Gregg Fraley

Is there anything worse than a job which makes you unhappy? Beyond terminal illness probably not. We spend a great deal of our time and energy at work and it’s where we would hope to have some opportunity for applied creativity and innovation. Today’s secret wish is from Emily who has, frankly, been mentally whipped into submission. She feels her work is hopeless, and  uncreative. She wishes for better. But she’s married to the paycheck and can’t see a way out. Everyday she comes home with her spirits lower than the day before. If you feel your job is sucking the life out of you, there are things you can do: 1.) Look into your heart and ask yourself if

Read More..

Hollywood creates stars and iconic faces, like George Clooney. These amazing faces on the big screen are a lot of fun, but sometimes I think they have us forgetting we are all good looking. Maybe not like a movie star, but nonetheless beautiful. From the inside out. And we are all as potentially creative as the biggest Hollywood actor. My Secret Wish cartoon caught this guy, Jim, wishing for a bit of glamor in his personage. Watching this man for a bit I got the sense he was average confident, and clever, but I also detected something, deep inside that was holding his self-expression back. That thing deep down was a wish for better looks. One of the glorious things

Read More..

As the son of a coach, and full-on sports participant in years past, I am not a stranger to exercise. I was doing push-ups daily before I entered kindergarten. I was an average athlete at best, but Dad was proud of how fit I was. The modest success I had was entirely due to good conditioning. Once upon a time! I’m back into an exercise program again and after just a couple weeks of very hard work I’m feeling the positive effects. While far from perfectly fit, I’ve made progress, I feel more prepared for life! It occurred to me, as I reached near maximum heart rate last night, that there is a huge parallel between the concepts of exercise

Read More..

Practical matters are often given as reasons for not doing creative things. “I’d love to try painting, but I don’t have time for that silly stuff.” “Yeah, I love music, but who can spend an hour a day practicing guitar.” “I hate my job, but I dare not change in these troubled times.” It’s true, we have to be practical. We have to pay mortgages, school fee’s, taxes, car payments there is no end to the bills in a middle class life style. No end to the trouble you can get into taking risks in life, and yet, being practical — all the time — isn’t much fun is it? Yes, we need some stability in our lives, but past

Read More..

Regrets are something we all carry around. Some of us more lightly than others. Maybe I’m projecting but when I saw “Harold” the other day it occurred to me that his regrets were of the heavier variety. He was working hard on his laptop but occasionally he’d look out the window of the train with a regretful frown on his face. I got out my pen and did a quick sketch. My imagination had him wistfully thinking about a very early crush. When boys are just beginning to get interested in girls there’s that awkward period where you’re scared to ask for a dance, or to even say hello, let alone have a kiss. That doesn’t stop you from thinking

Read More..

Train drawings…four faces.

Read More..

Am off tonight to do a Pecha Kucha presentation at an event organized by Simon Strong of Human Zoo. It looks like a fascinating line-up of tasty Pecha’s. It’s good fun to create something as scaled down as 20 slides at 20 seconds each.  It forces you to get to the essence of things.  In preparing for tonight, I put together what I think is an insightful set of 20 statements about innovation that I’m calling “Innovation in a Nutshell” or less PC, “No BS Innovation”.  Sharing my work with you here… So, please, tell me what you think of the following.  My intent is to take Innovation back to the absolute basics — if you follow this guide, you

Read More..

There is quite a bandwagon rolling right now about Creativity. 5 years ago it seemed that Creativity was a bad word. You could never say it aloud at a corporation because what it meant wasn’t new ideas, it was interpreted as “lack of control” or, even worse, those touchy-feely things that have nothing to do with business. Alright, you could say the word, IF, you coupled it with “…and Innovation.” This is still something you nearly always have to do. When you think about it, it’s kind of silly. Creativity is a bigger concept than innovation, in fact, innovation is a subset. So, saying Creativity AND Innovation is a bit like say, I like Music AND Raggae. Now, every few

Read More..

Riding the train you get a peek into the lives of other people. It’s one of my favorite places to observe, draw, and reflect. Yes, most have their game faces on already, but sometimes you get an intuition of what’s under the mask. I saw this woman a couple weeks ago riding the train into London. She was a domestic of some kind and she had a lovely open face (when you draw people everybody’s face looks more interesting, beautiful really).  Massive bag in her lap, practical brown shoes, tidy looking overall. A name came to me, Agnes. Agnes was a bit tired looking, in spite of a hurried, dab-on make-up job. Agnes relaxed for the ride and zoned out,

Read More..

Branding is something we are imprinted with at a subconscious level. I saw this guy at Hobgoblins, a quite ordinary guy, but with this poofy quiff.  I asked myself why? The result is this drawing. Non-Americans might not get the Bob’s Big Boy reference, click here and you’ll see what that is.

Read More..