Nov 22, 2018 Unexpected Connections: A Magical Day
Photo credits: Christina Choi – @cxchoi
Unexpected Connections was truly a magical day. Not only was the day full of inspiration, provocative prompts, and life lessons, but there were also moments of human connection with old friends and acquaintances, the speaker slate, and new community members.
Our teams had been gearing up for our much-anticipated Unexpected Connections for over a year. It was something that we discussed several years ago, to resurrect our long-form, all-day conference format. The event was to be a “best-of” Imprint day, building from our past decade-plus of luminary speakers and friends.
Imprint Lab began these events back in 2006 with Imprint Culture Lab’s Julia Huang at the helm. Since that launch year, our events took on many experimental formats across New York and Los Angeles, including invite-only supper clubs, “Imprint Presents” single speaker formats, filmed speaker roundtables, creator workshops, as well as all-day, multi-track conferences.
A number of speakers on this year’s roster were repeat honorees including John Jay, John Maeda, Kenya Hara, Jeff Staple, and David Choe. In his talk, John Jay referenced that, “Imprint Lab is connected to an influential creative subculture that is not visible to mainstream institutions and media, and it is tapped into hyper-connected individuals and collectives from art, design, media, technology….connected to a culture that flows beneath the surface.” This is absolutely what we strive to attain.
This year, we partnered with MAEKAN, a Hong Kong based, audio-first content platform, who creates stories for the curious and where the global community gathers to celebrate creative culture. Both Imprint and MAEKAN’s collective communities are composed of an eclectic mix of thinkers, makers, innovators, and influencers who are very much a part of the conversation we hope to create.
From the beginning, Unexpected Connections was built around the following foundational premise:
To be a gathering that brings together the highest-level creative minds across diverse fields including art, design, technology, business, and food. These intimate conversations will drive new perspectives via a series of one-on-one conversations. The unique connections will serve as the catalyst for ideas that will propel creative culture to new heights. As the “third wave” of this conference that brings together the influence of Pacific Rim (according to John Jay), Unexpected Connections seemed to live up to this goal.
Throughout the day, there were several themes that emerged from the talks and serendipitous pairings and talks.
Be curious
Although nearly everyone in the theater by virtue of being present likely had an inquisitive personality archetype, curiosity was something that was reinforced in several of the talks. As John Jay opened, it was about the notion that transformation begins with curiosity. We must all make a conscious effort to open our minds and to constantly explore the new. He also demanded that we get off the computer and make real connections. It was a valid reminder in this digital age to discipline ourselves to constantly push ourselves beyond the status quo. Furthermore, it’s not just about collecting information and knowledge, but it’s also important to gain and extract insight. To be relevant and truly creative, insight requires critical thinking and deeper analysis of data pieces.
Jason Mayden, whose Super Heroic brand creates quality play for kids and families talked about the special perspectives of children. We should look to kids with consideration as they ultimately have the lens of the future and constantly are exploring the “what if’s” that lead to dreaming, imagination, and discovery. Lindsay Jang and Jennifer Ferro also discussed that feeding and fostering your creativity IQ will allow you to go anywhere and achieve anything.
Learn, Unlearn, Relearn
My favorite concept of the day was introduced by John Jay, and it’s the simple thought that we must unlearn what we think we know and that burden of knowledge. He quoted Alvin Toffler, “the illiterate of the future are those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” And this is because, “holding onto stubborn, outdated beliefs can lead to mistaken assumptions and make you obsolete,” which he quoted Liz Alexander of Fast Company. This is so relevant in industries being disrupted today and trying to keep pace with shifts across technological advances, media consumption, consumerism, retail experiences, and more. John Maeda’s virtually beamed hologram sentiments were similar, stating that, “when you are uncomfortable, that’s when the magic happens.”
Jason Mayden and Jun Cha’s talk touched on how they both “appreciate the process of becoming,” which is a constant process throughout life.
Kenya Hara’s talk on ex-formation (opposite of information) also invited the audience to un-know concepts using imagination and a sense of curiosity to incite creativity. He says modern people love to say, “I know, I know,” as a sense of accomplishment, but really what moves people’s hearts is the unknown. The design examples Hara shared included stunning visual representations of ex-formation concepts: the female body, nudity, flora, air, Tokyo, stick figures, and plants. My favorite image was the bell peppers and tomatoes clad in jersey knit undies, showing how plump vegetables with their sexy twists can personify the nude. He demonstrates how to strip down our memory of familiar functions of objects and preconceived notions to create an entrance for curiosity. It highlights how little we know and emphasizes how this can be the starting point of design.
Start With Why
A number of our speakers cited Simon Sinek’s book, “Start With Why” as a guiding principle in life and work to intrinsically have a clear purpose and articulate story about the what and how. “In the age of big data, the question of WHY gets asked less and less,” stated Ian Leslie in “Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It.” Yimmy Yayo and Charis Poon exchanged on stage about constantly reopening questions that they’ve previously answered and consciously have an open mind. They continued the thought that today in modern popular culture and social media environments, people are communicating in 140 characters, but now we need to try to articulate clear critiques and analyze feedback while having a voice, identity and artistic point of view. This requires authentic problem-solving and more thought, consideration, purpose.
Jeff staple and Karen Okonkwo cited their own examples of this. Whether it is Jeff building one of the earliest streetwear brands or Karen co-founding TONL, changing the stock photography landscape with visually representative imagery and stories, the ultimate action is to “do your thing.” By just being authentic, and not playing to what is trending, you can focus on what you are passionate about. At this point then, you will be at the one-yard line. “So what else is needed besides heart and passion to be successful?” Jeff asked. The answer is to get out of the bubble, stay true to yourself, but identify and give up the areas you are not good at. These are the why’s that evolves into the how’s.
Deeply Connect With Others
Because our theme was Unexpected Connections, we wanted that theme to permeate throughout the day with the audience as well.
In the opening statements, we were instructed to “talk to people you don’t know.” Lindsay and Jennifer’s talk surfaced the idea that, “the savior to humanity is listening to others.” Lindsay also reflected upon successful strategies to be able to do what deceptively feels like everything, which is to empower and wholly trust your teams.
David Choe’s poignant talk was a balance of delicate honesty, pure emotion, and startling confessionals. His powerful interactive crowd exercises were to do a self-guided meditation that neutralizes how you view people on your hate list as well as encouraging the audience to lean-in to a lengthy, but meaningful, bear hug with a stranger that had the capacity to immediately break down barriers. He challenged us all to connect to ourselves … to stop lying, stop wearing a mask every day.
Also, we should connect to the person we least want to connect with. For example, he reached out to someone who was guilty of many wrongs, a despicable member of society, but the act proved meaningful to both of them. Lastly, like John Jay, David encouraged us to leave electronics out of our lives. For him, it has given him the gift of time and reflection, and this is where creativity can explode.
Face the future like a mortal
John Maeda’s personal story of a life altering accident, in which a serious fall gave him perspective and raw feelings of joy, just to be alive. How can we each experience a jarring enlightenment to trigger priorities and a sense of gratitude? Jennifer Ferro talked about how thinking of mortality gives her fearlessness, “Thank God we’re all going to die, now I can run this into the ground, (allowing me to face my prospect of failure) because we’re all irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.” Living a purposeful life was a theme that Helen Zia and Madeleine Brand explored in-depth, in terms of what are we all doing here? They cite the famous quote, “The arc of the moral universe/history is long, but it bends to justice” (Martin Luther King).
Today, we get too caught up in the here and now, not looking at big picture and centuries of history. So, we need to live in the present and really LIVE. However, living for today as a philosophy is not an excuse NOT to act. Helen and Madeleine continued to debate the role of media, and Madeleine feels it is the responsibility of journalists is to give voice to voiceless and hold powerful accountable. Helen got into journalism as an activist first and believes that media can use its creativity as a way to bring common humanity together and move society toward justice and peace.
There are infinite nuggets and quotes from the jam-packed day of Unexpected Connections. Besides these incredible back-to-back talks all-day long, the event tapped VNTANA to incorporate unique hologram technology throughout the day. Floating imagery on the screen as well as some virtual vignettes made the day more visually interesting. Our Luster mosaic created from crowdsourced photos was an engagement builder and will serve as a reminder of the community’s energy as it hangs on our wall.
“To say it was life changing would be an understatement” – Professor Sherry Berkin, CSULB Marketing
While many of us at Imprint, Intertrend, and MAEKAN had a warm fuzzy hangover the following week due to such a positive experience, we are still contemplating the key takeaways and applying lessons to our daily work. We also want to acknowledge the teams’ efforts, months of planning, stressors and problem-solving, and intense collaboration made this work smooth. We are extremely grateful for the speakers, sponsors, participants, volunteers, and our respective communities who made this all come together! Fostering innovation in this world will only be propelled by having important conversations like this amongst diverse creators, but with meaningful like-mindedness to push societal progress forward. Please maintain the new connections you’ve made, and let’s do it again soon!
