You could even say that translation is the organizing principle of Murakami’s work: that his stories are not only translated but about translation. The signature pleasure of a Murakami plot is watching a very ordinary situation (riding an elevator, boiling spaghetti, ironing a shirt) turn suddenly extraordinary (a mysterious phone call, a trip down a magical well, a conversation with a Sheep Man) — watching a character, in other words, being dropped from a position of existential fluency into something completely foreign and then being forced to mediate, awkwardly, between those two realities. A Murakami character is always, in a sense, translating between radically different worlds: mundane and bizarre, natural and supernatural, country and city, male and female, overground and underground. His entire oeuvre, in other words, is the act of translation dramatized.

Via The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami – NYTimes.com.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

– Steve Jobs, Wired, February, 1995

One key to entrepreneurs’ success is that they frame things differently, they connect existing dots in unique ways.

via Designers Are The New Drivers Of American Entrepreneurialism | Co. Design.

Over the course of 45 years in the film business, Francis Ford Coppola has refined a singular code of ethics that govern his filmmaking. There are three rules: 1) Write and direct original screenplays,  2) make them with the most modern technology available,  and 3) self-finance them.

If you don’t take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn’t been seen before?

via Francis Ford Coppola: On Risk, Money, Craft & Collaboration

I love the personal work of Ji Lee and enjoyed his talk at the 99% conference:

Bored with his ad agency gig and the uninspiring work he was producing, Ji Lee – now Creative Director of Google Creative Lab – decided to take matters into his own hands in 2002. The result was the ad-spoofing Bubble Project, in which Lee placed blank speech bubbles on ads around New York City. The masses responded and the project went viral, gaining Lee recognition and ultimately forwarding his professional career. Here, Lee talks about how he created, financed, and marketed the project single-handedly.

This combines so many elements that I’m drawn to into one functional environment – beyond object.  It’s meditative, ethereal, and draws from camping technology (rip-stop nylon, portable).  Camping in my tent has always been highly meditative and creative for me.  At one point many years ago, we even had our tent set up in our living room as a getaway and sleep spot.

The Cloud by Monica Forster is a portable room that can be used as a relaxing workplace retreat, a unique meeting place, for meditation, or as an ideal escape for creative brainstorming. A space of its own that can be used within any space, Cloud instantly defines an area and a mood apart.

Easily transported from place to place, when the Cloud is unpacked, a silent fan continuously keeps the chamber inflated as long as required. The room inflates in three minutes and stays inflated until its folded away into its connected carrying bag. Cloud is entered and exited via a self–closing slit door alowing ample ventilation. The Cloud is made of rip-stop nylon and includes the carrying bag with integral fan unit.

See it at UrbanPeel.

This Lego Volvo is crazy:

More amazing Lego creations at TechEBlog’s Top 10 Strangest Lego Creations.