5 Artists, 5 Days: How We Rebranded

Jive Brand Story
Only Art is Human
A Jive Collaboration Project

© Copyright Jive Software, Inc. 2014 All rights reserved. Jive Brand Story 2
Work better
together
Jive is the leading provider of modern communication and collaboration
solutions for business.
Like no other company in its industry, Jive unleashes the imagination and insights
of its employees, customers and partners. Many of the world’s top companies
recognize processes don’t build businesses — people do. Which is why they use
Jive to enable people to work the way they live, and create a sense of community
and common purpose.
To show the amazing things that are possible when
people truly connect, collaborate and communicate,
Jive launched a Jive Collaboration Project to craft
its own image through the unique, meaningful and
real work done on the platform itself.

Five artists. Five days.
One new brand.
Only art
is human

A picture is worth
a thousand words
The Jive brand is built from the heart,
inspired by the human spirit.
The Jive Collaboration Project is an effort to show that no matter the task,
from daily life to your life’s work, open collaboration unleashes the power
of random acts of productivity.

The brand embodies in its very origins everything it
is about. In partnership with Liquid Agency and the
Elizabeth Leach Gallery, five artists were invited to
come together and create a series of collaborative
images, using only Jive as their medium of
communication and sharing. They represented
multiple styles of art, from traditional to digital, all
collaborating through Jive to create the brand’s
signature look.
Through collaboration across distance and culture,
the Jive platform enabled the creation of a unique,
multi-artist work to represent the potential in
all of us.
It was an organic process that didn’t fully reveal itself
until it was complete.
It was real, it was Jive.
Beauty exists everywhere.
Only art is human.
All technology brands try to speak in a
human voice. Only Jive embraces what it
uniquely means to be human, and lifts up
the special things that people create.

The Jive Five
Much like Jive itself, the five artists were scattered across
different cities, time zones and countries.

7
© Copyright Jive Software, Inc. 2014 All rights reserved.
Jive Brand Story
Richard Gruetter was born in Portland, Oregon and studied art in Los Angeles and Claremont, California where he received his MFA in 1975. He currently lives, works and teaches in Spain.
In the past he has lived and worked in Japan, Italy, Germany and the United States. His work has shown internationally, including exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, the Palais d’Art in Paris, France, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum in Japan and the Portland Art Museum.
Richard
Gruetter
Painting
Rota, Spain

8
Jive Brand Story
Leslie first started to seriously think about making art in New Mexico when she was 18. She studied art in NYC at The School of Visual Arts from 1976-1979, and worked as an artist assistant to Julien Schnabel and Dan Christensen. She relocated to Paris in 1980.
In 1984 Leslie married Pierre Goirand and moved back to NYC from 1984-1990, and had her first one person show at La Galleria on the lower east side. This exhibit was reviewed by Glenn O’Brien for Art Forum. She moved back to Paris in 1990 and has continued to exhibit primarily in France. She has also published a children’s book, ‘Bravo Bruno’, with author Sandra Cisneros.
Leslie
Greene
Painting & Assemblage
Paris, France

9
Jive Brand Story
Michelle Ross received her BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR) and
her MFA from Washington State University
(Pullman, WA).
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, including those at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), The Art Gym at Marylhurst University (Lake Oswego, OR), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR) and Rome International University (Rome, Italy). In 2012, Ross was named as a Hallie Ford Fellow in the Visual Arts. Her work is held by a number of collections, including the Rhode Island School of Design Special Collections (Providence, RI), the City of Portland, Willamette University (Salem, OR), Saks Fifth Avenue and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR) – in both its main collection and in the Gilkey Print Center.
Michelle
Ross
Painting
Portland, OR

10
Jive Brand Story
Anna Von
Mertens
Painting & Quiltmaking
Peterborough, NH
Anna Von Mertens was born in Boston and currently lives and works in New Hampshire.
She received her MFA from California College of Arts and Crafts, and BA from Brown University. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), 2013 Rijswijk Textile Biennial (Netherlands), 40 under 40: Craft Futures at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery (Washington, DC), and the 2012 DeCordova Biennal (Lincoln, MA). Von Merten’s work is in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, CA), the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, and the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design (Providence, RI), among other institutions.

11
Jive Brand Story
Mark R. Smith received his BFA from The Cooper Union (New York, NY) and his MFA from Portland State University (Portland, OR).
He has had solo exhibitions at the Office of the Governor (Salem, OR), Northview Gallery at Portland Community College (Portland, OR), Gallery Hlemmur (Reykjavik, Iceland) and the Art Gym at Marylhurst College (Lake Oswego, OR). Smith was included in The Oregon Biennial three times, and received the curator’s award in 1995 and 2001. He has also received many public commissions, including projects with Trimet, Providence Hospital and the Port of Portland (all Portland, OR). Smith’s work is included in a number of public and private collections, including the American Embassy in Accra, Ghana, CityArts Inc. (New York, NY), King County Public Art Collection (Seattle WA), Lewis and Clark College (Portland, OR) and Nike Inc. (Beaverton, OR).
Mark
R. Smith
Painting & Assemblage
Portland, OR

The process
Discuss and repeat. Discuss and repeat.
The result would be intricate, multi-layered works where everyone
had placed their mark.
They had five days to generate as many pieces as they could.
After an initial kick-off conference call, all discussions and other
communications would take place in Jive – no email, no phone calls.
The ground rules were simple. The artists would work
together in Jive. They could let their creativity run wild,
uploading their images and sharing with the other
members of the group, who could then download
them, add their own touches and re-share the
collaborative image.

Artists generally work alone and don’t
collaborate. Their studio is their sacred space,
where their vision can come to life. Using Jive
in business where people are encouraged
to collaborate is one thing, but would the
platform support the freedom and natural,
intuitive workstyle the artists have used their
whole careers?
Moving to a
common vision

None of the Jive artists had used a collaboration environment like Jive, making this a new and unfamiliar experience.
It was an experiment, and not everyone
was confident it would work.
“ Initially I was doubtful. I thought, ‘that doesn’t sound like it’s going to work.’ We were collaborating with a list of artists I didn’t know, and who weren’t together physically – all using this virtual platform with a really tight timeframe. There were lots of unknowns and risks. But I said I’ll just give it a shot and see what happens. It came together beyond my expectations. It worked amazingly well.”
Anna
“ It involved a great deal of trust. The first day was stressful. You’re putting up unfinished work. You’re putting yourself out there in an exposed way. But it flowed effortlessly. It was a thrill to see others add to my work. Each day there was a surprise.”
Anna
“ There was trepidation but it went away really quickly once we saw
how easy it was.”
Richard
“ For me, as a person who sometimes feels dismay at being a solitary artist, it started to spark some interesting social possibilities. A lot of artists now are concerned with social responsibility and reject the notion of singular studio practice. I can imagine connecting artists globally toward consciousness raising around social issues.”
Michelle
14
Jive Brand Story

15
Jive Brand Story
As the week progressed, the artists found that they started to trust each other and embrace the process. And they found a way to make something bigger than themselves.
After the week was complete, five former strangers had developed close working relationships by connecting and interacting in Jive. The artists reconvened for a final wrap-up call to share their experiences.
“ It was like playing music. Richard said he’d always been jealous of musicians who can
just jam. There were times when I put
something up and when it came back it
just was so much richer.”
Michelle
“ I thought, ‘This is perfect – we’re all thinking alike.’ It took me back to when I was in 2nd grade with a bunch of smart kids working on a Christmas mural. It felt like children working together. I loved it. But it wasn’t children’s art, it was really sophisticated work we were creating.”
Richard
“ When we talked it was like all my friends are here. We figured out a way to work together starting from nothing without even knowing each other. We went in as strangers and came out a week later almost as friends or colleagues. There is this immediacy and closeness that’s fostered.”
Anna
“ Meeting other artists who you don’t know is a very rich experience, because inevitably it’s going to open you up. I didn’t realize how connected I could feel to the others’ work. It was a real discovery of other people and what they care about, even in a short period of only five days. That’s a huge thing. I think it’s hard for others to know how to share in that way, and Jive really makes it possible.”
Leslie

The Jive Five’s experience was similar to that of Jive’s business users: individuals working and contributing their unique perspectives while making something bigger than themselves.
As Richard puts it: “It linked us together across five different studios. It’s a mix of individual and group process. You visualize an idea privately and throw it out to the group, and the group has ideas you hadn’t thought of and that sparks your own ideas. I’m alone thinking by myself but at the touch of a finger have access to all these other minds. We’re alone, but together. It’s a really fertile environment for creativity.”
16
Jive Brand Story

From Abstract
Art to Meaningful
Message
Armed with the amazing array of
collaborative work produced by the
Jive Five, Jive then set out to bring the
whole thing together.
Jive is a global company that allows people to work
better together, anywhere in the world. Jive’s own
collaborative footprint in the world is the perfect
symbol of the collaboration project itself.
By joining together the locations of Jivers
collaborating around the world, from Tel Aviv to
Reading to Sydney to Palo Alto, these connections
form the Jive Globe: the actual manifestation of
Jive’s collaboration in the world.

The Jive Globe
By marrying the collaborative work from
the Jive Five with the daily collaboration of
Jivers themselves, Jive has created a symbol
for the union of analog and digital, of life
and work.
The Only Art is Human project is meant
to inspire the millions of people who use
Jive to unleash the insights, ideas and
impact of their employees, partners
and customers.
Copyright Jive Software, Inc. 2014 All rights reserved. Jive Brand Story 18

work better togetherTM
Final Work

“We live in a world that needs community and sharing.
This is a real step forward."
Richard Gruetter, The Jive Five
192037
Jive is the leading provider of modern communication and collaboration solutions for business. © Copyright Jive Software, Inc. 2014
For more information, visit www.jivesoftware.com

5 Artists, 5 Days: How We Rebranded

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