3 Blogs To Follow

I don’t list a blogroll on my blogsite, for the simple reason that I follow so many that the list would dominate the right hand column of my page. My RSS reader (Google Reader) delivers a few hundred articles and posts to my hand everyday (yes, most of my blog reading is done on my iPhone).

Over the last week or so, however, I ran across a few creativity/innovation-oriented blogs I found interesting and definitely worth following, so I thought I’d pass that recommendation along.

First is Creative Something by Tanner Christensen (Creative Strategist at Clearlink), whom I introduced to you when he sent me a preview of some cool iPhone wallpapers. “If you’re looking for creative inspiration, motivation, ideas, or insight, you’ve come to the right place,” says Tanner. I like his take on things. For example, in his December 19 post What Exploding Creativity Means For You, he asks a provocative question: “What does it mean to be creative in a world where anyone can think up new ideas…in a world where more and more people are finding their creativity every day, what’s next?” GREAT question.

Second is Mission Drift, written by Renata Razza, Nicole Howell, and Lora Silver. I love that title. I much prefer it over “scope creep” or “mission creep,” because it’s the drift that precedes the creep. In other words, what really happens in our projects and endeavors is that we drift away from our true and stated purpose, so we start adding and doing things that seem right at the time, but aren’t when we stop and reflect back against our original intent. Mission Drift caught my eye when they wrote “What If We’re Creating the Problem?” and cited the late Hans Monderman, a brilliant gentleman whose work I featured in In Pursuit of Elegance.

Third is Design Staff, a new blog founded by the user experience team at Google Ventures, and headed up by Braden Kowitz, an interaction designer and partner at Google Ventures. Design Staff content contributors include an additional half dozen designers, researchers and developers from Facebook, Uber, Adobe Typekit, AngelList, and AirBnB. “I decided to start Design Staff as a community for both entrepreneurs and designers to help one another build better products,” says Braden. “There are just so many questions flying around from both entrepreneurs and designers who want to work with them.” I’ll be featuring Design Staff strategies for small businesses next week in a full OPEN Forum article.

Enjoy!