The common thread of almost every Fast Company story is a creative person who had a compelling idea and managed to spin it into a successful company or organization that continues to innovate.
In case you missed them the first time around, here are some stories that inspired or fascinated us during 2014. You'll find teenage lingerie entrepreneurs, feminist coders, crossword-puzzle game changers, the engineer shaping the future of wearables, and more.
Pixar alums (many of whom joke that they're a small club, because no one wants to leave) have gone on to lead in a range of fields, from entertainment to consumer technology to healthcare. Fast Company spoke with more than a dozen executives, entrepreneurs, and storytellers from all eras of Pixar's three-decade history, all of whom have moved on but attest that Pixar's influence over their ongoing work is invaluable and profound.
If you are under the age of 50, there’s a good chance you are fiercely attached toSesame Street, the show that shepherded so many of us through our toddler years.
You may remember sitting in rapt attention, wondering if anybody would believe that Mr. Snuffleupagus was real, or giggling hysterically about Oscar the Grouch’s musical ode to trash. For generations of viewers, Sesame Street is a portal to a simpler, more innocent time in their lives. This creates something of a quandary for the show’s producers: how do you keep evolving a show so it doesn’t get stale without offending its devoted fans?
A still from a 1969 episode of Sesame Street.Photo: Bill Pierce, The Life Images, Getty Images
Over the last decade, Manhattan Mini Storage's ads have become increasingly provocative. The company has perfected its distinct, snarky voice with dozens of billboard ads that address hot button issues on New Yorkers’ minds including gay culture, right wing politics, abortion rights, and perhaps most shockingly, why the Mets even bother calling themselves a professional team.
People often ask which advertising agency hatches MMS’s hugely successful campaigns, but the truth is that the branding is an in-house job. For the last two decades, Archie Gottesman, chief branding officer of Manhattan Mini Storage, has been carefully crafting the ads for MMS, the company that her father and uncle founded in 1978. She spoke with Fast Company about their approach to advertising—and why groupthink makes everything suck.
With Purely Perfect, Michael Gordon hopes to change the American shower regimen and kill shampoo along the way. "The problem with shampoo is you have to make lots of product to try and correct what the shampoo did," says Gordon. The chemicals in shampoo strip hair of its natural oils, which necessitates conditioner.
Not only did Shechtman get crossword editor Will Shortz to include clues like "State of being awesome, in modern slang" (answer: epicness) in her own puzzle, she has influenced dozens of other grids, helping to justify more modern words and clues.
For each bra, Adore Me shoots multiple versions of images to run on its website. The distinctions between the pictures might include different models wearing the same set in the exact same position, or the same model in the same set in a different position, for example. Then, like any good tech company, it tests the options to find out which one sells better.
Unlike Sheryl Sandberg's brand of feminism, which puts the responsibility on women to lean in, the women of Double Union—San Francisco's feminist hacker space—take a structural approach. It's the system that needs fixing, not women.
Most people think of Rent the Runway—which rents designer dresses at a fraction of the retail price for women to wear to events—as an innovative fashion retailerpowered by impressive technology. And it is.
But, when the company moves to its new 160,000 square foot warehouse, it will also officially become the nation's single largest dry cleaner, as measured by pounds per hour.
We spoke to the unsung heroes—who, by the way, are harder to hire than engineeers—who make sure each RTR dress that shows up on your doorstep looks just as glamorous as it did the first time someone took it off a hanger.
In the last six months, three podcast networks have popped up, from established public radio players: Infinite Guest from American Public Media, SoundWorks from PRI, and Radiotopia from PRX. Meanwhile WNYC has added more podcasts to its roster of shows, which includes the beloved, and very popular, Radiolab. This American Life, the radio show, is now spawning a podcast called Serial. Online print media has also gotten the message: Slate has doubled its podcast output in the last two years.
With more people listening than ever, and real money to be made in a media landscape with disappearing ad dollars, of course radio veterans are flocking to podcasts. "There have been a number of successful podcasts that have generated fans and made money—everyone wants to see if they can take a crack," says Steve Nelson, the program director for Infinite Guest, American Public Media's brand new podcast network.
Game of Thrones features dragons, blood magic, white walkers, dire wolves, and all sorts of made-up creatures, but its world is a "fantasy reality," to use the words of the show's costume designer Michele Clapton. In spite of all the otherworldly elements, viewers still have to believe that the Seven Kingdoms could exist somewhere in the universe.
Much of the credit for the plausibility of the HBO show's made-up world goes to Clapton, who has overseen costume design throughout the show's first three seasons. For her, the key is looking at costume design as a mode of storytelling. "It's so easy to draw a pretty dress in a fun way," Clapton told Fast Company. "But this is so much more about finding the right look and telling so much more about that character, and that's what I really, really enjoy: the storytelling....Each thing will tell a story. It might look like a costume is wrong, but actually it's supposed to look like that. It's telling you something about the character at the time."
Amanda Parkes, the founder of Skinteractive Studios, is bridging the worlds of tech and fashion to make sure next-gen wearables look less like watches, and more like scarves.
New York real-estate developer Jamestown has perfected the art of creating the Next Hot Neighborhood. This is its formula—how gentrification really happens—and where you fit in.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий