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[+] Open the Meta Bar Tag: joshua blankenship. There are 11 posts tagged joshua blankenship. Open the Meta Bar to choose a different tag.

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Haiku Pickup Lines


I want your digits. Don’t worry—I can’t call you. I have an iPhone.

I remember Joshua Blankenship announcing his appropriately named (and beautifully designed) Tumblr, Haiku Pickup Lines but forgot to check it out until @hemeon mentioned it yesterday.

Great stuff. Clever, funny, and even a couple romantic ones.

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On 30, Aging, Good, Evil, Steinbeck, and Life

Joshua Blankenship picked this excellent Steinbeck quote in reflection of his own 30th birthday (read the whole passage). I also thought it rather poignant in light of the recent celebrity deaths, whose lives our culture spends a lot of time examining.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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Or, lack thereof.

I wanted to link to this article, but couldn’t resist quoting Blankenship’s take on the mess.

Holy lack of brand architecture,
Virgin has a lot of logo.

Joshua Blankenship, Virgin’s Branding Strategy

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Skinny Line

The biggest killer of progress in a project is losing momentum. In my opinion, the biggest killers of momentum are lack of focus and indecision. You pay dearly.

There’s no way around it, design-by-committee will cost you in the long run. So will decision-by-committee. Or anything-by-committee. It’s simple math. You’re going to pay the overhead. It might not be in cash (though it probably will be), but you’ll potentially bleed time and missed opportunities and your sanity in the process. Too many cooks COSTS.

Joshua Blankenship, On Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

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Guilty.

I’m consistently guilty of this. Truth is there is a lot I want to do. And a limited amount of time to do it. And I’m good at overextending myself. But ultimately I need to be the one that sets the priorities. Priorities are what dictate what gets done and what doesn’t.

“Oh, dude, I’ve been really slammed…I don’t have time.”

Liar. Thousands of people will spend hours just commuting to their jobs today. 20 years ago we didn’t have time for the internet. 100 years ago no one imagined carving out most of the night to watch TV. You have time. But you choose not to make time for certain things.

Joshua Blankenship, Stop Saying ‘I Don’t Have Time’

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Super-important rule for the creative process.

Design is more about thought process than implementation. Think before you computer.

Joshua Blankenship, Five Design-Related Lessons I’ve Learned Lately

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Make more room.

With the right people and the right ideas, hard work does actually add more amazing to a project.

We don’t have a huge marketing budget. But there’s always money to be found, so long as every dollar we spend brings back something more valuable in return…

There is always margin for amazing.

Joshua Blankenship, The Infinity of Amazing

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(emphasis mine.)

…you need a Social Media Strategist/Guru/Mahatma to run point and decipher the turbo-complicated, multi-leveled world of the big, wide web.

Only you don’t.

You don’t need those sites and you don’t need that guy on your team. You need to find The Mission and do everything in your power to ignore the voices that compromise it.

Joshua Blankenship, The Social Media Strategist/Guru Has No Clothes

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Joshua Blankenship usually does a Friday Five type of list each week, and I always love them. But this week’s really struck a chord with me. Excellent observations on his part.

ps - He’s started some rumors that he’s working on a book idea in the area of management or working with people or something along those lines. I feel like I’ve been reading his blog long enough that I can say whatever he puts out will be most awesome. I can’t wait.

  1. You can make it pretty as pretty can be, but if it doesn’t work or people can’t use it, you lose.
  2. Don’t hire until it hurts; you can do more than you think you can.
  3. Don’t overdo it; dedicated time for fun-having makes work time better.
  4. Hard seasons separate the hirelings from the People Who Get It.
  5. Working out consistently is amazing, and well worth the sleep and money traded for it.

Joshua Blankenship, Five Lessons Learned Lately

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Lack of conflict is present on teams where 1) someone isn’t speaking up, 2) the culture/structure doesn’t permit dissension or dialogue, or 3) everyone is in near persistent agreement. All three of these are detrimental to innovation on their own, and absolutely deadly in combination.

Joshua Blankenship, Stop Running from Conflict, It’s Where All the New Lives

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iPhone/Beatmaker DJ Set at NewSpring

Try to imagine this on a gigantic sound-system.


Joshua Blankenship on stage using his iPhone to DJ.

“…let it be known that the low-end that comes in at about 0:59 rumbled the whole auditorium, including the stage.”

Really excellent & fun. Read Joshua Blankenship’s post for all of the details.

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