puzzle. I mean, how do I be original? Okay. You be yourself. Well that’s not very original. Or that’s not very creative or that’s not very whatever I say it is. So how do you get this? And we love these words like authenticity and things today. I mean, how do we actually do this?

Jason Harris: Well, the founding concept behind being original is that you’re coming from a place of honesty and you’re giving people a real glimpse of yourself. Your unique personality, your idiosyncrasies. You wear those on your sleeves or sleeve, I should probably say. But it’s about understanding who you are, and if you don’t fundamentally know why you’re different than everyone else, and it’s that famous Oscar Wilde quote, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken,” that’s at the core of it.

Jason Harris: And it all starts, the principle and the habits falling underneath that principle all start with you leaning into your true character and you shouldn’t have a work persona or a school persona, and then your real personality comes out when you’re with your three closest friends. The idea of being original is that you’re always coming from this authentic place and people understand who you are, what makes you tick.

Jason Harris: You lean into all of those characteristics on all of those things that make you different. So that’s at the heart of it. And there’s more ways that I talk about in the book of how you can do that, like storytelling. The persuasive power of storytelling is one of those, and that’s really all about understanding stories from your life that made you the person that you are. It’s about talking about role models that inspired you and why. It’s talking about… even pop culture movies and books that speak to you, and the reason why they speak to you. Those are all part of… makes up who you are as a person.

John Jantsch: I think there’s a lot of pressure on people to not be themselves because let’s face it, some people feel like, “I’m not that influential. I’m not that interesting. The real me is kind of boring, so I have to put on a mask and be the influential me.” So what do you say to that person that feels like, “Hey, no, I have to have this different game when I’m in front of the team and I’m trying to sell them.”

Jason Harris: I think that’s patently untrue. I think people, even if you find that your real personality might be a little bit boring. I think you would lean into the fact that you’re more of a stoic person by nature or you’re more straight forward, but sort of play that up, like lean in and push as hard as you can on the things that you’re trying to avoid. People today have a really, really good bullshit detector, and so if you’re putting on a mask and you’re trying to win over your team by acting in a way that you aren’t really, because people see you at work, they’re going to know who you are in your real life. I think that will go against soulful persuasion because you’re being an actor and unless you’re a really hell of a good actor, it’s not going to be coming from an authentic place and it’s going to have the opposite effect of inspiring people.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think we’ve all encountered somebody that we maybe just completely disagree with their point of view or how they approach things. But we can appreciate the fact that that’s who they are and they’re just being who they are. And I have a… I hope he’s not listening. I have a neighbor that just says the most straightforward stuff that you’re like, “Wow, did you really say that?” But then you’re like, he does… That’s him not being filtered. That’s him. And I can actually appreciate that in some ways, even if I don’t fully agree with what he’s saying.

Jason Harris: Yeah, that’s a good point. And if your neighbor’s trying to inspire a team, he should be up front about, “Hey I know I’m super straightforward and this is super base, but this is the way that I approach things and here’s why.” And I think it’s about showing your… it’s like opening the kimono and letting people really see the real you and that’s the most powerful thing you can do. People respect that.

John Jantsch: So there’ve been countless books on this idea of storytelling, and you touched on it already a little bit, but would you say that in your experience, people that have mastered this art of being an influential, can I have a couple core stories that they lean on that really say a lot about what they believe?

Jason Harris: Yeah, definitely. And those should be memorized and practiced and rehearsed and they should become… that’s part of the habitual nature, is it’s ingrained in you so you can call on them at any time. You make a good point, you don’t have to have a list of 30 stories that are right for any moment, but you have to have a handful that you can call on when the time’s right that let people know a little bit about you.

Jason Harris: And at work we have a lot of… built an ad agency here and we have a lot of stories through building the company that are folklore that we tell from time to time when there’s new people that join us that the story is a metaphor for the beliefs that we have and they get passed down. And those are really important in an organization or for your personal brand that you have those personal stories and those antidotes. Even if you don’t have a ton of those, you can still transport people through storytelling by telling familiar stories that are either books or films or mythology that speak to you and you can articulate why they speak to you and why those are important lessons. And sometimes even a familiar story can really help persuade people because they, “Oh, I know this one, I can relate to this one,” versus a story that only you know about.

John Jantsch: So you mentioned this earlier and you have a whole chapter on this idea of ‘never be closing’. There’s no question that that habit will make you more likable. Will it make you ultimately more effective if your job is to meet a quota?

Jason Harris: Yeah, well that… I get this question a lot because ‘never be closing’ to me is the idea of letting go of short term transactional thinking and focus on building meaningful relationships. And I think business is a marathon, not a sprint. And if your goal is to hit those quotas and get your bonus and go quarter to quarter, you might do that for some time and you might hit those goals and you might follow the Glengarry Glen Ross principles and you might close a lot of deals because you’re just trying to get them to sign and you’re trying to hit that number in the spreadsheet. But over time, losing out on a couple of those bonuses, maybe feeling like you’re falling behind will ultimately pay off in compound interest over time. Because this idea of never be closing means you’re doing what’s right for the client or customer and you’re building meaningful relationships, and a lot of it is spending that energy in relationship building even if you’re not sure that there’s an immediate sales to be had or immediate goal, but over time they will respect you more.

Jason Harris: You will keep those relationships going. They will become referrals for you and you will end up being way more successful following that path than playing the short game. I think playing the long game is ultimately where success comes from in business. So we’ve all been down and out and had to do that one sale or we were going to… our business was in trouble or we were going to go out of business, but I truly believe that not hitting those goals or failing a little bit or having to lay people off or not getting that promotion because you didn’t hit those numbers, but focusing on playing the long game with those relationships, it might not be that you’re going to hit those huge jumps in the short term. But in a marathon you’re going to win out.

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John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think that’s a point worth repeating that everything you talk about in this book is really for somebody who’s playing the long game and not… you don’t develop habits of becoming a master influencer because you did some thing. It’s really a way to live your life, isn’t it?

Jason Harris: It’s an approach to life and it’s approach to relationships that and why. I love that you picked up on habits and how that’s different because these can be learned habits. We’re not all born telling great stories, just like we’re not all born being open about ourselves, or we’re not all born as generous people or some of the other principles, but you’re going to naturally have some of those already. But the other ones, the other habits you have to work on, and by working on them, like building any muscle over time, they become habitual and natural, and you don’t have to think about them anymore. But you have to work on them and they’re not going to… you’re not going to read this book and all of a sudden you’re Mr Persuader, Mr and Mrs Persuader. But if you look at the ones that you need to hone in on and you really make it a habit to practice those, they will become natural to you over time.

John Jantsch: And I think it’s a great point. I think a lot of people look at a book like this and think, “Okay, I have to do all these things.” And really, if you adopted one or two of these habits, actually at a level far greater than you do today, you’ve made progress, haven’t you?

Jason Harris: You’ve got. Yeah, you’ve made leaps and bounds of progress and that’s why this book to me is action oriented. It’s not a bunch of case studies about how people successfully persuaded someone else because that doesn’t help the reader. These are designed to really, they’re sort of illustrative examples and research and psychology examples. But at the end of the day there’s concrete ways that people can work on these skills. And it’s really, for me, by trial and error because I’m 20 something years into advertising and marketing career where I’ve failed plenty of times, and I’ve gone after short term games and I’ve let relationships drop to zero and I’ve done all these mistakes. And it’s only by seeing that from the lens of what’s worked that I was able to put this down.

John Jantsch: Well you started to wander into the next question I was going to ask you, is there a habit in the list of 11, and of course people can go to your website, they can go to Amazon and other places and see actually the 11 listed. But is there a habit that’s hardest for you?

Jason Harris: I would say for me the hardest habit was this idea of giving something away in every interaction, which is under the principle of generous, which is the general idea behind that one is that whenever you cross paths with someone you should always try to leave them a little better off than they were. And so whatever you give it should be about them. So it could be give your time, advice, it can be connecting them with someone else. It can even be stuff, it can be gifts. It could be when you pick up an interesting book that you read, you buy one for someone else. It can be sending them a text of something that you saw versus just posting on social media for everyone. It’s telling people that you’re thinking about them. Those are acts of generosity and for me I would not really always be thinking about other people in that way.

Jason Harris: I would be more self aware and focused on the task that I need to do. And if connecting someone with that person wasn’t paying off for me, I didn’t see the value in it. Or finding that half hour for someone to come in to my office or for me to take a phone call and give someone advice. I would say that I was too busy and that was really, really hard for me to change that mentality of being habitually generous and giving, giving something away because you don’t know, it’s not a clear connection of where that generosity pays off.

Jason Harris: You just have to put in to the universe and know that it does always pay off in some way. Whether it pays off by you feeling good about being a better person or it pays off by a business lead down the road. It does always pay off into something, and that was something I had to really learn because I wasn’t connecting it to what could possibly happen in the future. I was looking at it as, “Well, my time is valuable and this person can find someone else to get advice from or another connection. I don’t have time for it,” and so that was something I really had to work hard at, really hard at.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I had a guest on a previous show talk about this similar concept and when you’re trying to form these habits, he had what I thought was kind of a neat tip. So based on what you just talked about, this idea of every time you have a meeting, have this in mind or have something that you can give and he actually put them in his calendar. So when he had meetings with people scheduled, he’d actually look at his calendar ahead of time, say “Okay, what can I give here?” And then he would get it ahead of time. And I thought that is… once you adopt that habit, that is a very practical, tactical way to live it.

Jason Harris: Yeah, and it really… I’ll tell you a quick story. I have a thing in the book called the million dollar hoodie. And this is when it crystallized for me, I had met someone from Ben and Jerry’s at a conference and I was like, “Oh, this guy… I really like this guy,” and took his card. I sent him some Mekanism hoodies from my agency. He wore that hoodie all the time. It was very soft, comfortable. He liked it, whatever. It had our logo on it. 10 months later they were looking for a new agency and just because he was wearing that and someone had mentioned about the hoodie, he was like, “Oh yeah, I met this guy from this agency.” He put us into the pitch. We won the business and we’ve been working on it for six years and that’s when I thought, if a hoodie can generate a win and I wasn’t thinking about that at the time, habitually doing that.

Jason Harris: And whenever we go to any business meeting now, we’re always bringing little gifts, whether it’s a notebook or a hoodie or sending people books afterwards or a follow up, something. It really makes a difference because you’re just being generous without expecting anything in return, and it makes people feel good. And that’s when it dawned on me, I always think of the million dollar hoodie as like this, that’s a great specific reason to give stuff away. Not that it always has to equate to money or business, but that’s sort of my story about it.

John Jantsch: Yeah, people who are listeners to my show know I say this all the time, I think that the universe has a great scorekeeping mechanism and if you give without the thought of getting, at some point it’s going to come back around. So, the fourth principle, and we’re about out of time, but I just want to throw this out there. Empathy. I feel like as a country, at least in the United States, we’re probably as divided right now as maybe we’ve ever been or been since the 1800s. And empathy really is a lot about understanding somebody else’s point of view. How, again, you may or may not agree with me on this point of, it feels like we’re very divided politically, socially. So how can empathy in some ways heal that divide?

Jason Harris: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think we’ve never been more divided, more partisan as a country either. There was a study that came out recently again, in the 1960s there was 5% of families, like people that had sons or daughters, 5% would be upset if they married someone from a different political party. And then in 2016, the number was 65%. So just shows you in that short time frame how divided we’ve become from a political viewpoint standpoint, how partisan we are.

Jason Harris: And so to me, empathy is really all about developing a natural curiosity for others and listening and learning more and seeking out collaborations. Trying to join forces with people from diverse backgrounds and different areas of expertise. And it’s shifting the mindset of seeing people as more similar than different. And I always have this in the front of my head, which is that humans are 99.9% the same DNA. we’re made up of the same DNA. There’s 0.1% that makes us all different.

Jason Harris: And if you start with that framework, whenever you’re going into a conversation or a meeting or whatever, we all want the same things. We might have different viewpoints that are strong and we might not agree on on all the points, but from the basis of where we’re starting from, we are all after the same thing. And we are all that similar that you just have to try to develop that mindframe of, “Wow, we’re all the same. Let’s dive into those few key things that are different from us,” versus, “Oh man, we’re all so different. It’s impossible for us to get along.” I mean, that’s just a mental shift that I always like to practice.

John Jantsch: Well, and if you do in fact have all the answers, where’s your room to grow? Right. All right. So the last chapter I’ll let you leave us on. It’s my favorite, and I’ll let you just describe what you mean by that we have to become our own personal Jesus.

Jason Harris: So for me, personal Jesus is really all about this idea of where, to me, where soulful really resonates is when you marry skill with purpose. And skill is really about, all of us are only going to have two or three things that we’re really, really skilled at and really knowledgeable at. And we should always make sure that we hone those. And then every few years we should be trying to develop new skills and learning and growing. Not that they’re going to become, we’re going to master them, but it just keeps us fresh. And when you match the two or three things you’re really skilled at and you’re living skillfully, and you match that with purpose, that’s where you hit inspiration.

Jason Harris: And inspiration is really about mirroring things that you are good at with things that you could give back. And if you look at, you have two lists and you write down on one side the two or three things you’re really skilled at. Like in your case it could be marketing for small business podcasts, whatever it might be. And then you mirror things that you care about in the world that could be improved. I don’t know what those would be for you, but if you have a list of those three skillful things and those three purpose oriented things, and you look at those two lists long enough, you’re going to come up with an idea of how to blend your skills with purpose, to be inspirational to other people. And I think really if we’re all just about money and business and success, then we’ve lost the big picture. And that to me is a critical element of being soulful.

John Jantsch: Speaking with Jason Harris, the author of The Soulful Art of Persuasion. So Jason, where can people find out more about you and the book?

Jason Harris: You can check out thesoulfulart.com, that has every place you can buy. It has a little bit more about me and I have some sample reading materials on there that people can check out if they’re interested.

John Jantsch: Awesome. Well, I appreciate you stopping by. Did I mention I wear an extra large hoodie? I don’t think I mentioned that.

Jason Harris: You did now, it’s in the mail.

John Jantsch: Awesome. Well, Jason, hopefully we can catch up with you next time. I’m in New York, so thanks so much.

Jason Harris: Absolutely. Thank you John.

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blazaudiencex-blog · 6 years

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Audiences hold a very powerful and pivotal place in today’s society and in overall human interaction. Audience membership defines a lot of face-to-face and online communications alike as it allows for a community of agreement to form and increase the strength of the beliefs being offered up. In his book, Media Audiences: Effects, Users, Institutions, and Power, John L. Sullivan elaborates on all aspects of audiences. Sullivan’s initial commentary on audiences references a time when a vast majority of people are simultaneously in one large audience, and that is the Super Bowl. Sullivan deconstructs this audience into several small audiences through references to those in the audience who partake in the Super Bowl viewership for various different reasons (Sullivan, p. 1). As Sullivan alludes to, countless people watch the Super Bowl every year, but there are a lot of different reasons for viewership. Some viewers are invested in the game itself, while others find their pleasure in the commentary, the commercials, or even the traditional half time musical performances. These vast differences within the audience create a broad spectrum for audience membership and can allow for the distinguishing between the viewers and division into smaller sub-audiences. It is important to remember that although many people are members of the same audience groups, their interests and opinions can still be vastly different as individuals. In order to fully understand audiences and their members better, it is important to understand the Three Models of the Audience.

The Three Models of the Audience allude to the vast differences in audiences and the way they are targeted and utilized throughout media. The audiences-as-outcome model “Sees people as being acted upon by media. Typically, it reflects a concern about the power of media to produce detrimental effects on individuals, and by implication on society as a whole” (Webster, 1998, p. 193). This view on audiences is reflected through such media as propaganda and effects research. Propaganda in particular utilizes the audiences-as-outcome model in order to convey its messages and coerce the public. The audience becomes an outcome when they engage propaganda and begin to enact the ideas and outlooks that are expressed within said propaganda. Historically speaking, propaganda has a lot of negative connotations because its utilization was largely influential during Nazi Germany’s tyrannous reign of power during much of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Their audiences were largely impacted and persuaded into following ideologies that were less than reputable, and the results were catastrophic. The audiences-as-outcome model indicates that the power of the media produced the detrimental effects of this real life propaganda. Without propaganda and a mass media distribution, the power of anti-Semitic messages may have never reached the heights that it did. Audiences-as-outcome provide a lot of the most powerful, albeit dangerous, media communications the world will ever know.

The second Model of the Audience is audience-as-mass, and this is typically understood as “A large collection of people scattered across time and space who act autonomously and have little or no immediate knowledge of one another” (Sullivan, p. 6). This model is heavily relied upon to quantitatively measure audience consumption and interaction with the media. This model and its related tactics and techniques are often more telling about those utilizing them than those being investigated (Sullivan p. 7). In the real world such practices are utilized by companies such as the Nielsen company which gauges audience consumption through ratings systems which measure quantitatively the sizing and timeframes which consumers are engaging in media communications. Karen S. F. Buzzard discusses Nielsen’s shortcomings in her work titled The Rise of Market Information Regimes and the Historical Development of Audience Ratings, and she finds that Nielsen was inconsistent as an audience quantifier because they used their power and leverage to influence audience membership instead of merely observing and reporting as would be expected. Buzzard writes about the Congressional Harris Hearings, which ultimately ruled against the Nielsen company because they had monopolized and manipulated the ratings and audience measurement sector to protect its own vested interests. This notion is remarkably interesting because Nielsen had devised certain creative patents which prevented any other media ratings company from creating a solid inroad into the industry, even when Nielsen was banned for a decade from reporting on audience consumption (Buzzard, p. 515). This alludes to the risks and dangers of the audience-as-mass model and why it must be highly analyzed before consulting it critically.

The third, and final, Model of Audience, is the audiences-as-agent model, this model sees audiences not as objects or social constructs, but rather that “People are conceived of as free agents choosing what media they will consume, bringing their own interpretive skills to the texts they encounter, making their own meanings, and generally using media to suit themselves” (Webster, p. 194). This model suggests that every person consumes, analyzes, and interacts with media is doing so for their own personal interests. This notion relates heavily to the uses and gratifications theory of communications which finds that people consume media for their own wants, needs, and interests. This model serves perhaps as the most feasible model because it considers the activity of both the media consumers as well as the media producers. A great real world application of this model is music consumption habits. Everybody has their own unique tastes and preferences for music and rightfully so. People will choose what they like to listen to and do not feel the need to defend their preferences as one can simply choose to not listen to it and make their own choices. This makes it increasingly hard for music media producers to categorize and create audiences, as people from various demographics have vast and extensive ranges of music they choose to consume.

A lot of media consumption is also influenced by the audience as much as it is influenced by those who produce it. A significant amount of media consumption decisions and interactions are predicated on the choices and decisions of others. German Neubaum and Nicole C. Krämer wrote an article regarding the expression of opinions titled What Do We Fear? Expected Sanctions for Expressing Minority Opinions in Offline and Online Communities. In this article Neubaum and Krämer discuss the potential outcomes for expressing opinions in different communities. They discuss the possibility of whether it is easier to express unpopular opinions online or offline and the reasons why each one is so different. Neubaum and Krämer reference Noelle-Neumann’s Spiral of Silence Theory (1974) in order to express the human tendency to remain quiet when they are holding a minority opinion (Neubaum & Krämer, p. 139). The theory holds that “Humans have a fundamental need to not be socially rejected, and therefore conform to perceived social standards rather than represent a deviant perspective and risk isolation from others” (Neubaum & Krämer p. 140). This theory indicates the power of audiences by showcasing the ability to silence any objections to the dominant opinion in society. This ability to make people conform or keep quiet is the true power of an audience and thus must be taken rather seriously. When someone has an opinion that is not shared with the majority it is strongly rooted within the fear of isolation, which speaks to the power of an audience, as they will work in unison to outcast those with opinions that do not coincide with those that are popular and dominant.

The fear of isolation is detrimental for humans because of a need to not be rejected and thus the desire to conform to opinions that may not actually be their own. Neubaum and Krämer state that “Individuals perceive a particular degree of fear depending on the specific situation in which they find themselves” (Neubaum & Krämer p. 141). This variance in the degree of fear for individuals is a new revelation to the spiral of silence theory as computer-mediated communication is a very new and constantly changing. Computer-mediated communication has made it increasingly difficult to both gauge and control an audience and their responses to popular opinions. Due to the new and changing landscape of computer-mediated communication it is easy to see why people may feel these skepticisms and fears about voicing minority opinions. For Neubaum and Krämer, their “Findings also revealed that in contemporary social networking websites, wherein users commonly face a personally relevant audience, people are prone to hold back their opinion as they expect losing control over the reactions of their audience” (Neubaum & Krämer p. 139). If someone has the inability to influence or persuade the audience then they will understandably take some precautions in airing out their unpopular opinions in order to not be isolated by their peers. Being isolated from the audience is a huge part of computer-mediated communication and the desire to be included is the main factor behind not expressing opinions that are not popular or dominant.

People are dependent upon audience membership for their individual identity as well as their social needs to be accepted and well-received by their peers. The fear of isolation makes people seek audiences to join and allows for them to feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves. The fear of isolation can cause people to act and interact in ways that are inconsistent with their true values and beliefs. With this knowledge it is very clear to show the power and influence that audiences maintain through both face-to-face and computer-mediated communications. It takes one unpopular idea or opinion to be voiced for any individual to risk the chance of being isolated and alienated by their peers or even by complete strangers. This is a testament to the true power that audiences possess in today’s society. There is no denying that people in audiences are marvellously powerful after considering the influence that they have both in face-to-face interaction and computer-mediated communication.

All in all, audiences as a whole have a world of power and influence based on the motives and ideologies of the majority of the group. The vast ethnic and demographic differences can create a large spectrum for disagreement to occur. In these instances it is shown that the spiral of silence can cause people to blindly follow and agree with the majority despite their knowing it is incorrect. Audiences and their strength are two facets of communication that do not falter between face-to-face or computer-mediated communication. Audiences online in computer-mediated communication and in face-to-face communication both have the power to isolate and alienate any individual and thus individuals tend to be a lot more cautious and skeptical when interacting with a larger audience. The spiral of silence dictates a lot of audience behaviour and speaks to the influence that an audience can have, as individuals will stay silent in the wake of voicing an unpopular opinion. This fear stems ultimately from a deep rooted need for individuals to socialize and not to be rejected or isolated. This is why the media manipulates audiences and content in order to create the best possible media climate for their motives. Audiences as a whole are vastly important to human nature and have great levels of influence over the way individuals and groups in different walks of life handle their day-to-day communications. This is why audiences and their behaviours need to be studied and documented for further analysis and explanations.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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The most important scene in Brad Bird’s Incredibles 2 comes early on and offers a brilliant summation of everything the writer-director does so well.

The Parr family, having attracted the attention and irritation of the government with their superhero shenanigans, sits in a lonely motel room, munching on Chinese food. They’ve just saved the city of Municiberg from the Underminer, who set his giant drill on a path to destroy City Hall.

But officials don’t see all of the destruction that was averted — they only see the rubble that actually exists. Yes, nobody wants supervillains like the Underminer robbing banks, but there’s a process in place to ensure those banks and the money within them, and having superheroes leap in to save the day just complicates that process.

The scene is notable both for its small, detailed animation — pay attention to how Bob Parr (aka Mr. Incredible) can’t seem to grasp anything with his chopsticks and finally just stabs an eggroll through the middle — and for the way it tosses a bunch of questions the movie knows it can’t possibly answer up into the air. To change the law that has made superheroes illegal, the Parrs will have to break it, to show that superheroes can still be useful. Or, as G-man Rick Dicker wearily sighs in an earlier scene, “Politicians don’t trust anyone who does a good thing just because it’s right. It makes them nervous.”

The first time I saw Incredibles 2, all of these ideas jostling for space within the movie struck me as a movie frantically searching for a story to tell, one it eventually found but that didn’t quite cohere with everything else. The second time through, though, the movie made more sense to me as a meditation on the popularity of superhero stories and what it means to live in a world where what’s legal isn’t always what’s right. It doesn’t offer solutions, because it knows there aren’t any.

But the movie is also keyed in to something that’s always present in Bird’s work, something that’s caused some to accuse him of being an objectivist along the lines of Ayn Rand: an obsession with the rights of the exceptional and how they can be stacked up against everybody else.

Incredibles 2 strikes me both as Bird’s deepest exploration of this idea and his biggest refutation of it. Bird might be fascinated by the exceptional among us, but he’s also not interested in exceptionalism if it doesn’t benefit the larger community.

Brad Bird Photo by Juan Naharro Gimenez/Getty Images for Disney

The works of author Ayn Rand — including Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and others — have been hugely influential on the thinking of various political and economic theorists over the years. (Among current politicians, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan is a notable devotee.) To put Rand’s writings in modern terms, you could describe her objectivism as a kind of extra-strength libertarianism, in which the truly great among us should, as much as possible, not be shackled by the law or by conventions.

Atlas Shrugged is her magnum opus, a futuristic dystopia in which citizens who don’t contribute to society leech off the business classes, who create both wealth and useful material goods (mostly trains and railroads). The action of the book — if a book so heavy in long discussions of philosophy can be said to have “action” — mostly involves the various characters learning that society needs them more than they need society, that the world is only as strong as its strongest, who should be subject to as few rules and regulations as possible. Rand stops just short of saying, “Billionaires should be able to straight-up murder whomever they want,” but reading the book, you have to think the idea occurred to her at some point.

This is a vast oversimplification of a book I read once in high school for an essay contest, but Rand’s ideas that regulations are bad and wealth creators are good have trickled down into the modern Republican Party in ways that are hopefully obvious.

The question is if they’ve also trickled down to influence the films of Brad Bird, one of modern animation’s few auteurs, but also a writer-director who keeps returning to the idea that society places unnecessary constraints on exceptional individuals. You can see where the comparisons come from.

Bird has made just six films — 1999’s The Iron Giant, 2004’s The Incredibles, 2007’s Ratatouille, 2011’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, 2015’s Tomorrowland, and 2018’s Incredibles 2 — and four of those wrestle with the above idea at length. There’s a touch of that idea in Iron Giant (which we’ll get to), but it doesn’t dwell on it at length, while Ghost Protocol (one of the finest modern action movies) is mostly about how it would be totally rad to free climb the world’s tallest building. (Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland are live-action; the other four films are animated.)

The “objectivist” tag was first applied to Bird extensively after the first Incredibles. And to be sure, the very premise of the film plays in this territory: superheroes have been outlawed due to safety concerns, and one character bellows, “With everyone super, no one will be!” This is particularly true of a concluding scene in which young Dash Parr, blessed with super-speed, intentionally throws a race at a track meet. The plot reason for this is that he can’t let anybody know he has superpowers (which are still illegal), but it plays as a weird critique of the idea of participation trophies and the attempt to make sure no child’s feelings are hurt.

The criticism followed Bird through Ratatouille — which is ostensibly about how anyone (even a rat) can cook but is also kind of about how if you don’t have talent, you should get out of the way of people who do — and especially Tomorrowland, in which a group of geniuses abscond to an alternate universe where they build the sci-fi future imagined in the ’50s and ’60s and mostly abandoned in our modern era of imagined dystopias.

A world where the exceptional cordon themselves off and refuse to save the rest of the world is literally Galt’s Gulch from Atlas Shrugged, where the book’s mysterious hero, John Galt, hides out to proclaim his superiority to everybody else. And now Incredibles 2 toys with many of these same themes, which makes sense as a continuation of the first film. (When I asked him about these themes, he mostly punted on answering the question, saying he didn’t think about it that much when writing his movies.)

I think it’s worth considering all of these ideas in the context of Bird’s career, which got a bit of a late start. After beginning as a young wunderkind animator at Disney in the early ’80s, Bird was fired after raising his concerns that the company was half-assing it, instead of trying to protect its rich legacy.

Bird spent much of the ’80s bouncing from project to project — he worked on, among other things, a Garfield TV special and the Amazing Stories episode “Family Dog” (his directorial debut) — until in the early ’90s, he landed a job as the animation supervisor on a new TV show named The Simpsons, a job that made his career and allowed him to direct Iron Giant. When that movie flopped, he was brought to Pixar thanks to a college friendship with John Lasseter (who has recently been pushed out of the company after accusations of sexual misconduct).

But his directorial debut still didn’t arrive until he was in his early 40s. And while that’s not exactly unprecedented, it is at least a little unusual in an industry where someone with the evident talent of Bird likely would have proceeded through the ranks of a major animation company and directed his first film somewhere in his 30s.

Bird’s self-admitted demanding nature likely make him difficult to work with — something that surely contributed to his difficulty getting a film made, despite numerous almost-realized projects, like an animated adaptation of the comic The Spirit. (Bird was also probably hurt by his certainty that “animated film” and “kids film” shouldn’t be synonymous, even though animated films aimed at adults have always been difficult sells in Hollywood.) It makes sense that Bird’s frequent musings on the shackling of genius might be a political, but it’s just as possible this is an artistic idea, based on the struggles he had getting his career to take off. (My friend David Sims has had similar thoughts at the Atlantic.)

So, yes, we could read Bird’s filmography as a celebration of Ayn Rand and of climbing very tall buildings. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t also read it in the context of the career of a director who felt stymied at every turn for almost 20 years, before he unexpectedly became one of the most successful directors of his generation almost out of nowhere.

Even then, we’d be missing something big.

The Iron Giant paints a very different picture of how those with great talents should behave. Warner Brothers

One of the things that makes that early motel-room scene in Incredibles 2 so potent is the fact that there’s no clear right answer to the issues that Bird raises via his characters. Nor is there a right answer in a later scene in which Helen Parr (Elastigirl) talks with a new friend about whether the ability to create something great or the ability to sell it to the mass public is more important to the world. Nor in the frequent arguments about whether breaking unjust laws is the right thing to do, even if society requires people to be law-abiding to function.

It’s impossible for any animated movie to truly be “timely” because they’re produced on such a long timeframe. But Incredibles 2 feels eerily tapped in to the political debates we’re having around the globe right now. If you have massive amounts of power and feel like the world is circling the tubes, is your primary duty to society or to the self? Or your family? Or all of the above? Brad Bird doesn’t know this answer, so the movie doesn’t either.

This is a common thread across his filmography. All of his movies grapple with objectivist themes, to be sure, but they also don’t conclude that doing what’s best for the self is what’s best for everybody. The closest thing to an answer Bird ever provides is “Do what’s right, and what’s right is what benefits the most people.”

In short, his movies always posit that the exceptional should be allowed to express their talents to the best of their abilities — but only insofar as they can benefit society at large.

What’s interesting is how often Bird’s most openly objectivist moments and story ideas are presented as bad things. That collection of geniuses making up Tomorrowland, for instance, invents a machine meant to bring doom to our world, while the famous line about being special or super from Incredibles is actually spoken twice — the first time by a child and the second time by the movie’s villain. Helen is the closest thing the Incredibles franchise has to a moral conscience, and she’s always the one on the side of the idea that “everyone is special.” We just have different talents.

Ratatouille might be the best developed expression of this idea among Bird’s films. His portrayal of a restaurant as a collection of people who do very specific jobs to the best of their abilities, all adding up to a kind of symphony, is very much like filmmaking, with the film’s hero, Remy the rat, standing in as a director. The movie’s villains are those who would stand in the way of Remy realizing his full talents — but you can also read that as being against prejudice, as a celebration of the idea that anyone can cook and great art can come from someone you’d never expect (like a young and hungry would-be animator from Montana, not exactly a hotbed of Hollywood talent).

It’s telling that Ratatouille’s great chef is a rodent and not the gangly human who discovers he’s the son of a great, dead chef. Talent isn’t always predictable, following along conduits you’d expect. But when you find it, it’s best to encourage it but also make sure it’s tempered with kindness, as it is in Ratatouille, a movie where even the restaurant’s waitstaff is briefly but memorably celebrated.

All of which brings us back to The Iron Giant, a movie rarely discussed in conversations about Bird’s interest in exceptionalism. If any Bird creation is exceptional, it’s a giant metal man who eats railroads and can become a literal death weapon, but the arc of the film is about the giant trending away from that which makes him exceptional and would harm others, and toward what about him is exceptional that could benefit others. It’s a movie about a really amazing walking gun who decides, instead, to become Superman.

Superman’s a fitting icon to consider as a way to understand Bird’s ultimate philosophies. Yeah, he could kill all of us with a flick of his fingernail, but he doesn’t. So could the superheroes of Incredibles 2, but they make the choice not to.

That’s why Incredibles 2 stands so beautifully as Bird’s most fully engaged wrestling with all of these ideas. It never offers easy answers because there aren’t any. The question of how we build a society that benefits everybody and gives them the same rights as everybody else, while still allowing people as much freedom as possible to exercise the talents and abilities unique to them, isn’t one that can be answered easily. It’s arguably the work of democracy itself, and it will never be finalized, as long as human beings strive for a better world. Thus, those of us who are exceptional, be they people or rodents or whole countries, are only as exceptional as they are good.

While it’s not always easy to determine the right course of action, determining what’s good almost never is. It’s what takes you away from celebrating the self and back toward figuring out how that self can fit into the community of others, how your own exceptionalism can become a part of the great symphony of life.

Original Source -> Why Incredibles director Brad Bird gets compared to Ayn Rand — and why he shouldn’t be

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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From Ferraris to flying taxis: Q&A with Liliums new head of Product Design

Munich-based Lilium, the super-ambitious company developing an electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) jet and accompanying “air taxi” service, continues to hire top talent to make its vision a reality. The latest new recruitment is car design veteran Frank Stephenson, who has previously worked for Ferrari, Maserati and Mini, to name but a few.

Considered one of the world’s most renowned and influential car designers in recent times, 58-year-old Stephenson’s portfolio includes iconic designs such as the BMW X5, New MINI, Ferrari F430, Maserati MC12 and McLaren P1. Now he’s embarking on adding the Lilium jet to that list.

Officially starting next month, he’ll be tasked with recruiting an entirely new design team to shape both the interior and exterior of the jet itself, as well as a design language for the company’s wider infrastructure, including landing pads and departure lounges.

In a call with Stephenson yesterday morning, I got to ask him why he’s ditched Ferraris for flying taxis, what his new role will entail more specifically and to dig a little deeper into how he thinks about design and why good design really matters. A lightly edited transcript of the full Q&A follows.

TC: I don’t know a huge amount about designing cars, let alone designing cars that can fly. Designing a modern-day car involves a heck of a lot of people and designing something like the Lilium jet again involves a whole team of people. As head of design, how does your role fit into the larger machine of building a vehicle or “flying car?”

So if you have a Michelin-rated restaurant and you’ve got to feed 100 people, you’re going to have quite a few cooks in there and the waiters and everybody else to run the machine. But the chef, the guy that’s got the Michelin stars… gets all the credit for it. But it’s all the other guys doing the work for him and he’s basically overseeing it and he’s trying to keep everything moving along the right track. That’s kind of what it’s like. I mean, I’m not probably your standard type of design director because I like to get in and cook and mix up the stuff too. I just have never been able to stop getting my hands dirty. I guess in that respect, the design directors come across often as prima donnas almost and sit back and watch the guys work and every now and then say he likes it or he doesn’t like it. But I am more of a hands-on type of director.

I like to build small teams. I don’t like huge teams because it takes a lot longer to get things done and the energy sometimes isn’t as strong with a big team as it is with a smaller team. You’ve got to work faster and much more focused and much more efficiently to get the amount of work done. So that sort of builds the steam up in the pressure cooker, but if you love design it’s absolutely the right temperature to be working at. You want to be under pressure to deliver great design. And typically if you think about a design too long, it gets watered down and loses that character, that pureness that you had at the beginning. So smaller teams tend to come up with better ideas I think, or more dramatic ideas, than huge companies with huge design teams.

I don’t set the brief because that comes from marketing, what product segment or what market segment the product should fit. So if they’re telling us to design a two-seater vehicle or a five-seater vehicle or whatever then that becomes the target of the design team to deliver in a certain time span. What I do is I meet with the marketing guys, I meet with engineering guys.

The engineering guys will lay out what we call a package, where all the critical components are for the vehicle. With a car it is typically “Where does the passenger and the driver sit? Where are the wheels and where is the engine and how much trunk or boot space are we going to have?” Things like that. And then I work around all those components with the aerodynamic engineers, suspension and everything.

What I have to do basically is get the team going with theme ideas and really innovative breakthrough ideas, because that’s what designers do. They don’t repeat stuff, they have to come up with stuff that basically moves the game forward. You’ve got to create within this design team a kind of awesome childlike creativity and emotion feeling. It takes a lot of brainstorming and inspiration. You sort of set the tone of that kind of atmosphere within design to get the designers going and then the mood gains momentum.

I’m very advanced in the way I think — I have to be because of the way design is geared, you do a lot of computer work — but I typically make sure that we all start pen on paper sketching, because that is really the only way to get a design or a spark out of your mind. If you go through a computer it loses the human… So I pretty much try to keep the design team on paper as long as possible.

The moment we come up with great ideas, we work with engineers. Typically I try to get engineers and designers working together in the same studio or very tightly together so there’s no loss of traction, and to make sure that what we’re doing can be made. We typically create scale models out of clay. We maybe do two, maybe three, different designs, and as those designs evolve one will get chosen as the favorite theme. That goes to full-scale. And then when this clay model is finally approved by engineering, and approved by finance, and approved by marketing, and approved by design, we will recommend that to the CEO and he’ll have a look at it if he hasn’t followed throughout the process, and then that product will become the model for prototyping and we’ll take molds off of it and create the real panels for the car and then it goes into production. Pretty much that’s it in a nutshell.

As a design director I have to control everything from the look to the color to the ergonomics to the feasibility of it. And then with Lilium the requirements will probably branch out over into what the Lilium port will look like that you access to get into your jet. So the whole kind of environment from an aesthetic or emotional point of view.

TC: Give me more of a sense of the relationship between design and engineering (or form and function)… Aren’t you somewhat constrained in your imagination by the science of flying?

No, that’s what a bad designer would tell you, “I’m constrained, that’s why the vehicle doesn’t look as good as it should.” But the fact is he’s getting paid the big bucks to make that thing look good and if he can’t make it look good he’s just not good enough. So there’s no excuse in my book for bad design or anything that looks bad. Absolutely no excuse. Anything can be made beautiful and should be made desirable, obviously.

We have to have constraints because safety and engineering require that. If we don’t have constraints then designers aren’t designers they’re just artists and they’re not doing the job. You can make a pretty picture but if it doesn’t work at the end of the day then you haven’t really designed anything, you’ve just drawn a pretty picture.

So in terms of constraints, yeah, but that is what makes the game so fun for a designer, that you’re working within rules and legislation and restrictions which make it a challenge. That’s why you get good-looking cars and other cars that don’t look as good. Like I said, if there is a beautiful small car, why aren’t all small cars beautiful? It’s a taste thing obviously. Some people like some designs, a lot of people like other designs. But good design is absolutely not subjective. There’s good design and bad design, and there are a lot of bad designs out there — not to knock them or criticize — but there are principles for good design that designers typically learn when they’re being educated. If you don’t apply those laws of good design then you’re not going to have a good design.

Inspiration for good design comes from a lot of different sources, but if you’re looking at inspiration from trendy sources like fashion or other types of design that are in one day and out the next then you’re not gonna have a timeless design or an iconic design. Iconic designs are typically timeless designs, they last forever. Anything that was designed iconically 40 years ago will still look great 40 years in the future. The design is so good that it just lasts and lasts and lasts. It is hard to achieve that, but if you use the right type of mental design approach then it’s achievable.

I think designing cars is not harder or easier than designing an aircraft, it’s just making the absolutely best product you can make that works well. Typically if you design something that works very, very well it looks fantastic. If you design something that doesn’t work very well then the design doesn’t matter at the end of the day. One of the interesting things is people always say that form follows function. I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous in my life because for me form equals function. If the product works well, it looks great. There’s nothing in the world that works fantastically well and looks awful, that combination doesn’t exist. Especially in nature. You look at all these beautiful animals and organisms in nature that work incredibly well, and therein lies the beauty of nature. Horses and cheetahs and all these amazing animals, nobody sat down and designed this amazing-looking animal. Evolution caused it to be absolutely fantastic at what it does, and through being fantastic at what it does, the result is the look, and that look is awesome. That same principle is how I feel about design. If you work very good with the engineers and you create optimized solutions, it’s very easy to make them look good, it’s almost inherent in that way.

TC: Regarding the Lilium jet… what is the main challenge in your mind of designing what is a new type of transportation?

My challenge — simply put — is to make the person who gets into the jet not want to get out of it. You know. Although he’s reached his destination he’ll want to do it again and again and again. The reason behind that is because all the new generations coming along after the old farts like us are basically looking for experiences. They’re not so much geared towards buying materialistic things. They love experiences. And that’s what Lilium is going to be offering, an experience and a service. And I see that as the future. For me it’s an amazing opportunity to be able to take something from scratch and develop it into a reality.

It’s always been a sort of science fiction, when you see The Jetsons, the cartoons and things… it’s like, one day, but not in my lifetime. Well, here’s news for the world, it’s coming before they know it and it’s going to be here very, very soon. And these things have to look as amazing as the technology that they’re bringing with them.

What I need to do is not just make it an incredible aesthetic joy to be in, but when you get inside one of these things you don’t want to get out of it. It’s going to be the experiences that you have when you’re inside this transportation device. If you could just take that situation of being inside a capsule, what would you want to occur there? You want to relax, you want to socialize, you want to work, you want to be entertained. All that is now incredibly possible.

I mean all the advances … where everything coming now is digital and so real that you can actually imagine something on the inside being the new wave of entertainment. So basically you’re in your private space, you get to turn it into a virtual world where you’re being transported from A to B or wherever your destination is. And within that space in time you’re in the ideal atmosphere. You’re not really sitting in a plane and just going along for the ride, which is what you do pretty much in a taxi. All the new materials that are coming about at the moment in terms of seats, flooring, lighting, buttons, displays, image projection, sounds and temperature control. You know all the things that we try to shoot into new cars as a next step for luxury, those are just going to become everyday things that are making the whole ride an incredible experience.

Regretfully they’ll be a lot shorter in duration because of the nature of the jet being you know very high-speed and all that. But it’s kind of like if you can imagine somebody who loves roller coasters they’re always at the end thinking “oh my gosh that was too quick, I want to do this thing again.” That is the kind of positive feeling you should have when you get out of the vehicle.

TC: I saw this documentary a while back that made the point that the world we live in is predominately designed by humans and therefore design can make or break our everyday experiences. As a designer, is it really difficult for you living in a world where, let’s face it, a lot of design is awful?

Some designers take it as a job. Other people just live it. And design is all about making the world a better place not a prettier place. That’s [just] a consequence of making it a better place, but making it a better place is what the end goal should be. It’s a shame that there aren’t more designers in the world thinking about making the world a better place.

TC: How did you get this job ? Did they come to you? Were you just like, “I’ve done cars, I want to do something new”?

It was fate, that thing when two separate paths suddenly collide. I think it was more like that. I’d left McLaren in November 2017, not because I was frustrated or anything like that but because I thought there was something bigger than just designing products that nobody really needs, they just desired and want. What was I doing, I was just clogging up the road networks even more and not making the world a better place, probably a more exciting place, but not socially better. And so I left with my ideas of starting my own design studio, which I’ve been sort of kicking off, in terms of how to improve the world, and then I heard about Lilium and Lilium contacted me.

It was just a match made in heaven. It met all my principles of working for an exciting and incredibly innovative company from the very beginning. To be able to establish a design department for them with a design DNA, a design language, the design team, the studio. Doing something for the future of humanity. Staying with transportation, but making it even better than it ever was. Making something science fiction reality.

TC: Are there any particular designers or designs that you can point to and say that designer or product has stood the test of time?

That’s really, really tough. I can tell you specific products for their aesthetic value but I think I have to go deeper than that because you know everybody admires different designers for different reasons. If you could put two guys together that would be da Vinci and Einstein. I mean da Vinci was probably the guy because he not only could paint and draw and all that but he was also an incredible engineer and he figured out how to make these things work and he wanted things to look great too. So if I could say one person for me it would be da Vinci more than anybody else just because the guy could paint, the guy could engineer. Anything he ever touched was absolutely amazing. He was doing flying machines way back too. I like his natural approach. I like people who are really in tune with nature because for me that’s the best inspiration we have. He came up with things that never existed before for the benefit of humanity. Pretty much. If he would have been that kind of guy today he would be the absolutely most awesome human being on earth. I’ve got tons of books on his works and him, and everything like that, just because he’s so inspiring to me.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/23/ferraris-to-flying-taxis/

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1nebest · 6 years

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From Ferraris to flying taxis: Q&A with Lilium’s new Head of Product Design

Munich-based Lilium, the super ambitious company developing an electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) jet and accompanying “air taxi” service, continues to hire top talent to make its vision a reality. The latest new recruitment is car design veteran Frank Stephenson, who has previously worked for Ferrari, Maserati, and Mini, to name but a few.

Considered one of the world’s most renowned and influential car designers in recent times, 58-year-old Stephenson’s portfolio includes iconic designs such as the BMW X5, New MINI, Ferrari F430, Maserati MC12, and McLaren P1. Now he’s embarking on adding the Lilium jet to that list.

In a call with Stephenson yesterday morning, I got to ask him why he’s ditched Ferraris for flying taxis, what his new role will entail more specifically, and to dig a little deeper into how he thinks about design and why good design really matters. A lightly edited transcript of the full Q&A follows.

So if you have a Michelin rated-restaurant and you’ve got to feed 100 people, you’re going to have quite a few cooks in there and the waiters and everybody else to run the machine. But the chef, the guy that’s got the Michelin stars… gets all the credit for it. But it’s all the other guys doing the work for him and he’s basically overseeing it and he’s trying to keep everything moving along the right track. That’s kind of what it’s like. I mean, I’m not probably your standard type of design director because I like to get in and cook and mix up the stuff too. I just have never been able to stop getting my hands dirty. I guess in that respect, the design directors come across often as prima donnas almost and sit back and watch the guys work and every now and then say he likes it or he doesn’t like it. But I am more of a hands on type of director.

I don’t set the brief because that comes from marketing, what product segment or what market segment the product should fit. So if they’re telling us to design a two-seater vehicle or a five seater vehicle or whatever then that becomes the target of the design team to deliver in a certain time span. What I do is I meet with the marketing guys, I meet with engineering guys.

The engineering guys will lay out what we call a package, where all the critical components are for the vehicle. With a car it is typically where does the passenger and the driver sit, where are the wheels and where is the engine and how much trunk or boot space are we going to have. Things like that. And then I work around all those components with the aerodynamic engineers, suspension and everything.

The moment we come up with great ideas, we work with engineers. Typically I try to get engineers and designers working together in the same studio or very tightly together so there’s no loss of traction, and to make sure that what we’re doing can be made. We typically create scale models out of clay. We maybe do two, maybe three, different designs, and as those designs evolve one will get chosen as the favourite theme. That goes to full-scale. And then when this clay model is finally approved by engineering, and approved by finance, and approved by marketing, and approved by design, we will recommend that to the CEO and he’ll have a look at it if he hasn’t followed throughout the process, and then that product will become the model for prototyping and we’ll take moulds off of it and create the real panels for the car and then it goes into production. Pretty much that’s it in a nutshell.

As a design director I have to control everything from the look to the colour to the ergonomics to the feasibility of it. And then with Lilium the requirements will probably branch out over into what the Lilium port will look like that you access to get into your jet. So the whole kind of environment from an aesthetic or emotional point of view.

TC: Give me more of a sense of the relationship between design and engineering (or form and function)… Aren’t you somewhat constrained in your imagination by the science of flying?

No, that’s what a bad designer would tell you, ‘I’m constrained, that’s why the vehicle doesn’t look as good as it should’. But the fact is he’s getting paid the big bucks to make that thing look good and if he can’t make it look good he’s just not good enough. So there’s no excuse in my book for bad design or anything that looks bad. Absolutely no excuse. Anything can be made beautiful and should be made desirable, obviously.

So in terms of constraints, yeah, but that is what makes the game so fun for a designer, that you’re working within rules and legislation and restrictions which make it a challenge. That’s why you get good-looking cars and other cars that don’t look as good. Like I said, if there is a beautiful small car, why aren’t all small cars beautiful? It’s a taste thing obviously. Some people like some designs, a lot of people like other designs. But good design is absolutely not subjective. There’s good design and bad design, and there are a lot of bad designs out there — not to knock them or criticise — but there are principles for good design that designers typically learn when they’re being educated. If you don’t apply those laws of good design then you’re not going to have a good design.

I think designing cars is not harder or easier than designing an aircraft, it’s just making the absolutely best product you can make that works well. Typically if you design something that works very, very well it looks fantastic. If you design something that doesn’t work very well then the design doesn’t matter at the end of the day. One of the interesting things is people always say that form follows function. I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous in my life because for me form equals function. If the product works well, it looks great. There’s nothing in the world that works fantastically well and looks awful, that combination doesn’t exist. Especially in nature. You look at all these beautiful animals and organisms in nature that work incredibly well, and therein lies the beauty of nature. Horses and cheetahs and all these amazing animals, nobody sat down and designed this amazing looking animal. Evolution caused it to be absolutely fantastic at what it does, and through being fantastic at what it does, the result is the look, and that look is awesome. That same principle is how I feel about design. If you work very good with the engineers and you create optimised solutions, it’s very easy to make them look good, it’s almost inherent in that way.

TC: Regards the Lilium jet… what is the main challenge in your mind of designing what is a new type of transportation?

What I need to do is not just make it an incredible aesthetic joy to be in, but when you get inside of one of these things you don’t want to get out of it. It’s going to be the experiences that you have when you’re inside this transportation device. If you could just take that situation of being inside of a capsule, what would you want to occur there? You want to relax, you want to socialize, you want to work, you want to be entertained. All that is now incredibly possible.

I mean all the advances … where everything coming now is digital and so real that you can actually imagine something on the inside being the new wave of entertainment. So basically you’re in your private space, you get to turn it into a virtual world where you’re being transported from A to B or wherever your destination is. And within that space in time you’re in the ideal atmosphere. You’re not really sitting in a plane and just going along for the ride, which is what you do pretty much in a taxi. All the new materials that are coming about at the moment in terms of seats, flooring, lighting, buttons, displays, image projection, sounds, and temperature control. You know all the things that we try to shoot into new cars as a next step for luxury, those are just going to become everyday things that are making the whole ride an incredible experience.

Regretfully they’ll be a lot shorter in duration because of the nature of the jet being you know very high-speed and all that. But it’s kind of like if you can imagine somebody who loves roller coasters they’re always at the end thinking ‘oh my gosh that was too quick, I want to do this thing again’. That is the kind of positive feeling you should have when you get out of the vehicle.

TC: How did you get this job ? Did they come to you? Were you just like, ‘I’ve done cars, I want to do something new’?

TC: Are there any particular designers or designs that you can point to and say that designer or product has stood the test of time?

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