In 1998, I stumbled across Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth for the first time. I remember downloading it to my Palm Pilot so I could refer to it whenever I wanted to. I shared it with many of the creative people I have worked with over the years. In the time since I first discovered the manifesto, it has been posted to hundreds of websites, sometimes in very unique ways (like this and this). It has been plagiarized and satirized. But what Bruce wrote 12 years ago, is still applicable today. If you are interested in personal growth, this is a good place to start. And it’s this week’s friday inspiration:

1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

28. Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’

31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea – I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces – what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference – the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals – but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

Dear Designer,

As you know, I currently have an opening for a senior designer.

In fact, I have a couple of openings. It’s a decent position. Good salary. Benefits. Lots of work. And I want to hire you. Really, I do. But you are making that very difficult.

So, in the interest of helping you get the job you seem not to want, here’s a little advice. I hope it’s useful.

1. You are a designer. That means the most important thing you can show me is design. Not your resume. Not your references. Not your LinkedIn profile. Not your blog. Not your scrapbook. Not your twitter feed. And not your cover letter. Sure, all these things might help me see that you are the kind of person who will fit in with our team, but if I can’t find your portfolio, I won’t waste my time with any of this stuff.

I just reviewed 68 applications for the position you applied for and more than half didn’t include a single sample of design work. Here’s an idea: blow me away with your design talent and leave me wanting to talk to you about everything else. We’ll connect on Facebook after we talk.

2. You need an online portfolio. Offers to show your portfolio “on request” are a waste of your time and mine. Websites are cheap and easy to create, in fact, if you want to be a senior designer, you should have created several of them by now. Get one for yourself. Now. If your portfolio needs to be explained, it’s not good enough.

3. You don’t need to show me every piece of work you’ve done in your career. Just show me the best stuff. Knock my socks off. If you can show me just 5-7 things that are awesome, I’ll know you are capable of greatness. And you’ll get an interview.

4. I don’t care what you did in high school. Or boy scouts. Leave it off your resume.

5. MySpace is not an effective portfolio host. Just trust me on this one.

6. If you’ve been in college since 2003 and plan to graduate in 2011, you need to have a very good story as to why.

7. You may think that putting stuff like “I take long walks, I ponder life’s imponderables” on your resume will make me think you are deep. It doesn’t. It makes me think you are weird.

8. No designer should send an 8-page unformatted word document as a resume. And don’t title it “childprotegy.doc.” (sic). This is the very best way to show me you aren’t.

9. If your website crashes my machine (twice), I won’t come back. Sorry.

10. You know the section on the resume that is usually called “objective”? Leave it out. I know that the objective is to find a job, otherwise you wouldn’t be sending your resume to me. The thing is, no one ever says the objective is to get a job. Instead they write, “to find an upwardly mobile position within a fast-paced, forward-moving organization in which I can contribute to critical strategic initiatives and demonstrate my ability to…blah, blah, blah”. Let’s just leave this section out. It takes up space and tells me you’re not creative enough to think of something better.

11. I know that the expected thing is to send a cover letter and resume. In fact, the posting asks for it. But that doesn’t mean that’s all you should do. You’re a designer. You’re creative. Prove it.

In this economy, there are a lot of people who want the job you are applying for. You need to find a way to stand out. Show me you are an artist. That you think differently. That you’ll contribute. Do that and the job is pretty much yours.

Your friend and possibly future employer,

Me.

A few weeks ago I was driving my car—running errands—with my four-year old daughter, when she yelled out, “bingo!” A few minutes later she did it again. “Bingo,” she said, “Now I have more bingos than Boo” (my nine-year old boy).

I was curious, so I asked, “What’s a bingo?” She answered, “Oh, it’s a yellow car. I have hundreds of them.”

Apparently my kids have been playing this game with each other for awhile. Each time one of them spots a yellow car, they shout, “bingo!” It’s a variation of the slug bug game I played with my brother, without the sore shoulders.

The game works for two reasons. First, bingos (yellow cars) are somewhat rare. Scan a near-by parking lot. Among the hundreds of white, blue, and tan cars, you may see one or two yellow cars, or none (I live in a city where we don’t have yellow taxis). The second reason the game works is that yellow cars stand out from the mass of other bland colored cars. They are easy to spot.

Which got me thinking about how marketers call attention to their brands using something that stands out from everything else. Let’s call them bingos. Some examples:

Apple uses design as a bingo for its products. It started with the unique (at the time) candy colored, plastic all-in-one iMacs and has spread to include every product in its portfolio. You see an Apple product and can’t help but want to touch and play with it. In the technology category, great design is both rare and noticeable. Bingo.

The rhythmic rumble made by Harley Davidson Motorcycles is a bingo. You can hear it from miles away. And you won’t hear it from a Japanese bike. It calls attention to itself in a way that no other motorcycle brand does. Harley Davidson has even filed a trademark application to protect its exhaust sound. Bingo.

Lady GaGa uses outrageous costumes and set-ups as a bingo. Some of the outfits are so ridiculous, you simply see them and think, seriously? But you can’t look away. You want to see what she’ll do next. It doesn’t matter whether her music is good or bad (at first), the costumes get your attention. In the world of music, she stands out from the crowd. Bingo.

Goodyear has for decades put blimps in the air above football games. Blimps are rare. They are pretty easily noticed, especially when the cameras pan to show them above the stadium. Even if another brand put its name on the blimp, we’d still think of it as the Goodyear Blimp. Bingo.

A bingo can be just about anything—a sign, an ad, a shape, an aroma, a color, a design, a function, a style, an idea, a behavior, a voice, an experience, a service, an employee, a distribution model, a price—as long as it stands out from everything else and draws attention to itself. In most cases, it is very hard to accomplish.

Do you use bingos for your brand? Is there something about your product that makes it stand out from the mass of bland competitors? Is there something about your product that is rare in comparison with the competition? If not, should there be?

Note: Though there is some overlap, a bingo is not a “purple cow” as defined by Seth Godin in his book of the same name. Bingos are not necessarily remarkable (though the best ones are). Yellow cars stand out and are easy to spot, but not all yellow cars are great cars. In fact, some are lemons. So having a bingo for your product will not necessarily make it great or worth buying. But it will get your product noticed. And if your product is also great, then what you have are the makings for a very strong brand.

This entry was originally posted on March 22, 2007 at the old Brandstory blog (link available for a limited time). Of the 200 or so entries I posted there, this one got the most ardent comments. For those who care, I have posted the original comments here. They’re long and a little contentious.

Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week recently gave a provocative speech titled, “Are Designers the Enemy of Design?” Very interesting stuff. Here’s how he starts:

“…DESIGNERS SUCK. I’m sorry. It’s true. DESIGNERS SUCK. There’s a big backlash against design going on today and it’s because designers suck.

So let me tell you why. Designers suck because they are arrogant. The blogs and websites are full of designers shouting how awful it is that now, thanks to Macs, Web 2.0, even YouTube, EVERYONE is a designer. Core 77 recently ran an article on this backlash and so did we on our Innovation & Design site. Designers are saying that Design is everywhere, done by everyone. So Design is debased, eroded, insulted. The subtext, of course, is that Real design can only be done by great star designers.

This is simply not true.”

Bruce isn’t just talking about graphic designers, but all professionals who design. Read the whole thing.

Let me say that I agree—sort of. I work with plenty of designers who don’t suck. Great talents who understand that non-functional design is called art, not design. Exceptional artists who love to help clients create things they can’t do on their own (at a price that makes sense). Designers who are more interested in the needs of their clients (including sometimes making the logo bigger), than their own needs for aesthetics.

But almost every day, I see designers who treat their customers like morons, or think their clients don’t know anything about their own customers, or the needs of their own businesses. I’ve read comments by designers who have argued that if an entrepreneur can’t afford an expensive logo created by a “professional” designer, they shouldn’t be allowed to start a business. And I’ve read a “Client Code of Ethics” written by designers about how clients should act when working with them.

Designers don’t suck. They offer an incredibly valuable service (regardless of price). But some of them need a reality check.

The value of design is not determined by the price charged by the designer (great design is available at all price points). The quality of design is not determined by years of experience (or advertising agencies would be filled with 65 year olds, rather than 20 year olds).  The acceptability of design is not determined by where you get it (you can get great graphic design at Landor as well as Logoworks [full disclosure: I work at Logoworks]).

Someone once said that politics is too important to be left to the politicians. The same is true of design. Your business/brand is far too important to be left exclusively to the designer. Bruce argues, “People want to participate in the design of their lives. They insist on being part of the conversation about their lives.” If you’re serious about the design of your brand, you want to be a part of that conversation too.

Be a designer.