Creative Links 13.8.07

I’ve discovered an excellent blog called New Music Strategies, which has a lively and well-argued point of view on the new realities of the music business. A good introduction is author Andrew Dubber’s e-book 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online, which is also available as a free printed booklet.

Daniel Schutzsmith has a new issue of Graphic Define online, with a great selection of guest authors writing about ‘the business of running a design studio’ (most of which will apply to any creative business). On a similar theme the Creative Review blog has a great piece called Running A Design Studio: The Boring Stuff, by Build partner Nicky Place.

I’m finding The Ideafeed an excellent source of new stories and publications about the creative industries. Maybe you will too.

Andrew at Northern Planner shares some tips on Using research and information to write a great creative brief – worth reading for anyone on the giving or receiving end of a creative brief.

Steve Roesler has an insightful series on Fear of Success, which in my experience is surprisingly common among creative professionals (and also applies to Organizations).

If you’re wondering what could possibly be scary about success, have a read of Marcus Brown’s unforgettable post The Show Off. I’m pleased to say Marcus retains his creative enthusiasm, in a mind-boggling new project The Ides of March. If you have a business problem, send it to Marcus and he’ll come up with an idea to help you solve it – if you like the idea, you pay what you think it’s worth (yes, really), if not he posts it on the Ides of March. I had the pleasure of meeting Marcus at the Interesting conference in June – he’s charming and obviously very bright, so I’m looking forward to following his creative thinking high wire act.

Juliana Frasson Xavier is a Brazilian planner who’s been making the most of her time in London by interviewing some of the luminaries of the UK advertising scene and posting her findings on John Grant’s Brand Tarot blog. She asked her interviewees about the thought processes they use to approach creative and business challenges – a fascinating topic, especially considering her interviewees include Phil Teer, Creative Director of St Luke’s, Richard Huntingdon of Adliterate, and Russell Davies of Russell Davies.

Finally thanks to Steve at Creative Generalist for this sighting of the rare species of Poet Managers:

Poetry speaks to many C.E.O.’s. “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers,” says Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, a $3 billion producer of sound systems for luxury cars, theaters and airports. Mr. Harman maintains a library in each of his three homes, in Washington, Los Angeles and Aspen, Colo. “Poets are our original systems thinkers,” he said. “They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”