Humanity shows its kind and creative face
Issue 5: inspiration from innovation, advertising and dutch music...
It’s April 1st, and yes, some people still make jokes. That is okay. Just like creativity, humor is a coping mechanism. Of course, the coronavirus has infected the April 1st jokes as well. We received a letter from the Dutch Clean Affairs Office. Now that schools are closed and children are being homeschooled, the government wants to check whether they do that in a clean environment. Kids have to clean their rooms, and parents need to send proof to the teachers.
More seriously, I have seen an amazing ability of our human race to adapt to change extremely quickly and extremely well. With creativity and kindness. So many inspiring initiatives around the world of individuals and companies who show their innovative prowess and compassion, it’s impossible to list them all. In this newsletter I will mention a couple. I hope it inspires you to make your business get through these times okay. Or to help others. More inspiration in this fifth issue comes from advertising, music and a touch of poetry.
What our carers need more than applause
In all honesty I forgot where I first saw this. I think it was on Facebook. It’s not important. What is important, is that a couple of designers at Jiobit, who normally make GPS trackers for kids, designed a face shield for care staff that can be easily printed and uses these old transparent overhead projector sheets. Easy and cheap to make. They don’t sell these masks, what makes their story special, is that they shared the blueprint on thingiverse. So, if you have a 3D printer, you can help your local hospital by making these. And if you are a good designer, you can make improvements. How helpful is that?
Back in my own country, The Netherlands, one of our iconic beer brewers, the Swinkels family, is taking back the beer fromt their restaurants and cafe clients who ar now closed due to government measures. The beer is processed into much needed disinfectant for use in hospitals, who will receive it freely.
Over in the Czech Republic, car maker Skoda has taken its hyper-specialized 3D printer out of the production line, and is now making respirators in it. The blueprints are, for those companies who own one of the limited number of these special machines, available so they can join in, too. The reusable respirators are intended for front-line hospital staff. Taking the machine off-line, designing the respirators and starting production took less than a week. That’s how quick we can act when we must.
Links
3D printable PPE Face shield
Swinkels explains their new product
Skoda makes respirators
Over to future generations
I don’t know about your country, but we had some conflicting messages of the effects of the coronavirus on youth. It almost sounded that they were in no way affected. So when we started our partial lockdown, young people initially acted like they were invincible. Maybe also not realising that they could be carriers and kill others. Or get sick themselves. And let’s be honest, it’s not just kids. It’s actually even worse when adults act irresponsibly. There are probably some ad agencies that are doing great business now by coming up with good campaigns. We have one in our region called “Slimmer Chillen”, or “Chill Smarter”. Young people can show off how they chill in a way that is compliant to government measures. Yes, they do have a website. But their main channel is, you guessed it, TikTok. Good time to have a go at that platform, too. I resisted, but not anymore.
Do you know the book “We are going on a bear hunt”? It was first published back in 1989. Yes, that is over 30 years ago. I first heard of it 2 years ago, but that’s besides the point. This book is now, globally, inspiring people to let kids go on an anti-corona-measure-compliant bear hunt. Not real bears, but teddy bears. All over the world, people are putting bears in their windows so children can roam their neighbourhoods trying to spot the most. Community, people. That’s how you do it.
And while you’re at it, here’s a personal tip. I was inspired by the street chalk challenge I wrote about in the previous issue. Now that we’re home schooling, I notice my kid does not like to do his dictations. We are experimenting in making it fun. This week, we headed out to visit my mom. She’s 85, so we could not go inside. We took our stoepkrijt (chalk crayons) and I had already sent her the text. Our Big Boy and his grandma did three words. He tought it was fun, but it was hard on his little hands. Still, everybody was happy. It’s the small things. Look what you can do, and go and do that.
At first I thought this was an extremely fun campaign by Netflix. To urge you to #staythefuckhome, they were to post billboards outside with spoilers of their popular shows. A fun contribution. Sure, I learned about it on April 1st, but still I liked it. Turns out not to be completely a real campaign. But it’s no joke, either. It’s a campaign by students from an advertising school in Germany. I reckon they just graduated. Spoiler alert: here’s a video about the campaign.
Links
Slimmer Chillen campaign (in dutch, but you get the idea)
Bear Hunt book on Wikipedia and story about global hunts now
Art director Seine’s site
The Cult of Us
In crisis times
human's nature reveals
what it is we are truly made of.
These are the first three lines of my poem The Cult of Us. I was inspired by all the people who are working hard, adapting to change, are creative and innovative and, most of all, kind. Read the full poem on Medium (friend link, so no paywall for this poem in this way).
Inspotainment
There are two bits of Inspotainment in this issue. First is a classical music piece on cello by Simon Marciniak. He shared this idea to help artists who see their income being reduced to zero at the moment, because all performances are cancelled. Idea is simple: follow artists on YouTube and watch their clips. As soon as you have 1000 followers on YouTube, you are eligble for the monetising part of the service. Watch this clip and subscribe to his channel.
To close off, some Dutch music. This song is for you to wake up to. The refrain could be translated as “Good morning, good morning, good morning Sunshine. Woman, how you look socialble, a bit of smiling won’t hurt you.” I guess we can all use a bit of that. Keep smiling.