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Inspirational People: Leon Logothetis

In both our work and in volunteering, we have seen both the most giving and the most greedy of people.

Watching The Kindness Diaries on Netflix reminded me that thankfully, there is more good in the world than not – and it starts with us to keep kindness going. We honestly get so down when we go out of our way for people, and they take it for granted – or expect more and more. But Leon Logothetis, the creator of The Kindness Diaries, reminded us that if you keep putting kindness first, it becomes contagious and others want to help too. Instead of stepping back or ignoring our surroundings, we just have to be present and open.0

Leon travels the world with no money, relying on the kindness of others, and the stories of those he meets along the way. And the stories is the other part: we are humans, we are made of stories. Stories make us who we are. This is nothing to be ashamed of – our stories are our experience, our being. And I am so inspired by Leon’s quest in listening to others and their stories. In design, it is the stories behind each person and each business that make them unique – but they often get hidden away in this need to appear “corporate” or “professional”. But we are human, we connect to stories.

The Kindness Diaries is nothing without the stories of the people in the series. It would be meaningless without the stories behind the kind gestures, understanding where the kindness came from. And that’s the gem – businesses with stories have more meaning. They have more reason for people to connect with them, because there’s something to relate to, or feel something for.

We just need to encourage more kindness in businesses. Put kindness first, whether you’re on your own or a part of a large corporate structure. Kindness starts with us. Kindness starts with you.

Kids learning code

One thing I love seeing is the opportunity kids have today: we have come so far with coding over the past 20 years.

When I was growing up (see my previous post), it was up to me to do my own learning. I could only learn what I found in my own free time, as it wasn’t a focus at school. Now there are coding clubs run across Australia, teaching kids how to use code in all sorts of ways. Not just webdesign, but game design, animation, program design and more.

Why do I think kids learning code is so important?

Coding is all about problem solving. You might be creating a website to share information, or developing a game to teach people a new skill. But the problem solving runs deeper. When coding, sometimes things don’t work as expected. You learn so much through testing and redeveloping. Even just working through some code to find an error, and learning the most efficient way to analyse the code.

Problem solving teaches kids to be detail oriented, patient and be able to think on their feet. And if they’re learning it while they are having fun, then they usually won’t feel like they are learning (in a good way).

Coding also gives a lot of kids a new space for creativity. Not every kid is set to become an artist, but there are many more ways to be creative – and coding opens up a whole world for it. Coding gives the framework to create new inventions, new ways of presenting information, new ways of interacting. And when it’s kids at the helm, there are no limits.

I am really looking forward to the future, and what the next generations create with code.

Cayt’s book launch!

Our very talented copywriter Cayt launched her own novel this week – The Blood Apothecary.

She writes her own material at any moment she has, and The Blood Apothecary has been a long project that we’re all excited to see turned into a book – a real book! She regularly writes website content and brochure content for our clients.

We helped design the cover for the book, and the book had a successful launch at Readings in Hawthorn. Congratulations Cayt!

 

Paul Hawken: a night of change

We went to see a presentation by Paul Hawken on Friday, at the Peninsula Community Theatre. For those who don’t know, Paul Hawken is a socially-aware environmentalist and author of many books. We went not knowing anything about Paul – all we knew was that he was going to talk about sustainability, the economy and business.

Wow. It was hugely different to the media release, but was an amazing presentation. It was strange in the fact that many people from Melbourne travelled down to Mornington for his presentation, so there were very few familiar local faces around. If anything, it was more of a spiritual discussion than a lecture.

Around sustainability, he feels there needs to be change from within each person, not change from outside sources. You can bring in processes and products, but if the people won’t change, then all these plans of improving the world fall to the wayside.

“
We can’t solve problems by changing things, we can only solve problems by changing [ourselves].
– Paul Hawken

For us, sustainability is a strange word – it’s become somewhat fashionable and its real meaning has lost strength. Think about all the “green” or “sustainable” businesses you see each day – how many of those are really wanting to change our mindset, or just wanting to make a dollar at the end of the day because there’s a demand to be “green”?

To have a sustainable world is going to be hard – everyone is used to having resources literally on-tap, which makes it hard to change. We know we’ve even got a long way to go to really make a change – both in business and personally – but starting is better than sitting and watching the world go by.

Steve Jobs, you won’t be forgotten

The world lost a visionary today. Look around our studio and you know Apple has had a large impact on how we get our work done. I’ve always had a special respect for Apple, which strangely enough grew even more after watching the movie The Pirates of Silicon Valley.

I always have a giggle at the first Apple computer:

And to finish, one of my favourite quotes from Steve Jobs:

“
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes…the ones who see things differently – they’re not fond of rules…You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things…they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
– Steve Jobs