Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 in (30.5 x 40.6 cm). Collection of the artist.
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See the process.
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The experience of entering a building influences the way you feel inside the building. If the transition is too abrupt there is no feeling of arrival, and the inside of the building fails to be a sanctum.
While people are on the street, they adopt a style of "street behavior." When they come into a house they naturally want to get rid of this street behavior and settle down completely into the more intimate spirit appropriate to a house. But it seems likely that they cannot do this unless there is a transition from one to the other which helps them to lose the street behavior. The transition must, in effect, destroy the momentum of the closedness, tension and "distance" which are appropriate to street behavior, before people can relax completely.
Evidence comes from the report by Robert Weiss and Serge Bouterline, Fairs, Exhibits, Pavilions, and their Audiences,Cambridge, Mass., 1962. The authors noticed that many exhibits failed to "hold" people; people drifted in and then drifted out again within a very short time. However, in one exhibit people had to cross a huge, deep-pile, bright orange carpet on the way in. In this case, though the exhibit was no better than other exhibits, people stayed. The authors concluded that people were, in general, under the influence of their own "street and crowd behavior," and that while under this influence could not relax enough to make contact with the exhibits. But the bright carpet presented them with such a strong contrast as they walked in, that it broke the effect of their outside behavior, in effect "wiped them clean," with the result that they could then get absorbed in the exhibit.
-- From Enumerable.com
This image is from the lobby of XPLANE's new St. Louis office.
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Bossman/geek drawing by XPLANE Creative Director Scott Matthews.
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When there's no real person to embody an abstract service, marketers sometimes create fictional people to personify brand attributes.
The Maytag repair man, General Motors' Mr. Goodwrench, the MicroWarehouse customer service rep, Dell's Uncle Dudley—these characters help us visualize service qualities (such as "reliable" and "responsive") that otherwise might not come across as credible. Of course, invented characters can also backfire: Microsoft's intrusive Office paperclip figure personifies much of what users find obnoxious about Microsoft itself.
Read more in Softletter.
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Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 in (30.5 x 40.6 cm). Collection of the artist.
If you want to get an email when my paintings go up for sale on eBay, please send me your email address at dgray [at] xplane.com or send me a flickrmail.
Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.
When you've followed the thread of empirical science to it's logical ends -- when you've split the atom; when you've mapped the human genome, when you've discovered every land mass and every species and mapped the periodic table -- what's next?Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.
You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
this is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.
Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.
This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.
Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.
This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.
-- Margaret Atwood
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To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour
-- William Blake
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"...one of the most effective sales presentation tools that I've ever been taught. Write your entire presentation out and then get some colored markers. For all the facts that you have written down, highlight them in red. Next, color all your humor in green. Lastly, color all your audience participation in blue.Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.
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