I dare you to top this list. What do you love about music? How important is that perfect song or that killer lyrics to you when you're in the zone doing design work? One thing I love about ZURB is the energy we have in the shop. Music plays a huge part. Mark's endless MJ, Ryan's electronica, or Jonathan's krautrock keep us moving. But one song has risen above all others of late:
Best Design Team Song
We break in the afternoon almost every day now, not for naptime, but for I'm On a Boat time (not to be confused with Business Time). What's the connection to the interaction design business? It's all about team culture and passion. Somehow, right now, Andy Samberg and his mates capture it perfectly. To explain it any more would ruin the moment. Personally, I have a goal to see this team actually on a boat off Hawaii some day soon, blasting this same song from the starboard deck until we're sick of flipping burgers and flippy-floppies.
When we need to tear away to focus and get in the flow alone, we throw horns and toss on a pair of earbuds. For me, these three songs just keep me going:
Best Design Lyric
HERE'S WHAT I WANT
HERE'S WHAT I WANT
HERE'S WHAT I WANT
Someone to come at me
Someone to design
Coming from a dream world
Coming from a dream world
Marnie Stern's "Simon Says"
Damn! Or to quote my friend Tex when he heard this album, "Holy ****ing face melter." Marnie Stern is fierce and coy as she throws down a challenge to every designer out there in a song named after a classic interactive toy. It's a passionate plea to see that we're all setting our sites too damn low. We need to step it up and come at our work from a dream world if we hope to change our real world into anything like it.
As Stern puts it in another perfectly named track on the same album:
The future is yours, so fill this part in
The future is yours, so fill this part in
The future is yours, SO FILL THIS PART IN
Marnie Stern's "Transformer"
Best Burning the Midnight Oil Song
And at the desktop there's cryin' sounds
For all the projects due and no one else is around
And the sprinklers that come on at 3 A.M.
Sound like crowds of people askin'
"Are you happy what you're doin'"
Grandaddy's "The Group Who Couldn't Say"
Front man Jason Lytle's lyric from this killer track on Grandaddy's Sumday is the perfect way to take things down a notch and reflect a little at the end of a late night (or early morning) crunch. Every designer has been there when the neighborhood sprinklers come on and we're still up pounding away. Are we happy what we're doing?
Best Song For The Drive To Your Client In Palo Alto
I'm a street walking cheetah
with a heart full of napalm
I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb
I am a world's forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys
Honey gotta help me please
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby detonates for me
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology!
Ain't got time to make no apology
Soul radiation in the dead of night
Love in the middle of a fire fight
Iggy & The Stooges, "Search and Destroy"
This is the lead track on what I'll also nominate as the best album to get yourself pumped for a client meeting in Palo Alto, Iggy & The Stooges' Raw Power. Their fire and out-of-control energy was corralled and shaped by David Bowie's passion and production. It cannot be beat. I defy you to top this one.
To fully appreciate the raw power of this lyric, you have to actually listen to it on the drive from ZURB's headquarters into Palo Alto, the Hollywood of Startups. The highlight hits when the seventh track "Shake Appeal" starts as you roll onto Page Mill Road. You're ready to crush that meeting!
Here's What I Want
Someone to come at me with a song, a lyric, or an artist that tops any of these for design inspiration. I dare you!
