PinterestWe had such a great response to the Five Books to Inspire Your Business & Life article, thought we would share a few more titles from our bookshelves. These five are all short books that can be read in one sitting, and yet they are filled with big ideas to help fuel your creativity. -P.
Limitations encourage creativity : “Never rue the limitations of a design problem – a too-small site, an inconvenient topography, an overlong space an unfair palate of materials, contradictory requests from the client… Within those limitations lies the solution to the problem!” –From 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be is a clever and amusing guide to success by Paul Arden, a former creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, and who was behind some of the agency’s most iconic work during the 80’s.
Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by cartoonist Hugh MacLeod, is a quirky visual guide to creativity and striking out on your own.
Steal Like an Artist is a short but thought-provoking look at writer and artist Austin Kleon’s creative philosophy. The book explains how artists take ideas from a variety of sources to create something fresh and transformative. The book discusses the important distinction between stealing ideas to create something new, and the hack who merely imitates or copies. A great book for those striving to be unique.
Damn Good Advice (for people with talent), was written by real-life Mad Men era advertising guru George Lois. Lois was responsible for the the seminal MTV launch campaign “I want my my MTV”, as well as countless iconic Esquire covers. The book offers exactly what it says on the cover–damn good advice.
101 things I learned in Architecture school is the first in a brilliant series of books that cover a variety of professions. The commonality between all the books in the series is the way each discipline uniquely looks at problem solving, critical and creative thinking. Although the books focus on the specifics of each profession, most of the lessons are adaptive and transferrable to other areas. We found this particular book gave us some interesting perspectives on both our photography and design process.