| INK STAIN BLOG |

A note about collaboration...

Spiremedia Project manager Meghann Lord and UI Web expert Chad Truemper, are excellent collaborators. They've hired Ink Stain to help them create brand strategy and messaging for a key Spiremedia client. And I'm very grateful. Yet what's really noteworthy...

...is that both Meghann and Chad want to brainstorm as a team. And while that's not highly unusual, I've noticed that the offer to collaborate, as a team, radically improves the quality of the engagement. And yes, collaboration is really fun, but it's serious fun. And there's brain science to this notion of collaboration, although it seems a little ridiculous to get all sciency -- because we all know that when collaboration occurs, a good chemistry is built, better ideas surface -- and more quickly -- than when one is working as a lone brand wolf. Moreover, creative consensus creates team camaraderie. (That was a bigspeak way of saying, it's more fun to work with others). Collaboration builds the confidence needed to present to our clients solidified, true grit, ideas. That's a HUGE payoff. So thanks to Spiremedia's Meghann and Chad for your collaborational juju. It's a win, win, win, in the house of the brander, agency, client, casino.  

No more, says the No Mind Left Behind report: "Your conversations are part of a deeper dialogue that invite debate. Yes, you are encouraged to actually argue. And get pissed. (sic) But because you've been taking the time to write, go deeper, write some more, you can see the humor in it all BECAUSE YOU ARE SAFE AND SECURE IN YOUR THINKING.
Continue reading Controversial new program: No mind left behind. New program designed to thwart rising number of registered sentence offenders.

And if you're a marketer, designer, sales person, (oh, sorry, I mean New Business Development, heh heh) the story is the same. People communicate their so-called needs using the left brain. They get around to satisfying them with their right brains, then they need to be reintroduced to their original goals with a whole brain.
Continue reading Opposing ideas naturally rebel against each other. But they also rely on each other to create something bigger than themselves. And they do that through tension..

I was overwhelmed and amazed at my culture again. I inhaled the golden rust from the bolts that held the illusions of our culture to their psychological foundations, (just like you do most likely, because this is our culture, your culture, a culture of us, and there are Codes in which we live by after all).
Continue reading The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille -- and if my recommendation makes you feel a little defensive -- AS IN, WHY SHOULD I? -- Weeellll....that's simply RIGHT ON CODE, isn't it?.

If you walk around the block and read the poem embedded in the walls, you'll go back to 1879, and come back to the world of now, depending on how slow or fast you read and walk. And think. And feel.
Continue reading The best use of story on the side of a building, Denver, CO.

@font-face { font-family: "Times"; }@font-face { font-family: "Verdana"; }@font-face...
Continue reading The Justice League of Street Food: A Social Media Success Story.

So, getting called in to work on the "brand" is pretty cool. You get access to a cerebral, theoretical, and subterranean world, one that has restricted access and is top secret; a world of concrete tunnels that lead to the inner sanctum of the ultimate idealism chamber...and...who knows what we're going to find in here...we might be stayyyyyingggg a while...
Continue reading Brand: As elusive as Big Foot, a UFO and the Loch Ness Monster. But we kind of like it that way... .