I’ve had this glass jar sitting on my shelf since December. I set it up for the DWR Modernmart event back then and had it on my table for passerbys. What’s inside? Little paper fortunes, pieces of wisdom, well wishes. Whoever stuck their hand in the jar pulled out a nice saying, and a few lucky people ended up with a gift bag filled with Five and a Half goodies to take home.

I’d like to reenact the jar of wishes online, for all you who couldn’t be there to draw from the real jar of wisdom.  Only this time, it requires a bit of participation on your end. And yes, there are gift bags involved!

Interested? Here’s what to do:

Write in the comments section of this post your own original well-wish or piece of wisdom. (Include your name, e-mail and website.)

From the submissions we get, we’ll choose our favorite 3,  who will each receive a Five and a Half journal. Also, Shawn will hand-letter those 3 sayings into notecards (with each credited to its author of course) which will be printed and mailed to all of you who participate (we’ll ask for all your mailing addresses when the cards are ready, don’t put your mailing addy in the comments section for the world to see!).

To get you started, here are a few of the pieces of wisdom and well wishes that we had in the jar of wisdom (I was in such a hurry I didn’t think of any of my own):

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” ~Mark Twain

“If life seems to have more questions than answers, try to be the one who asks the questions.” ~Lucy as Madame Fullcharge, Peanuts

“Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’.” ~Yoda, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Remember, these examples are by other people. We’d like to hear your own original sayings, created by you.

Okay, now it’s your turn!

{Update, April 22nd, 2008: Thanks for writing in with your quotes! We’ve picked our favorite three and are making them into notecards to send to the first 22 of you who wrote in with your original sayings. We’ll post pics of the notecards online soon!}

We know quite a few of you have your postcard tacked to your bulletin board or fridge and are meaning to get around to it. This is a friendly reminder from the people who sent you the postcard that since the weather’s getting nicer, it might be fun to make a date with a friend, grab your postcard, and head into the lovely spring sunshine to complete the task. (And e-mail photos to us.)

Above, a couple of pics from our buddy Amy of Greenjeans who spent an afternoon in the park with her friend Mia doing what “the postcard says.” I know, we said no more previews of submissions we’re receiving till we put up the official site, but this one really put me in the mood for spring (green grass and sneakers!) so I just had to share!

There’s no right or wrong way to complete each task, and you can interpret the instructions however you like. The point is to have fun and to see something really ordinary in a very different way. And please don’t be shy, we’d love for you to share your results with us!

It took longer than expected to write 400 postcards; we just sent out the very last of them today. However, exciting news comes through the airways that some of you have received yours and are getting ready to jump into your task and send us pics. Yay! 

In about a month, say, around April, we’ll be posting the submissions online (quite possibly a separate site devoted to creative thinking and whatnot) so that you can see what others have done, and also follow along as we plan the next round of ”the postcard says” (it probably won’t involve writing another 400 of them though). And we’ll also include instructions for those of you who don’t get a postcard but want to be a part of this too. So stay tuned!

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Update, March 1st: We hear that the bulk of the postcards are just arriving! We’ve decided not to show any previews of the submissions we’ve already received because there’s no right or wrong way to do each postcard task. Even if you’re not sure of the instructions, just do whatever you think it says, your way. Remember, the point of all this is for you to be nudged a little out of your comfort zone to think and see the world around you in a different way. Have fun and remember to share with us what you do!

I don’t think I need to explain this.

Between the two of us, that’s still a lot of postcards to write.

It’s something we all strive for as we spend hour after hour sketching, thinking, writing, trying to come up with something that stands apart from what’s already been done. We’re all unconsciously influenced by the things we’ve seen, read, and heard, and those things inevitably appear in our work. I read somewhere that everything original has already been invented, so all we’re doing is recreating variations of those things (unless you create some snazzy new scientific gadget, of course).

It’s cool to see the different influences that appear in people’s work, and how those influences get combined and reinterpreted in new ways. What isn’t so cool is when emulating something turns into copying. There’s an article in the New Yorker about how designer brands are getting copied and that it’s not such a bad thing because it keeps the designers productive (they have to keep churning things out so that the knockoffs can’t keep up). I agree with that, to a certain extent, but it doesn’t condone copying. There’s something so distasteful about blatantly taking someone’s images or words and using them as one’s own.

Darker thoughts aside (because I can run off a list of instances where friends in art, design and illustration have had their work copied after sharing it online), I think that’s where the fun and challenge of making things lies ~ everyone’s making stuff these days, so how do you come up with something to be recognized as distinctly yours, to claim that, and then continue to make new and interesting things afterwards?

We’ve all got something we consider priceless, that others might not see the value of. I think mine is an old pair of scissors that I borrowed from my best friend when we were twelve that I still have in my closet. The plastic handles are faded now, but the blades still cut really well. When I look at the scissors I can vividly recall those afternoons when we sat on the living room carpet cutting pieces of colorful construction paper, working on our latest craft projects.

That bout of nostalgia came to mind after reading Taking Things Seriously by Joshua Glenn and Carol Hayes. What started as a project where they enlisted family, friends and strangers to submit ”photos and essays about ordinary things instilled with extraordinary significance” (pg. 9) turned into the book: ”an old fashioned wonder cabinet: […] an assemblage of this, that and the other thing (pg. 18)”. The book is like a short story collection with lots of really nice pictures. I found myself always looking at the picture first, trying to guess what meaning lay behind say, the velveeta box or the crumpled pie tin, and then reading the adjacent essay to find the answer. When my eyes went to the photograph again, I saw something different, something meaningful. 

Taking Things Seriously is a process, an experience in looking and interpreting, reminding us to take a good look at all the ordinary things around and to realize that they are each far more just that.

Keri Smith already has quite a following from the numerous guides and how-to’s that she’s written and drawn, generously sharing with us how she (and we) can get those creative juices flowing. Now she’s got another great book to add to our shelves ~ The Guerilla Art Kit. A few words of wisdom and pointers (like how to make street art respectful and nondisruptive), pages of illustrated how-to’s and instructions (my favorites are “seed bombs,” “public chalkboards” and “hidden fortunes”), some really cool templates, and she’ll have you ready to hit the sidewalk as an anonymous artist. And the book looks just as good as the content: a sturdy hardcover with spiral bound inserts printed on cardstock (so the book won’t get soggy if you’re following a page of instructions and you’ve got glue and paint on your fingers), filled from cover to cover with her fun illustrations.

Keri Smith reminds us that seeing things differently involves connecting with our surroundings, and in the case of guerilla art, letting our work be changed by the environment it’s placed in, getting rained or stepped on, and responded to by others: ”Like a random act of kindness, guerilla art has the potential to create a ripple effect. Imagine the postal worker running through his day, stopping for a moment to read a quote you have chalked onto the sidewalk. You have the power to enter into people’s daily routines” (pg. 15).

I’ve already gone through the book twice. Once the weather turns a little cooler I’ll be pulling on my walking boots and heading outside with a handful of seeds and chalk.

We all know that great piece of advice: to “think outside the box.” So true ~ something as simple as a change of materials (like a pair of scissors instead of a pencil) can point you in the direction of creating something fresh and different. But there’s more to it than that. Sooner or later, you’ll probably get stuck again (like I’ve been for the past week!), and you can keep changing the things you use, but what really needs to happen is a change in how you think.

That’s where creative thinking comes in.

We’ve started going through De Bono’s Thinking Course, which seems like the nerdiest book ever (and it’s not exactly thrilling to read), but we’d heard about it because lots of designers swear by it and we decided to try going through it. The purpose of the book is to practice different exercises that get you thinking about things in nonconventional ways. The first exercise is called “Plus, Minus, Interesting.”

It’s similar to the idea of “pros and cons”, only this time around, you add an “interesting” column. That’s where you put all the tangents, questions, and other ideas you get. Most likely, you’ll find that there are things you hadn’t even considered, and possibly even more creative ways to deal with the issue at hand. Next time you’re musing over something, write it down, and give “plus, minus, interesting” a try. It’ll definitely be worth your time!