"Left/Right Brain" ad from Mercedes-Benz

Take a closer look at this Mercedes-Benz ad created by Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive Tel Aviv, Israel.


Enjoy this copy....


Left brain:

I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

Right brain:

I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.


(I appreciate the share from http://streetanatomy.com/)

"Minding Design: Neuroscience, Design Education, and the Imagination"

I am a member of The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and was quite interested to share this with our neuroscience innovation colleagues.

Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture hosted an international symposium dedicated to exploring the relationship between neuroscience and architecture. The symposium titled, "Minding Design: Neuroscience, Design Education, and the Imagination," was held in November 2012, at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Architects and brain scientists have much to learn from each other and discussion addressed the implications of neuroplasticity on lifelong learning, how the environment changes the structure of the brain, how the imagination functions, and how to best nurture it and what is important for the designer to know and how best to teach it.

Minding Design explored the implications of these advances on the education of those who design our built world.

Here is a link to share with anyone interested in details

www.taliesin.edu/md

Sharing music: a powerful way that humans bond

This weekend, I started listening to the audiobook of Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia

The Columbia University professor is probably the country’s best known neurologist. He has the ability to make the complexities of neurological disorders understandable to laymen while portraying the afflictions of his patients in a compelling and compassionate way. 

When the book was first published, writer Scott Horton of HARPER'S Magazine put 6 questions to Dr. Sacks about his remarkable study of music and the human brain.  

Here's one of the exchanges:

4. You suggest that we favor language as our primary medium for the communication of ideas, but your book develops the case for music as another important vehicle. Doesn’t this suggest that music and language have the potential to reinforce and support one another as media of communication?

There is a great deal of debate about the relationship between music and language, and speculation about which capacity evolved first. It has often been suggested that music emerged as a by-product of linguistic capacities. But musical rhythm, with its regular pulse, is very unlike the irregular stressed syllables of speech. We will probably never know the answer here, but whether parts of the brain evolved specifically to process music, or music happened to make use of neural pathways that arose for other reasons, it is clear that music has been central to the human enterprise for 40,000 years or more. Bone flutes, some of which date back even further than this, have been found at Neanderthal campsites. Sharing music is one of the most powerful ways humans bond together, and this has obvious survival value. We still use music in this way, to come together in singing religious songs, holiday music, national anthems, protest songs, even “Happy Birthday.” If we had a time machine, it would be fascinating to learn how early music and speech came together in the form of song. Steven Mithen, in The Singing Neanderthals, proposes that speech and music developed simultaneously, as a sort of song-speech, which later separated into spoken language and music.

Read the full interview at harpers.org

N-of-8 inspiration: book review of “Brainsteering”

I’m always on the look-out for more references to support my use of the N-of-8 creative group innovation model.

And I really like the one-column book reviews in Inc. magazine.

That’s where I learned about Brainsteering: A Better Approach to Breakthrough Ideas by Kevin and Shawn Coyne.

Here is what the reviewer said to read if you read nothing else: The chapter on developing effective questions analyzes queries that produce good answers. Such questions identify customer problems and reveal approaches that don't fall under standard operating procedures.

Click here to go to the review article.

2 sides of the brain -- and the battle between them

This blog post was submitted by Katie Pendlay, one of STINSON's graphic designers.

If you understand the differences between the functions of the hemispheres of the brain, you are scratching the surface to the age-old problem of why the left brain “Management” and right brain “Creatives” don’t always see eye to eye.

There is a real gap between analytical, logical reality-based Management and the creative, holistic, and impetuous Creatives. Management in business is in the application of the ideas, and Creatives in business is in the ideas themselves.

Compare and contrast these brain functions:

Traditional “ad agencies” get labeled as visual and creative, but not logical. However, many times their clients, who they are pitching ideas to, are the logical Management types.

So what is the solution? A Creative needs to learn to sell their idea to Management using management terms. Using analytical tools to explain creative solutions helps Management understand and buy into these conceptual ideas.

One tool that we could find beneficial in closing this gap, is Stinson Brand Innovation’s proprietary StrategicGPS^®. It uses situation analysis and brand insight to develop strategy and tactical initiatives visual, focused, and executable. It helps to direct alignment and execution of tactics and resources. The tool plots relevant findings visually, so its memorable and enhances recall. And it allows use of metrics to track progress over time (time-oriented). It is the perfect blend of visual and logical process that helps Creatives and Management to meet in the middle to solve a problem.


While you’re thinking about this, why not take a Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... will you see the dancer turning clockwise or counterclockwise? Click here to take the test.