Because of what I do I am always on the lookout during my internet perusing for examples of visual communication for inspiration and insight. Last night I stumbled upon the website for To Resolve Project.

The idea for the To Resolve Project is ingeniously simple, smart, fun and motivating: take your New Year’s resolution and render it into a visual or graphic that can be saved as an iPhone wallpaper. What I found so interesting is the impact that the visuals of these resolutions make, far greater, in my opinion, than if they were just words listed on paper.

The To Resolve Project is also a great way to put into practice the process of transforming a thought or message into a visual. Take a moment to notice how the colors, font and illustration choices effect the overall meaning of the resolution. The same concepts mentioned apply to branding for a business as well. Customers, clients, and the prospective of both, react emotionally to your organizations visual identity (regardless of whether its subconscious or not).

Below you will find a small collection of the To Resolve Project’s resolutions that I found particularly fun to look at, but please check out their site, and if you are interested you can submit a resolution of your own. Which ones are your favorite?  What is your resolution this year? And how would you communicate that visually? I’d love to know in the comments below!

Lydia lnichols

Inka Mathew

Shane Harris

Riley Cran

Danielle Torricelli

And you can thank the Hello Giggles Team for this beautiful delight: ‪What Are You Doing New Years Eve? by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt‬. Zooey’s voice is heavenly and Joseph is too handsome for words. You can find HG on Facebook and Twitter. Their YouTube channel is VERY entertaining (I especially enjoy Molls’ Five Favorite Things of the Week.) And here is Joseph’s amazing site: http://hitrecord.org/.

Marketing Motivation
Marketing Over Coffee (podcast)
Penelope Trunk
Mashable
Google (not really a blog however leads me to GREAT bloggers)

Creative Inspiration
The Sartorialist
The Coveteur
The Selby
Apartment Therapy (specifically House Tours)

Comic Relief
Hello Giggles (specifically Molls’ Five Favorite Things of the Week)
The Ellen Show (specifically the Naughty Audience Dancing videos and Bad Paid-For Photos)
Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me (podcast)

ANDDD I am thankful for YOU! Thank you readers for reading our blog – we appreciate you! Let me know how we are doing (@NickiG) and PLEASE share your favorite bloggers with us!

Yep, it happens to us all.

I am a firm believer in the power of the mind and that the physical can affect us in a multitude of ways. The state of our physical bodies and physical spaces can have great impact on our thoughts and in turn our behavior. And, no, I did not just make this up. Feng Shui is a great example of this same exact philosophy (and it’s been around a really long time). The idea is simple: spaces affect and reflect our physical, mental and emotional states of being.

This lesson in the mind and space connection should not be swept under the rug (nudge, nudge). It applies to every aspect of our lives including the world of business and marketing. Clean and clutter free work spaces (that includes your computer hard drive, people!) can increase productivity and creativity because your mind is given the chance to focus on the important things, not just the dust bunnies swirling around your monitor.

So take this nugget of wisdom and mull it over a moment:

Put your space in order to regain clarity, rather than trying to order and control your thoughts in an unordered, unorganized, messy space.

Wow. Makes sense right?

I put myself to the test. Feeling overwhelmed and scattered this week I decided to spruce my workspace up a bit. It all began with an image my sister posted to my Facebook wall calling me to action:

“Make your office look like this!” my sister exclaimed. I gave it my best shot in the ten minutes I had available.

The Before Shot:

The after shot:

In the time I had,  I made my space feel open, happy and clean, with a dose of creative inspiration taped up to the wall, resulting in the perfect blank canvas for my mind to get working. I challenge all of the Healthy Marketing Advice blog readers to this clean space, clean mind challenge and I would love to know if you felt a shift in your thinking afterward.

On a closing note, I wanted to share some images of beautiful and inspirational work environments I found online via Pintrest and Office Snap Shots.

JDilla “U-Love” Donut video by talented graphic artist, Alan Gonzales. Alan was assigned a project to create a music translation of any song he chose, compiled of elements that best display both a qualitative and quantitative aspect of the song. For this project, he gave himself constraints of only using donuts and Typography to get the message across. This video is CREATIVE and watching it makes me crave for donuts. I spoke with Alan and he shared that he doesn’t have a sweet tooth so his roommates were pretty stoked to help him with this project.

Sophia Grace and Rosie from Essex, England singing Nicki Minaj “Super Bass”. It took Sophie Grace 2 days to memorize this song. Her parents put it on YouTube and Ellen Degeneres brought her to LA to sing on her show. And then Ellen gives her the best surprise.