10 Characteristics of Creatives

From my brother, Mike:

I'm currently re-reading Ellen Shapiro's "Graphic Designer's Guide to Clients: How to Make Clients Happy and Do Great Work" . Although she speaks specifically to designers, I've found that a good many of her ideas would apply to just about anyone working in a creative field. Read below where she notes Ed Gold's "10 common characteristics of great designers":

THE TOP TWO
1. talent (their work flat-out looks good)
2. advocacy or sales ability

AND
3. curiosity
4. dissatisfaction
4. perfectionism
5. energy
6. confidence

A BALANCE OF...
7. idealism
8. realism
9. wit

AND
10. they just love their work

"A designer who can't sell an idea is probably not going to be very successful," [Gold] says, adding, "I'll go a step further. A designer who can't sell an idea will never be a great designer."

Nine Dangers of Story

From my brother, Mike:

While teaching English as a Foreign Language in Istanbul, I came across a wonderful book titled The Art of the Story-Teller by Marie L. Shedlock. Although she discusses telling stories to children in classrooms, many of her ideas are relevant to story-telling for any audience in any fashion. I thought I would share one part of the book where she lays out nine dangers of story. I think of this list often when editing interviews in my work at StoryCorps. For full explanations of each item, you can visit Penn's digital library where the book is available in its entirety. Lots of great stuff to dig into, especially for those of you involved in developing animation and other media for children.

1. Danger of side issues.
2. Altering the story to suit special occasions.
3. Danger of introducing unfamiliar words.
4. Danger of claiming cooperation of audience by means of questions.
5. The difficulty of gauging the effect of a story on its audience.
6. Danger of over-illustration.
7. The danger of obscuring the point of the story with too many details.
8. The danger of over-explanation.
9. The danger of lowering the standard of the story in order to appeal to undeveloped tastes.

- Mike