Creative Reaction

Pure schadenfreude. This tale of a well-meant, but poorly implemented idea is equally delightful and cringe-worthy. Paint Chips tells the story of the Esquire, “a building of high-end duplexes and spacious lofts”, where the “building’s board decreed that each floor would be allowed to choose the exterior colors of their doors, as well as each door’s jambs, lintel and sill.”

The building’s tenants are largely creative & intellectual types and no framework for the decision was mandated. At the time of writing, 16 months later, only one of the seven condo floors had reached consensus.

This well-written account has so many lessons, it’s simply too hard to pick one, though if I have to, it would be that constraints are a necessary and healthy component of creativity. Add your own in the comments.

While maintaining the site, I realized feedburner.com, which I use for site stats, updated its format for feed addresses. I’m getting errors and appears they are not working properly. I apologize for the inconvenience.

They’re now working again. Thanks for your patience!