Creative Anarchy


Book Description

Creatives are taught the rules of design by mentors and professors. We are told what to do and how to do it. "Follow the rules and color within the lines," they say. "Only use two fonts on a page and don't make your logo too complicated," they say. It's time for us to tell them to shove it. Creative Anarchy explains and explores both rule-following and rule-breaking design. It includes tips to throw design caution to the wind, designers' stories with galleries of work, and creative exercises to help push your designs to the next level. Creative Anarchy is about great design and awesome ideas. You'll find sections specifically devoted to designing logos, posters, websites, publications, advertising and more.




A Beautiful Anarchy


Book Description




Enabling Creative Chaos


Book Description

In the summer of 2008, nearly fifty thousand people traveled to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to participate in the countercultural arts event Burning Man. Founded on a commitment to expression and community, the annual weeklong festival presents unique challenges to its organizers. Over four years Katherine K. Chen regularly participated in organizing efforts to safely and successfully create a temporary community in the middle of the desert under the hot August sun. Enabling Creative Chaos tracks how a small, underfunded group of organizers transformed into an unconventional corporation with a ten-million-dollar budget and two thousand volunteers. Over the years, Burning Man’s organizers have experimented with different management models; learned how to recruit, motivate, and retain volunteers; and developed strategies to handle regulatory agencies and respond to media coverage. This remarkable evolution, Chen reveals, offers important lessons for managers in any organization, particularly in uncertain times.




Design Anarchy


Book Description

Adbusters' Design Anarchy is a visual call to arms to resist the commercialization of everything from motherhood to masochism, and has spawned a new genre of "Reactionary Advertising." Each of the hundreds of images in this volume, many paired with notes, commentary and poetry, provokes thought and feeling. It is this feeling, this emotional "conversation" with the page that fuels Adbusters' vision: to prevent the deadening of society, everyman, us, me. You.




A Creative Passion


Book Description

The specter of anarchism is haunting statist and capitalist culture and politics in the 21st century. Anarchism—the idea that people can organize their lives on the basis of justice and equality free from political and economic rulers—has provided inspiration for a variety of contemporary social movements. Yet anarchism remains a misunderstood and misrepresented philosophy. A Creative Passion, edited by a longtime anarchist activist and scholar, offers important insights into anarchist cultural practices and worldviews. The classical anarchist Mikhail Bakunin famously proclaimed that the passion for destruction is also a creative passion. Anarchists over the decades have sought to destroy the tyrannical, authoritarian, exploitative, and oppressive aspects of statist and capitalist societies and culture, while creating alternatives based on solidarity, justice, care, and mutual aid. This innovative work provides exciting perspectives on current movements and ideas that seek a world free from authoritarian domination. It will be a welcome resource for students, faculty, artists, and community organizers alike. Chapters examine anarchism and dada, drama and anarchy, eco-anarchism and critiques of capitalist civilization, DIY and anarcho-punk assaults on corporate culture industries, and Wole Soyinka’s anarchism.




Anarchy and Art


Book Description

One of the powers of art is its ability to convey the human aspects of political events. In this fascinating survey on art, artists, and anarchism, Allan Antliff interrogates critical moments when anarchist artists have confronted pivotal events over the past 140 years. The survey begins with Gustave Courbet’s activism during the 1871 Paris Commune (which established the French republic) and ends with anarchist art during the fall of the Soviet empire. Other subjects include the French neoimpressionists, the Dada movement in New York, anarchist art during the Russian Revolution, political art of the 1960s, and gay art and politics post-World War II. Throughout, Antliff vividly explores art’s potential as a vehicle for social change and how it can also shape the course of political events, both historic and present-day; it is a book for the politically engaged and art aficionados alike. Allan Antliff is the author of Anarchist Modernism.




The Revolt of the Unique


Book Description

Our epoch is an epoch of decadence. Bourgeois-christian-plebeian civilization arrived at the dead end of its evolution a long time ago. Democracy has arrived! But under the false splendor of democratic civilization, higher spiritual values have fallen, shattered. Willful strength, barbarous individuality, free art, heroism, genius, poetry have been scorned, mocked, slandered. And not in the name of "I", but of the "collective". Not in the name of "the unique one", but of society. Thus christianity - condemning the primitive and wild force of the virgin instinct - killed the vigorously pagan "concept" of the joy of the earth. Democracy - its offspring - glorified itself making the justification for this crime and reveling in its grim and vulgar enormity. Already we knew it! Christianity had brutally planted the poisoned blade in the healthy, quivering flesh of all humanity; it had goaded a cold wave of darkness with mystically brutal fury to dim the serene and festive exultation of the dionysian spirit of our pagan ancestors. In one cold evening, winter fatally fell upon a warm midday of summer. It was christianity that, substituting the phantasm of "god" for the vibrant reality of "I", declared itself the fierce enemy of the joy of living and avenged itself knavishly on earthly life. With christianity Life was sent to mourn in the frightful abysses of the most bitter renunciations; she was pushed toward the glacier of disavowal and death. And from this glacier of disavowal and death, democracy was born. Thus democracy - the mother of socialism - is the daughter of christianity. Here is your full description. Just read the book, you don't need a description.




An Anarchy of Chilies


Book Description

A reference book that introduces the nuances and versatility of 100 members the chili family in lively four-color illustrations, this volume presents everything the aspiring chef or gardener needs to help them harness the heat. With more than 2,000 varieties, and a dizzying array of flavors, shapes, sizes, and colors, the riotous world of chili peppers has no laws and no limits, and a revolutionary power to transform our food and gardens. This essential kitchen companion profiles 100 versatile chili varieties, chosen to showcase their impressive range of shape, color, flavor, and heat, ranging from milder everyday favorites such as the jalapen~o, ancho, and bell pepper to exotic new superhots like the Dorset Naga and Carolina Reaper. Organized by heat level on the infamous Scoville scale, An Anarchy of Chilies tells the story of each variety and offers advice on how to identify, grow, and prepare them. The striking illustrations, in a vivid graphic style inspired by the CMYK process and Mexican oilcloth prints, make this not only a go-to reference but also a beautiful art piece.




Metamorphosis


Book Description

How do we perdure when we and everything around us are caught up in incessant change? But the course of this change does not seem to be haphazard and we may seek the modalities of its Logos in the transformations in which it occurs. The classic term 'Metamorphosis' focuses upon the proportions between the transformed and the retained, the principles of sameness and otherness. Applied to life and its becoming, metamorphosis pinpoints the proportions between the vital and the aesthetic significance of life. Where could this metaphysical in-between territory come better to light than in the Fine Arts? In this collection are investigated the various proportions between the vital significance of the constructivism of life and a specifically human contribution made by the creative imagination to the transformatory search for beauty and aesthetic values. Papers by: Lawrence Kimmel, Mark L. Brack, Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez, William Roberts, Jadwiga Smith, Victor Gerald Rivas, Max Statkiewicz, Matti Itkonen, George R. Tibbetts, Linda Stratford, Jorella Andrews, Ingeborg M. Rocker, Stephen J. Goldberg, Leah Durner, Donnalee Dox, Catherine Schear, Samantha Henriette Krukowski, Gary Maciag, Kelly Dennis, Wanda Strukus, Magda Romanska, Patricia Trutty-Coohill, Ellen Burns, Tessa Morrison, Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, Gary Backhaus, Daniel M. Unger, Howard Pearce.




Start Ugly


Book Description

Start Ugly is a celebration of the messy creative process and a call to face the obstacles of that process with mindfulness and humanity. This is a book for anyone who has ever wished they were "more creative."