Rebel With A Cause: THE Conversation

I have a story to tell, about being a Rebel With A Cause. But when it’s a story of space exploration, time travel and magic and art and immersion, I was never going to take a conventional approach. I’d love you to experience it.

Some of the greatest conversations I’ve had with Monty Munford have occurred around a dining table, over drinks at the Century Club, or in the back of a cab. Monty has lived a life of adventure and ridden the tech rollercoaster. As a straight-talking industry leader, risk-taker and Gamepay CSO, he’s more used to interviewing Steve Wozniak, John McAfee or Kim Kardashian, but we sat down to talk freely about design, tech and innovation, the people that matter and the direction it’s all taking. We’d love you to join us.

As we talked about the past and present, conversation naturally turned to our virtual future. We want evergreen content to live on in the Metaverse – it’s why Matt Littler of Analog Films shot all three episodes in VR, so we could offer the experience of sitting with Monty and myself, not simply watching from behind a screen.

The stereoscopic 3D footage was all shot on an Insta360 Pro II camera, with ambisonic spacial sound, surrounded by the visual feast of Bittescombe Lodge in the heart of the English countryside. This luxury location offers an incredible mix of traditional and contemporary design, reflecting the nature of our conversation and my roles as President Elect of the Chartered Society of Designers, Artist, Adviser, Mentor and Ambassador for numerous startups and creative organisations.

I make the point in our conversation that many new forms of technology don’t replace those already in existence – they compliment and extend the experience, rather than make any one platform obsolete. So naturally, this series exists in a conventional video format too, as well as the written words below.

Each platform offers its own unique content, so I hope you’ll enjoy the jetpack moments expressed on each.

Speed Up For Traffic Lights

Episode 1: The Present

We all have words to live by, even if most aren’t aware of the exact phrase that gets us out of bed in the morning, we’re acutely aware of a war cry to get shit done, or die trying.

I’ve always had a fascination with time, be that the potential to travel – physically or virtually – backwards to relive, alter or learn from our past or head to the future for a glimpse of our destiny or alternate realities existing in parallel to our own.

This in turn has given me an appreciation for just now precious time is. In the words of Louis Armstrong “we have all the time in the world” – yes, but we still wish for more or discard what we already have.

How often have you found yourself behind someone approaching traffic lights and they begin to slow down, anticipating a red when they’re still on green? This defines the character of a driver expecting the worst outcome, it’s a negative mindset.

And this is exactly why I hit the accelerator when I approach a green light, pre-empting the positive and effectively engaging my own time machine. Imagine how many precious minutes each year are gained from not sitting at a red light. Time gained, pulse raised and positivity reward unlocked (almost) every time.

Those life-affirming words can be distilled into the phrase “Speed up For Traffic lights: Bank on Green Not Red”.

My mindset isn’t something developed from a group of inspirational business leaders and entrepreneurs. No, my Dad instilled the ‘Power of Positive Thinking’ in me – his very own words to live by.

Sadly, we lost Dad to COVID in 2021, just 5 months before his 90th birthday. But those words live on as the inspiration for mine.

Episode 2: The Past

One of the most disappointing things in life is knowing when an opportunity has been missed. When connections fail to meet. When a message falls on deaf ears.

I would rather apologise for something awesome than ask permission for something lame – that’s been my attitude throughout my first 50 years. Never settling for average when exceptional is achievable.

So, for me it’s always been about telling the right story in the right place at the right time. If any of those three key ingredients are missing, it all falls down. It’s no use if your timing is perfect if you don’t have the right thing to talk about or the words, images or experience fail to materialise.

I believe in magic. Not Harry Potter, but the application of science to deliver the unbelievable. The unexpected creates impact, impact makes people sit up and take notice, and once you have their attention, you need to deliver on the promise.

Magic without substance is just vapour. It’s why I appear on stage shooting fireballs – but they serve to illustrate the challenge for contemporary marketing. Offering an audience a glimpse of IronMan’s inventory – be that full-body haptics, bionic shoes or the infamous flame-throwing – they all form part of a narrative and demonstrate technological collaboration. They also break with the expected structure of a keynote, disrupting ‘the feed’ and stopping an audience in their tracks.

It’s easy to form an opinion based on someone else’s opinion. That’s why global conference stages are full of people that Google their topic and deliver the search results via Powerpoint. I’m proud to be able to put my money where my mouth is and say “I’ve been there and done that”, giving weight to my opinion – even when my advice is to learn by my mistakes and follow a different path.

This attitude helped me deliver the first iPad app and Apple Watch apps on the days those products launched, create one of the first multitouch iBooks, spend 48 hours in Virtual Reality, work end-to-end with mobility brands (inside and outside the vehicle) and paint portraits of Michael Douglas, Anthony Hopkins and Chris Eubank, then getting under the skin of NFT art – as an artist! I’ve been honoured to work with legends of the music industry, motorsport heroes, stars of the silver screen and help relaunch the Star Wars franchise.

If you don’t know it can’t be done, you just find a way to do it. Like when people find super strength to lift burning cars, we all have our own superpowers.

There’s so much more that sits under NDA for now, but I’ve also been taken at gunpoint in Beirut, smuggled into Bosnia in the boot of a car, had security remove me whilst dressed as Captain America, nearly filmed one Presidential inauguration in VR and lost another Presidential client following their assassination! But that’s for another day…

Episode 3: The Future

As an Artist, Designer, Technologist and Innovator, I’m more excited about the prospect of designing the future than ever before. The tools we have at our disposal are undoubtedly powerful, but humans tend to switch off from the technological white noise. When brands like FaceBook (now Meta) don’t simply talk about Virtual Reality – they also offer it AND paint a picture of their view for its future, consumers sit up and finally take notice.

Although I’ve been deeply involved with the Metaverse for the past decade, it’s a tough sell when you’re flogging a dream without an audience. For Virtual and Augmented reality to succeed, these technologies have to provide escapism AND familiarity. The experiences must be top-shelf and immediately accessible.

However, the most important area of focus for the Metaverse – and any new technology – isn’t a digital environment, it’s the physical world around us.

We all return to reality so we need a reason to plug ourselves in to begin with and inspiration to achieve more when we return. My 48 hour VR immersion in 2017 made me appreciate reality far more than the virtual because we haven’t laid the foundations for the Metaverse yet, let alone started building the dream.

Look up. From your desk, from your screen, from your device, from your LIFE. It’s the equivalent to an artist taking a step back from their work and gaining perspective.

So, I ask you… are you a Meta Offsetter? For every virtual idea you have, think of another in the real world. It’s like planting a tree for carbon neutrality, but one reality doesn’t defeat the other. Instead they co-exist, with each platform adding value rather than forcing a choice or making something obsolete.

We all need to take a breath, it’s a process I’ve always valued. That moment of peace, allowing us to reset mentally and physically and return stronger and more focused than ever.

I haven’t had that since my Dad died on February 5th 2021. Since I held his hand and said goodbye with the promise that I’d make the next 12 months mean something.

So here I am on 22 / 02 / 2022. Ready to write the NEXT chapter.

A Brief Discovery of Time Travel: Dean Johnson and Monty Munford IN the Metaverse

Immerse yourself in the full VR experience via your headset of choice or 360º on-screen exploration as Monty and Dean take a deep dive into the potential for The Metaverse.

[For best results, open in the YouTube app on your preferred platform]

The Inspiration Game

No one wants to own anything, or drive anything, or change anything. The great Innovators have stopped innovating. The great storytellers aren’t making as much noise as the bad ones. And everyone is happy to follow the crowd – or so the crowd has been told…

In January 2019, Apple reported their first decline in revenues and profits in over a decade. They blamed weak iPhone sales and a downturn in China. True, the Chinese market has become a tougher nut to crack, but the underlying reason for the downturn is we’ve stopped wanting AND needing some of their products.

I used to queue outside Apple Stores to get my hands on new model iPhones. I even waited in line for over twelve hours outside the New York 5th Avenue glass cube in 2010 to be the first to buy an iPad. But that was then, I now struggle to justify the cold nose, sore feet and dented bank balance.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no interest in owning a PC or using Android as my primary mobile OS – because I still love Apple. My long line of MacBooks have never let me down and have been worth every penny and my iMacs have always been there when I needed them, delivering day in, day out for years. My iPhones have worked brilliantly inside and out, looked beautiful and felt like the quality products they are.

So why are Apple’s profits down? Because their flagship physical products are too good and too straight. Too good might seem a great selling point – but it’s clearly becoming an issue. My iPhone 7 Plus is into its third year of ownership and I haven’t upgraded my iPad mini for seven! They both work perfectly and I simply can’t justify upwards of £1,000 for the iPhone I’d want (or need) or an iPad Pro upgrade.

So let’s turn to ‘too straight’. Apple used to excite me. I’d eagerly await each live-streamed keynote with a sense of anticipation akin to the Oscars – living in hope for Steve’s ‘one more thing’. And he’d always deliver. Deliver something we didn’t need or know we wanted, but we just had to have it because it was the future. Our future.

The world we know and love has been built on elation, not iteration – but that’s what Apple now delivers. It makes $Billions from smoothly blending one model into the next. One service and software update into another. The world needs a defibrillator moment where we kickstart the kickstarts and make our hearts beat that little bit faster as we rediscover the joy of the unexpected.

Apple didn’t become the most valuable company on the planet by making poor business decisions so it’s not about dropping the things that work and veering off at a tangent. Tech rivals all too often over-promise and under-deliver, or feel they need to fill a market gap only to find no one wants what they have to offer. But the key to consumer engagement is telling a great story and making it relevant to a brand’s audience.

I’m not going to apologise for disagreeing with the statement “make things people want, don’t make people want things”. Screw that, most people don’t know what they want until they see it. A brand’s role is to tell them why it exists, how it can improve their lives and steer them to ownership, membership or sponsorship via the point of least resistance.

Advertising and marketing opportunities still bring us stories for the products we consume, but these stories need to be told by the people with the passion behind the brands. How they’re made is one thing, but the reasons why they exist are far more powerful.

I spoke with Roborace CEO, Lucas di Grassi in Berlin in December and he told me about the race series startup’s change of direction away from the Daniel Simon-designed Robocar as the audience didn’t understand its capabilities and true Artificial Intelligence. The focus has instead been turned to their DevBot car, with a combination of AI and driver interaction.

The inability of the audience to grasp Robocar’s relevance is not a failing of the motorsport fans – but a missed opportunity to tell a story of excitement, interaction and inspirational possibilities for the future, rather than one of the technology beneath the surface. Don’t give up Lucas, we need Robocar in our near future, weaponised and ready to roll.

It’s more important than ever to get this story right when introducing the next generation of self-driving vehicles. Industry experts speak of the irrelevance of dealerships and a pure digital future but they’re missing the point. Entirely.

Motorists won’t simply hop from their current vehicles into an autonomous network. They don’t trust the technology, it’s as simple as that. The way to convince is not through a VR simulation. Not an online video. It’s by physical experience, sat in the very car they will be instilling ALL their trust. This won’t be about telling an audience how safe a range of robot vehicles is – it’s through the vehicle occupant not being involved in an accident.

The next level of trust will be via word of mouth and the testimonials of ‘real people’ – not actors or brand ambassadors. Selling the autonomous future through trust not tricks.

But there’s still a world of inspiration for us all to discover. The iterators may be shouting louder, but sift through the white noise and you’ll find thought leaders not simply leading by telling great stories – they’re also leading by example.

Richard Browning of Gravity (or ‘Rocket Man’ as he’s more commonly known) is pushing the boundaries of personal mobility by offering us a superhuman vision of the future. He has built a successful business from his own personal invention, innovation and ability to sell a dream. One jetpack is evolving into a scaleable race series on the road (or lack thereof) to tomorrow.

Claire Lomas, an athlete paralysed in 2007 in an equestrian accident epitomises courage and encouragement. She has never faltered in her battle against her physical condition, unwilling to accept the boundaries seemingly imposed upon her. Claire has worn a robotic exoskeleton to complete marathons and her determination to excel has resulted in a new skill – motorcycle racing!

Both Richard and Claire aren’t playing the Inspiration Game – they’re living it. Roborace will also inspire and innovate in equal measures when their story is told in the right way to the right audience, and it will be epic.

Apple has stopped playing the game. It’s not too late for the company I still love to let the iteration take care of itself and get back to thrilling us with one more thing.

And if they’re struggling to find inspiration themselves – or any of us for that matter – the words from Apple’s own 1997 TV ad celebrate the existence of The Crazy Ones. The very people I love and will always aspire to be.

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

E3: The Blockbuster Generation

Hollywood is rejoicing as cinema-goers flock back to the big screen this summer. In recent years the movie theatre experience looked as if it was going the way of the music business, but now the 2015 summer of excess is serving up the blockbusters.

The current box office takings merely provide the warm up act to this winter’s releases where we’ll see the long-awaited extension to the Star Wars franchise following on from James Bond’s November action in SPECTRE.

I have a point to make here, relating to the millennials amongst us (the kids born this millennium) and my time spent at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in LA this week. Having sat through Avengers: Age of Ultron last month, I came away feeling a little despondent and wondering which came first… the story-less all action ADHD blockbuster or the constantly distracted audience?

I had an interesting conversation in the back of a cab last year. I was heading to the airport having just delivered my TEDx talk in Athens, before jetting off to LA for the next big adventure.

I say the talk was interesting, but I mean ‘challenging’. My esteemed car-sharer was a seasoned TED speaker, with years of experience in the field of human behaviour. He held the view that kids today are bombarded with too much information, especially of the digital variety. He believed that mobile devices should be strictly rationed as they cause more problems for kids than they solve.

I told him that I agreed in principal but ‘all things in moderation’ is a better approach than insisting on a non-digital solution. You don’t filter the noise out by turning it all off, you learn to live with it, categorise it and make use of it.

I’d be the first to admit that my kids don’t lead a normal life. The very nature of my job exposes them to a new piece of tech hardware or delivery platform on a regular basis. They are a fabulous sounding board for the reactions of the next generation of consumers as they’re quick to dismiss and not afraid to speak their minds. They have none of the social or business diplomacy to worry about – it just works or it doesn’t.

They’ve been fascinated by and indifferent to various smart watches and VR headsets over the past couple of years and it’s easy to see that a constant supply of digital watch faces will appeal more than garage door openers and short-form film and games are perfect for VR.

At E3, the audience is hungry for new games, but still prefers the familiarity of a sequel and will happily immerse themselves in a single game for hours on end if the content offers enough variety and a continual challenge.

Minecraft is already huge but Microsoft demonstrated a whole new level of immersion at E3 – on HoloLens. If you’re not familiar with this new platform, it’s Microsoft’s foray into the augmented reality market. projecting seemingly real content into the wearer’s field of vision. I’ll be getting hands-on today and will update this article in a few hours.

So where does this leave our kids? Lost in a digital world of shock and awe, content and distraction? Yes, all of the above and it’s brilliant.

I saw the Disney movie Tomorrowland a couple of weeks ago and I loved it. It touched a creative and technological nerve and moved me to write this article. It’s not an explosion-a-second blockbuster like Age of Ultron as it manages to combine an all-action adventure with something subtly cerebral.

It’s a film with a message. Don’t lose your sense of wonder, investigate new technology and be creative with it. Use it to push boundaries, not live within them. We wouldn’t have reached the moon or built electric cars without a commitment to improve the world in which we live. We can also have fun whilst doing it!

It’s our responsibility to encourage kids to live with and use technology to their advantage, rather than distance themselves from it, and a brighter future.

Rebel With a Cause

A rebel… every business needs one, from tech to finance, automotive to entertainment. Someone compelled to swim against the tide, or in reality, ahead of it.

To many, the idea of a disruptive influence in the midst of a well-oiled machine is the last thing they’d want to encourage. After all, there’s no ‘I’ in team, right? There is a big one in Impact and Instinct and two whoppers in Innovation.

Consider for a second some of the great disruptors, from Galileo and Socrates to Darwin and Jobs, we remember the plaudits and success but they faced their fair share of obstruction, ridicule and uncertainty. They stood their ground (often to their own detriment) but achieved greatness – not for themselves, but the advancement of mankind.

Their contribution to the world we live in was only given meaning through a willingness, a compulsion, to run before they could walk. They faced failure but learnt from this and channeled their energy into ever greater statements of intent.

The Apple ad from 1997 perfectly summed up this sentiment – “The ones who think they are crazy enough to change the world… are the ones who do”.

This spot was released to initiate the Think Different campaign in 1997. Here's to the reasons we stick with Apple through the ups and downs.

Now, I’m not claiming for a second that I have any right to share a platform with the greats mentioned above but I am a rebel and proud of it. 

My wife used to say the words to the Garth Brooks song ‘Standing Outside the Fire’ could have been written for me… “life is not tried, it is merely survived when you’re standing outside the fire”. It’s true, it’s hot in here, at times frickin’ uncomfortable and rarely involves sleep. It’s more rewarding than simply keeping your head down and merely getting on with it.

There is a careful balance to be achieved here. A business formed entirely of rebels is doomed to failure. My ‘Ultimate Agency’ post from 2010 is an example of a fantasy creative agency but imagine a top table featuring the likes of the late Steve Jobs and Wally Olins, to Stephen Fry, Mitch Joel, Marc Newson and Thomas Heatherwick. The Ultimate Agency would descend into anarchy without an army of ‘responsible adults’

My talk at TEDx Athens last weekend focused on the importance of balance. I spoke about the need for ‘seamless narrative’ and how without a clear understanding of this, you were unable to create ‘meaningful disruption’.

I gave the capacity audience their first taste of my rebellious disruption by equipping every delegate at the stunning Onassis Cultural Centre with our Brandwidth Innovation Lab app (iOS and Android) the audio-watermarked musical opening to my presentation triggered the digital performance, with each phone or tablet screen turning into an individual pixel to deliver a stunning light show – a 4D experience culminating with each handset vibrating as one for the final crescendo.

In the grand scheme of things, this was the equivalent to a digital firework display or waving lighters in the air at a concert. I still had a serious point to make. Communication on every level, on every device, no matter what kind of brand, business or individual needs to master the basic art of seamless narrative. Conversation and a clear personality needs a manageable change of pace. Merely shouting at an audience doesn’t work when everyone adopts the same volume or this just becomes white noise. Maintaining consistency is essential when adding impact to the meaningful messages.

My presentation is now available on Slideshare (although I had to convert this from Keynote to Power frickin’ point to upload) but please download for the full experience containing the embedded audio and video.

Disrupting Seamless Narrative from Dean Johnson

Here's the full TEDx video of my talk, complete with app-controlled 4D light show.

TEDx Athens was a wonderful experience, run by a passionate team lead by Dimitrios Kalavros-Gousiou and I was fortunate to catch some of the city sights thanks to Big Olive City Walks.

I wish I could have stayed longer but I’ve already flown from Athens to London, to San Francisco to Cupertino to LA in the past 48 hours, leaving disruption in my wake.

What a rebel.