Simmer Creative Studio

NOTICE: Simmer Creative Studio (formerly Simmer Branding Studio) no longer consults in the area of trademarks and brand names. We still offer a wide range of services in the realms of writing and social media, as well as creative ideation, Solocrafting and Ensemble building techniques.

Our branding guru, Idea Mixologist Marc Hershon, is now working with Lexicon Branding, Inc. If you're looking for expertise and services related to trademarks, servicemarks and/or corporate names, please click on their name to see their site.

Our resident Storyologist Jonathan Littman is ready to help you and your company raise the bar with creative innovation techniques and insights. Contact him today at jonlittman@earthlink.net.

Simmer Creative Studio offers a variety of services to help you achieve a higher level of creative output. By focusing the precepts we explore in I Hate People! — our recent business book from Little, Brown Publishing — we can show you and your company how Solocrafting and building Ensembles can push your productivity while sparking inspirational innovation.

Or perhaps you need something written, from magazine articles and books to screenplays and cartoons. Simmer Creative Studio is ready to deploy our unique efforts to help you quickly produce whatever it is you need to tell your story.

Our Most Recent Joint Effort

Our most recent foray as a creative duo I Hate People! It's the title of a new business book with attitude that the two principals of Simmer — Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon — have written. Debuting in June, I Hate People! is published by Little, Brown & Co. and represents the end of phony niceness in the workplace. Focusing on a dedicated worker we call the Soloist, the book helps to identify and, by doing so, avoid the entanglements that often arise in the workplace by those we call The Least Wanted.

It wasn't easy fighting the tide of political correctness — the word hate is not one eagerly embraced by those in the publishing conglomerates. But a visionary editor, Junie Dahn at LB, saw that the book had real potential to break through the noise and clutter in the business book arena. The early response has been more than favorable. We'll see what happens.

In the meantime, please visit our attendant blog for the book, I Hate People...But It's Nothing Personal. There you can read a lot more about the book, the ideas behind it and links to purchase a copy online! Also, enjoy our constantly updating content about life in the workplace and how to make it both easier and more productive in the face of dealing with those who tend to get in your way.

Simmering

At Simmer Creative Studio we've moved away from traditional brainstorming and engage in a creative process we call "simmering". Sometimes a typical "simmer" might be an hour or two, focusing strongly on a particular challenge. More often, however, a simmer can stretch over a couple of days, spent in and out of the office, at the library, the bookstore, the coffee house or at home in front of the TV. Notes are taken and exchanged, via email and in person, and the simmer continues until we've achieved what we need in order to move on to the next stage of your project.

Do You Nunu?

Isn't it funny when a word gets so overused it ceases to be what it means? Like "innovation". This poor little word has really gotten put through the wringer in the past 20 years, to the point where anything said to be innovative somehow seems to be not so much so. Wiht our history in the storytelling and branding arenas, we took at as a challenge to create an idea that feels like innovative should feel but doesn't. With that in mind, we simmered on it for a bit and came up with nunu. Pronounced "noo-noo". Or, better yet, "new-new" -- as in an idea that is so fresh that it is newer than new. Plus it's more fun to say that "innovation"...