Creative Inspiration

The main function of The RIP FILE is to show things that inspire me at the moment. Be it advertising (mostly advertising) or whatever. I found three very inspirational items last week and I’m just now getting to posting about it. It’s been a busy week.

Dyson bladeless fan:


Dyson of the cyclone vacuum fame has done it again. This guy is super interesting and creative. The story goes Dyson was working on a hand dryer and noticed that the high speed air leaving the dryer was sucking in surrounding air thus amplifying the volume of air leaving the dryer, which was useless for a hand dryer. But the phenomenon inspired Dyson to create this. It’s a fan with no blades and it’s supposed to be super efficient. Don’t ask me how it works cause my brain will melt. You can check out this article on Wired.com. They do a good job of explaining it. Those guys are smart and stuff.

The bladeless fan is such a great example of a guy following his creative impulse. A lot of people would have just treated the air sucking phenomenon as an unwanted side effect. But Dyson was willing to explore what this new discovery could do. Good example of following your creative instincts.

Multi-touch mouse:
I thought the Mighty Mouse was a big leap in desktop interaction. These guys have bested the conventional mouse by 10 (literally). All the touch screen stuff coming out lately is cool. I have a touch screen phone (not an iPhone unfortunately) and I like interacting with my technology this way. I even played with the HP touch screen desktop awhile back and it was interesting. But I kept asking myself “How can this be more than just a cool trick?”

These guys took the touch screen concept and used it to re-imagine the way we interact with information on a computer screen. It’s more than just the next evolution of the mouse; it’s a whole new way of organizing and interacting with information on your computer.

I hope this makes it to the consumer market someday. It’s a really cool idea, and a good example of redefining the status quo. If anything stifles creativity it’s sameness.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

Adam Savage obsessions:
Mythbusters is one of my favorite shows. The geekiness of that show is extremely entertaining and satisfying. So I found Adam Savage (one of the hosts) on Twitter and started following him. Turns out, the dude is crazy interesting and creative. I started researching him further and came up will all kinds of cool things that Adam has been involved in. My research led me to a site called Fora.tv (which has become one of my favorite sites) and found this presentation given by none other than Adam Savage. I’ve watched it several times. It’s a bit long but so worth the time. I highly recommend watching it.

Adam Savage’s willingness to test his creativity and push the envelop of authenticity is what inspires me most about the presentation. He doesn’t want to settle for close enough—it’s perfection or failure. That’s a dedicated dude. What I took away from the presentation was a desire to push ideas as far as they will go. Then strap on some retro-boosters and push it farther. That’s a lesson in creativity we can all benefit from.


[If the video doesn't launch check it out here.