The illusion of life

Cento Lodigiani demonstrates the 12 basic principles of animation developed by the 'old men' of Walt Disney Studios, amongst them Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, during the 1930s. Of course they weren't old men at the time, but young men who were at the forefront of exciting discoveries that were contributing to the development of a new art form. These principles came as a result of reflection about their practice and through Disney's desire to use animation to express character and personality.

This is also a great primer for user interface designers. 

Maya Angelou's Wisdom Applied To Creativity

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

For the past few days that quote by Maya Angelou keeps popping up everywhere. In blog posts, TED talks, marketing books, student design work, branding podcasts, everywhere, because it reveals a simple truth, it is all about how you made them feel.  

Elizabeth Gilbert: Success, failure and the drive to keep creating

Elizabeth Gilbert returns to the TED stage. Once she was an "unpublished diner waitress," devastated by rejection letters, and yet, in the wake of the success of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' she found herself identifying strongly with her former self. With beautiful insight, Gilbert reflects on why success can be as disorienting as failure and offers a simple — though hard — way to carry on, regardless of outcomes. 

Joi Ito & Tim Brown on The Future of Making

The idea of making isn't just reserved for handmade bikes, artisan pickles, and Arduino helicopters. The future of making is a product of our human needs and the possibilities we create through technology. This is about a larger shift towards making and the unexpected movements that might occur. It's about how everyone from you to your grandma might design, make and consume products or experiences in the next 10 to 15 years. In this SxSW Interactive session Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab, and Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, will host a conversation that considers how we might fashion new tools for the future and then how those tools might influence our lives.

Magic in Service of Truth: Rushdie pays tribute to Gabriel García Márquez

In The New York Times, Salman Rushdie writes a lovely tribute to Gabrial García Márquez:

We live in an age of invented, alternate worlds. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Rowling’s Hogwarts, the dystopic universe of “The Hunger Games,” the places where vampires and zombies prowl: These places are having their day. Yet in spite of the vogue for fantasy fiction, in the finest of literature’s fictional microcosms there is more truth than fantasy. In William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha, R. K. Narayan’s Malgudi and, yes, the Macondo of Gabriel García Márquez, imagination is used to enrich reality, not to escape from it.