Today, Malala Yousefzai – the Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for having the temerity to go to school – receives her Nobel Peace Prize. In a ceremony presided over by King Harald V of Norway, she becomes the youngest ever recipient of the award.

After she was shot, she was flown to Birmingham for life-saving treatment, and has been campaigning ever since for the rights of girls to be educated. If you’re ever heard her speak, you will know that this girl of seventeen is old beyond her years. She is confident, measured, insightful and funny. Plus she has guts of steel.

Here she is addressing the UN on the right of as part of her campaign to ensure free compulsory education for every child. On her sixteenth birthday.

I don’t know about you, but I think I went bowling on my sixteenth birthday.

A wise man (and a character in The West Wing) once said: “If they’re shooting at you, you must be doing something right”. Malala is definitely doing it right – this girl has more courage and strength in her little finger than most of us have in our whole body.

You can read more about Malala Yousefzai in her autobiography.

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Pep Talk

Kid President commands you to wake up, listen to the beating of your heart and create something that will make the world awesome. This video from SoulPancake delivers a soul-stirring dose of inspiration that only a 9-year-old can give.

I can’t tell you how much I love this video! Seeing the world through the eyes of a child is a fantastic way of cutting through all the garbage of adult life and getting back to what is important. It fills me with hope that the world may not be lost just yet after all…

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With that in mind, I set my brain working on a new collection of inspirational artwork designed especially for kids. I wanted to produce a some designs which would suit being displayed on a child’s bedroom wall, and would give the kids a set of guiding principles to consider as they grow up – some ‘Life Lessons’.

The result is still a work in progress, but I wanted to share the initial ideas that I am developing. These are simple concepts that are universally understandable, and which – coincidentally – apply just as well to adult life too!

If we can get children to start thinking about life in different ways, they we may just end up with a more inspired, kind and happy generation of children! Fingers crossed.

‘Life Lessons’ Artwork

So here are the three ‘Life Lessons’ artwork designs I have produced so far…

It seems like kindness is a severely underrated commodity these days. Just doing something good for someone without any hope for anything in return is a wonderful thing. And the strange thing is, even though we aren’t expecting it, the kindness normally does come back round to us (and the same goes for being unkind).

It sounds so simple, and in reality, it is. Honesty is the glue which holds relationships together – whether it is a friendship, a marriage, a family, a customer or a nation.

This is the simplest idea in the world, right? Then why do so many of us seemingly forget this basic and fundamental piece of advice for living our lives? Why do we insist on doing things which make us unhappy? Why don’t we measure every decision through a ‘happiness’ lens? It may not be the only factor which drives your life, but it should at least be a consideration.

Each of the three designs is available to purchase as an unframed print, a framed print and a mounted print. They look great on their own, but I think they really work amazingly well when displayed together – choose the life lessons that suit you and your child, and display them all side by side. Commissions welcome, so if you have a different set of words you would like to use, that is no problem.

Please also check out our kids name artwork here.

Life Lessons – ‘Be Kind’ Image Credit: Evelyn Flint/Texture
Life Lessons – ‘Be Honest’ Image Credit: Saral
Life Lessons – ‘Be Happy’ Image Credit: Meg Stewart

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Here was a person who was willing to write so openly and honestly about challenges in her life, and how she has overcome them, that I felt sure we would be able to come up with an amazing design.

The first blog post I read of Marie’s was about why she loves vintage fashion. It isn’t really about fashion at all; rather it is about not fitting in, and not being able to wear what everyone else wears. Marie’s writing about the epiphany she felt when she discovered vintage clothing, and the confidence it gave her, was inspiring. She has also written beautifully about her battles with her weight, and reaching acceptance (just about!) with her physical appearance.

Before I even contacted Marie I had lots of ideas floating around in my head, but I wanted to get to know her so I could really design with her in mind. I started by asking who or what inspires her.

“My daughter Lucy is my inspiration, without a doubt. She taught me the meaning of unconditional love.”

“My relationship with her father was quite tumultuous, and broke down when she was only one year old, so it was just me and her for a long time. I realised I needed to do my best for her, not just for me. If I continued feeling ‘messed up’ it would rub off on her and may affect her in later years.”

“The other person who inspires me to work hard is my Dad, who passed away suddenly around the same time that I split from Lucy’s father. He was a hard-working and honest man. A man of few words, but those words were precious to me, because he always made a lot of sense.”

“Dad was a listener and he taught me not to always jump into things; to think before I make decisions.”

I wanted to dig further into Marie’s life and character, and was very interested in a recent experience she had with motivational speaker Sharon Amesu.

“I went to one of Sharon’s motivational events a few weeks ago. I became a tad emotional during one of the sessions, and at the end of the event, a lady I had never met before came over to me and said, ‘Excuse me, can I just say you have the most wonderful aura and persona about you. I can tell you are a lovely person. I just had to tell you that'”

“What a lovely thing to be told, I always used to think I was invisible to people, I just blended into the background. I need to tell myself I am wrong!”.

Having built up a really good picture of Marie and her life, I set to work creating some personalised inspirational designs for her.

I played around with themes of empowerment, self-confidence and defiance.

These themes came through strongly from her writing and from our preparation work for this project. So that we didn’t get too bogged down, I also came up with some more light-hearted concepts around fashion, mannequins and a rather forthright duck!

This is the final design Marie chose:

I wanted to capture something subtle, that hinted at the inner strength that I sensed in Marie.

“I love ladybirds, and I love this design!” said Marie.

“The words are a daily reminder for me that I AM strong and capable, if only I believe in myself.”

If this story and the Ladybirds design has inspired you, you can buy this design as a framed print, mounted print, poster and screensaver here.

You can find Marie on Twitter here.

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We’ve been slogging away at Hello Inspiration Towers (OK, Hello Inspiration Basement) and I’m super-pleased to be able to show off these four new greetings card designs. All cards are blank inside for your own message, but their fronts are anything but plain!

Here’s a sneak peek of what they look like…

Most Awesome Person – New Greetings Card Design

‘You’re the most awesome person I know (apart from me).’ Yes, you’re rather amazing. You’re pretty awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I can only think of one person who is more awesome… guess who?!

Amazeballs – New Greetings Card Design

‘Amazeballs’. I don’t want to blow your trumpet or anything, but you’re pretty amazeballs.

Super Awesome Fantastic – New Greetings Card Design

‘Hey There Super Awesome Fantastic Amazing Person’. Credit where it’s due – I could have gone on and on listing the superlatives, but hopefully you get the idea. You’re awesome. Amazing. Brilliant. Etc.

O.M.G. – New Greetings Card Design

‘O.M.G.’ Sometimes only a shaggy-haired cow can really help get your message across.

You can also make any of these new greetings card designs into a framed print, mounted print, screensaver or poster print. We’ll also turn it into anything else your little heart desires, apart from a handbag. Here at Hello Inspiration we frown upon photo-printed handbags.

We would love to know what you think of the new greetings card designs – which one is your favourite? Drop us a line to chris@helloinspiration.co.uk and let us know which one you like best, and we might just send you out a free sample!

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Very excited to publish this first instalment of the Inspiring the Inspirers project! Hello Inspiration has been working with abstract artist Ellie Depp to produce a piece of inspirational artwork based on her unique life experience. What would this talented young painter have to say about inspiration?

I was interested to work with Ellie because I wanted to get to the bottom of how inspiration plays a part in the life of an artist. Where does her inspiration come from? Does she have to go looking for it, or does it come and find her? Does she ever get stuck for ideas, or fed up with the creative process?

Her story of the redemptive power of art taught me more about inspiration than I had ever expected.

“I was at University doing Maths because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t enjoying the course, and began to struggle with depression, which started to spiral out of control,” admits Depp. After some of the toughest times in her life battling with serious depression and thoughts of suicide, she decided to return home from University to get treatment. She dropped out of her course and decided to take up painting to fill her spare time.

“I got the painting bug and now here I am,” says Ellie. “My healing process has been long and I don’t think it’ll ever really be over – but painting has helped me get to a place where I’m more stable and happier than I have been for a while.”

“Art is my saviour,” says Depp.

“It has created a world for me to escape into. Art doesn’t judge me, it doesn’t talk back, it doesn’t feel sorry for itself or ignore me. Life is still rocky and very hard work, but my happiness has become priority number one and will always have to stay that way. If I can make my life enjoyable and meaningful, and spend my time doing what I love, then I have a beautiful life.”

Ellie was keen to take part in the Inspiring the Inspirers project as soon as I contacted her. Her response to my long and rambling pitch for the project was simple and full of enthusiasm: “Sounds awesome I’d love to be included!”.

I initially expected to create a design based on where the inspiration for Ellie’s art came from, and I actually sent a set of primer questions about the mechanics of her creative process. What Ellie came back with was so much more personal and honest that I was blown away. The project was no longer about how she is inspired to create her art, but about how art itself inspired her to change her life.

“When Chris asked me to be part of  this project, I spent some time thinking about my journey so far. I wanted to convey how art has helped me to change my priorities, and ensure that happiness is my number one focus in life,” says Ellie. She summed it up perfectly in her simple brief to me:

“I’ve never been happier than when I’m making my life beautiful.”

Armed with this message, and an understanding of the challenges she has faced in her life, I played around with the concepts of beauty, happiness and the restorative power of art. I presented Ellie with a number of design concepts based on these themes, and this was her final choice:

I used Ellie’s acrylic painting Reminiscing Eden as a backdrop to this striking design. It is a stunningly bold and explosive painting – something which comes through even in the fragments which are visible in the lettering. The wording is a simple play on the phrase ‘art therapy’. By breaking it into two one-word sentences, we are emphasizing that Ellie’s work is both art in itself, and therapy for her. The two words – and everything they stand for – stand alone, but go hand in hand in Ellie’s life.

Ellie says: “I absolutely love this design!”

“I think it sums up everything about me and my art, and why I do what I do. I love the clean lines and the white background – the whole image just makes an instant impact. I am the living embodiment of art therapy, so using my artwork to form the words is genius.”

So how was the experience of working with Hello Inspiration? “I wasn’t sure what to expect when we first embarked on this collaboration,” admits Depp. “ I initially wanted to create some quote that was on the quality level of Martin Luther King and Einstein, but it was quite hard to say what I wanted to say without using a famous quote of someone else’s. I was delighted with the way Chris took my overall message and personality and managed to come up with several different options. I could never have managed anything like that myself.”

“The final design is something so simple, yet it represents me and my art work perfectly.”

Artwork featuring the “Art. Therapy.” design is available to purchase here, with 10% of all profits going to Mind, a charity which helps make sure no-one has to face a mental health problem alone.

Ellie Depp is a self-taught artist from Derbyshire UK, who creates stunning abstract works in acrylic and watercolour, and is particularly known for her striking use of colour. She has exhibited in Leeds, York, Sheffield, Derbyshire and London, and her work has been published in GQ amongst other publications. You can see more of Ellie Depp’s artwork here.

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I want to introduce a new project which is aiming to work with inspiring people from many different walks of life, to find out what inspires them, and how they pass that inspiration on to others. The project is called “Inspiring the Inspirers”, and the concept is this…

I am planning to work with a number of different people who are all living inspirational, motivational lives. People who help others to change and improve themselves.

I want to try and dig into what inspires people who inspire others.

I know that we all struggle with motivation sometimes – even those people are following a calling to inspire others. How difficult it can be to find the angle, that gem of an idea that will push someone onwards to the next level in their life. I know I have with this many times.

We struggle with this motivation because we’re just as human, just as fragile and just as fallible as the people we try to help.

I will work with each inspirer to create a unique piece of Hello Inspiration artwork which means something to them. The best piece of advice they have ever been given, a mantra that helps them deal with challenging times, even just a single word which sums up the difficulties they face and provides some comfort to them, and assures them that they’re doing the right thing. The best thing is, I have absolutely no idea what these inspirers will choose.

When we’re done, we will have a collection of fantastic pieces of inspiration artwork from some amazing inspirational minds – and better yet, we will have the stories behind *why* they are inspirational to those people.

I can’t wait to get started…

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Hello Inspiration’s Twitter bio lists three simple rules for the account – no quotes from Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill or the Dalai Lama permitted.

So what’s the deal? Is Hello Inspiration some kind of Apple-hater, with no time for anything Steve jobs ever said or did? Have we singled out Steve Jobs for exclusion because we consider Jobs to have been an ego-maniac, out of control show-off and self-important geek?

No. Quite the opposite in fact.

The reason behind the exclusion is simple, and it stems for everything that Steve Jobs was, and everything he said…

He said some *amazingly* inspirational things – his 2005 Stanford commencement speech is still widely quoted nearly ten years on, the “Think Different” campaign for Apple is a modern classic in the advertising world, and he coined one of the most brilliant one-line sales pitches with his “a thousand songs in your pocket” line for iPod.

So, doesn’t Steve Jobs seem like the kind of person that Hello Inspiration should be quoting?

I mean, he’s got inspiration coming out of his ears, right…?

But here’s the thing; jobs was a visionary – a game-changer. He thought differently, and he broke the mould. He didn’t want to beat the competition by simply making better gadgets, he wanted to make the competition irrelevant by making products that no-one had even conceived of before.

For me, the best way to be like Steve Jobs is not to go around blindly quoting his wisdom and then basking in his reflected glory. The best way is to think different. Act different. Forge your own path and be original. Be something that no-one else is being. Hello Inspiration is trying to stay true to his words by not just blindly copying them.

We need to act on his words, not just stare at them on a poster.

At Hello Inspiration we are trying to act on his advice by only using original material in our artwork. Does that make it more difficult? Yes. We can’t just lazily trawl the internet for the same tired old lines that have been quoted and quoted and quoted to death, and churn out artwork by the hundred. We have to sit down with a blank piece of paper, and really *think* about what we want to say.

We may never reach the brand recognition of Apple, and I’d be happy with one millionth of their annual turnover, but at least we’re being original.  That feels important.

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PS – if you want to read more about Steve Jobs, I would definitely recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography “Steve Jobs” – a fascinating journey through the life of this troubled genius.

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