Archimedia Studios

A formula for a successful leader?

The answer is simpler than you may think;  “Surround yourself with talented people.”
What we meant by this was, hire people who tend to be self-leaders. People who love to learn. High-energy people who already have goals. People who don’t require much supervision. People with “the intangibles” – strong character. And then help them grow stronger in the job.

Experienced managers talk about three types of employees: (1) self-leaders who have the potential to be managers themselves, (2) willing followers who may someday learn to be self-leaders, and (3) the rest, who take up most of a manager’s time and probably shouldn’t have been hired in the first place.  You have to identify and get rid of the third type of employee so you can hire more of the first and second type.

Your people are your most important assett !

Tips on becoming a better leader, manager, etc.

1. Volunteer to help before you know what you are really needed for
2. Show up early for a meeting and welcome everyone with a handshake as they arrive
3. Facilitate a meeting for someone you work with
4. Prepare for a meeting before you attend and present your thoughts on the meeting topics first.
5. Highlight several strengths or skills you see another person has and tell them<
6. Admit a mistake you have made
7. Tell stories of times where you have learned something new from a failure
8. Apologize for some wrong doing or hurt you have caused to someone
9. Display or publish your own personal values to your co-workers
10. Introduce yourself to anyone you don’t know in the workplace
11. Start a relationship with a colleague outside of work

12. Develop and use a consistent positive response to greetings like, “Hi, how are you?”
13. Share with someone one of your vulnerabilities
14. Always treat others respectfully
15. Outline for your boss each month all your accomplishments, plans and lessons learned
16. Make calls to maintain your network and to keep your contacts informed of your presence and lend an offer of help should they need it
17. Be transparent and share personal stories
18. Provide regular feedback to others about behaviors and actions you can see and hear19. Share your vision
20. Dream big
21. Define, build and maintain your reputation
22. Spend more time with those performing well than those not
23. Keep business performance and expectations independent of any personal relationship (business is business and personal is personal)
24. Admit when you are not right
25. Communicate clearly, inquire deeper and paraphrase often
26. Spend time communicating with people in private
27. Ask about and learn what motivates other people to help them achieve it

Principles of Great Art and Design

10 Perceptual Principles of Great Art and Design

PEAK SHIFT: We find deliberate distortions of a stimulus even more exciting than the stimulus itself—which is why cartoon caricatures grab our attention.

GROUPING: It feels nice when the distinct parts of a picture can be grouped into a pattern or form. The brain likes to find the signal amid the noise.

BALANCE: Successful art makes use of its entire representational space, and spreads its information across the entire canvas.

CONTRAST: Because of how the visual cortex works, it’s particularly pleasing for the brain to gaze at images rich in contrast, like thick black outlines or sharp angles—or, as in the geometric art of Mondrian, both at once.

ISOLATION: Sometimes less is more. By reducing reality to its most essential features—think a Matisse that’s all bright color and sharp silhouettes—artists amplify the sensory signals we normally have to search for.

PERCEPTUAL PROBLEM SOLVING: Just as we love solving crossword puzzles, we love to “solve” abstract paintings such as cubist still lifes or Cézanne landscapes.

SYMMETRY: Symmetrical things, from human faces to Roman arches, are more attractive than asymmetrical ones.

REPETITION, RHYTHM, ORDERLINESS: Beauty is inseparable from the appearance of order. Consider the garden paintings of Monet. Pictures filled with patterns, be it subtle color repetitions or formal rhythms, appear more elegant and composed.

GENERIC PERSPECTIVE: We prefer things that can be observed from multiple viewpoints, such as still lifes and pastoral landscapes, to the fragmentary perspective of a single person. They contain more information, making it easier for the brain to deduce what’s going on.

METAPHOR: Metaphor encourages us to see the world in a new way: Two unrelated objects are directly compared, giving birth to a new idea. Picasso did this all the time—he portrayed the bombing of Guernica, for example, with the imagery of a bull, a horse, and a lightbulb.

Focus on PR

Many companies waste away millions of dollars trying to establish brands with advertising. When it comes to branding, too much money is worse than too little because when you have a lot of money, you spend a lot of money on stupid things like Super Bowl commercials. Brands are built on what people are saying about you, not what you’re saying about yourself. People say good things about you when (a) you have a great product and (b) you get people to spread the word about it.

Ingredients of Good Design

Good design is the result of great thinking, as well as great ingredients. Typical ingredients are compelling photography and strong content. The job of the designer, as a sort of master chef, is to measure, blend and cook these elements into a successful project. Where do these ingredients come from, and just how good are they? Some elements come from clients, some are original work.

Using cheap or free design elements is like a five-star chef using canned sauces and pre-made dishes in the spirit of a fast-food restaurant. Creating from scratch seems to be a thing of the past. Photo shoots and original illustration are now usually done only by agencies (like ourselves) that work for big clients with deep pockets.

Certainly, factors outside of the designer’s control will affect these decisions, such as budget. But the price of using only cheap or free assets is that designs will increasingly look like replicas of each other. In addition, clients will come to expect assets for free or next to nothing, so budgets will not be there for future projects.


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