Dialogues with Creative Legends and Aha Moments in a Designer's Career


Book Description

In Dialogues with Creative Legends, you will find answers to some of the perplexing questions talented people confront. From these dialogues emerge a startling range of ideas, from beginning a creative career to developing client relationships, mentoring, and the role of design thinking in society. The author's gradual revelations about the intertwined contributions of creator and patron will resonate with students and practitioners in all the creative professions. This remarkable book explores the role of creativity in commerce and culture. It's a quest for livelihood and meaning that is at once highly personal--and strikingly universal. Come along as the author interviews many of the creative luminaries of the late 20th century, including: Saul Bass, Buckminster Fuller, Paul Rand, Lou Dorfsman, Herb Lubalin, Don Trousdell, Charles & Ray Eames, George Nelson, Massimo Vignelli, Heinz Edelmann, Victor Papanek, and Hermann Zapf.




Dialogues with Creative Legends


Book Description

'Dialogues with Creative Legends: Aha Moments in a Designer's Career' explores the relationship of creativity and business, told through a series of interviews with influential visual designers and business leaders. Interviewees include key creative and business leaders of the late 20th century such as graphic design giants Paul Rand and Herb Lubalin, through to influential industrial designers George Nelson and Victor Papanek.




Visual Design Solutions


Book Description

Enhance learners' interest and understanding with visual design for instructional and information products No matter what medium you use to deliver content, if the visual design fails, the experience falls flat. Meaningful graphics and a compelling visual design supercharge instruction, training, and presentations, but this isn't easy to accomplish. Now you can conquer your design fears and knowledge gaps with Visual Design Solutions: a resource for learning professionals seeking to raise the bar on their graphics and visual design skills. This informal and friendly book guides you through the process and principles used by professional graphic designers. It also presents creative solutions and examples that you can start using right away. Anyone who envisions, designs, or creates instructional or informational graphics will benefit from the design strategies laid out in this comprehensive resource. Written by Connie Malamed, an art educator and instructional designer, this book will help you tap into your creativity, design with intention, and produce polished work. Whereas most graphic design books focus on logos, packaging, and brochures, Visual Design Solutions focuses on eLearning, presentations, and performance support. Visual Design Solutions includes practical guidelines for making smart design choices, ways to create professional-looking products, and principles for successful graphics that facilitate learning. Ideal for instructional designers, trainers, presenters, and professors who want to advance from haphazard to intentional design, this book will help them realize their design potential. Gain the knowledge and confidence to design impressive, effective visuals for learning Increase learner comprehension and retention with visual strategies offered by an expert author Serves as a reference and a resource, with a wealth of examples for inspiration and ideas Addresses an intimidating topic in an informal, friendly style In four parts, the book provides a thorough overview of the design process and design concepts; explores space, image, and typography; and presents workable solutions for your most persistent and puzzling design problems. Get started and begin creating captivating graphics for your learners.




Paul Rand


Book Description

Edited by Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo. Texts by Derek Birdsall, Ivan Chermayeff, Shigeo Fukuda, Milton Glaser, Diane Gromeala, Jessica Helfand, Steven Heller, Armin Hoffmann, Takenobu Igharashi, John Meada, Richard Sapper, Wolfgang Weingart and Massimo Vignelli.




Type and Image


Book Description

Type and Image The Language of Graphic Design Philip B. Meggs What is the essence of graphic design? How do graphic designers solve problems, organize space, and imbue their work with those visual and symbolic qualities that enable it to convey visual and verbal information with expression and clarity? The extraordinary flowering of graphic design in our time, as a potent means for communication and a major component of our visual culture, increases the need for designers, clients, and students to comprehend its nature. In this lively and lavishly illustrated book, the author reveals the very essence of graphic design. The elements that combine to form a design— sings, symbols, words, pictures, and supporting forms—are analyzed and explained. Graphic design’s ability to function as language, and the innovative ways that designers combine words and pictures, are discussed. While all visual arts share common spatial properties, the author demonstrates that graphic space has unique characteristics that are determined by its communicative function. Graphic designs can have visual and symbolic properties which empower them to communicate with deep expression and meaning. The author defines this property as graphic resonance and explains how it occurs. After defining design as a problem-solving process, a model for this process is developed and illustrated by an in-depth analysis of actual case histories. This book will provide insight and inspiration for everyone who is interested or involved in graphic communications. While most materials about form and meaning in design have a European origin, this volume is based on the dynamic and expressive graphic design of America. The reader will find inspiration, hundreds of exciting examples by many of America’s outstanding graphic designers, and keen insights in Type and Image.




The Advice Trap


Book Description

From the author of the runaway bestseller The Coaching Habit comes an authoritative guide to getting the most out of your workforce--and it all starts with curbing your urge to dole out advice. In The Advice Trap, bestselling author, speaker, and leadership coach Michael Bungay Stanier shares his invaluable insights into developing team members' professional performance, using tips that even the busiest managers can put into play. Learn how to confront and quell the three advice monsters that lurk inside us all, and how to resist the seven temptations that can ensnare even the most well-meaning manager. With his trademark wit and wisdom, Michael shows you exactly how to ask questions that drive impact and engagement, eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive. He takes you through examples of common problem situations, and reveals how to overcome them by using his everyday coaching tips. Finally, he shows you how to attain the highest level of engagement with his "blackbelt" tools of employee interaction: transparency, lightness and deep appreciation. A companion to The Coaching Habit, The Advice Trap gives you the power to say less, ask more--and change how you lead forever.




Sophie's World


Book Description

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.




Search for the Red Dragon


Book Description

John, Jack, and Charles (who met nine years ago when they became Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica, an atlas of all the lands we think of as imaginary) have come together again. Someone is kidnapping the children of the Archipelago of Dreams - and the legendary Dragonships, which can cross between the two worlds, have disappeared. Their search takes them from Sir James Barrie and Peter Pan, to Jason and the Argonauts, Medea, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and much more! An inventive, magical adventure that will keep readers riveted.




Mental Immunity


Book Description

“Mental Immunity is the perfect vaccine for the mind-viruses infecting our culture: alternative facts, fake news, and conspiracy thinking, to name a few.” —Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of The Believing Brain Astonishingly irrational ideas are spreading. Covid denial persists in the face of overwhelming evidence. Anti-vaxxers compromise public health. Conspiracy thinking hijacks minds and incites mob violence. Toxic partisanship is cleaving nations, and climate denial has pushed our planet to the brink. Meanwhile, American Nazis march openly in the streets, and Flat Earth theory is back. What the heck is going on? And what can we do about it? In Mental Immunity, Andy Norman shows that these phenomena share a root cause. We live in a time when the so-called “right to your opinion” is thought to trump our responsibilities. The resulting ethos effectively compromises mental immune systems, allowing “mind parasites” to overrun them. Conspiracy theories, evidence-defying ideologies, garden-variety bad ideas: these are all species of mind parasite, and each of them employs clever strategies to circumvent mental immune systems. In fact, some of them compromise cultural immune systems—the things societies do to prevent bad ideas from spreading. Norman shows why all of this is more than mere analogy: minds and cultures really do have immune systems, and they really can break down. Fortunately, they can also be built up: strengthened against ideological corruption. He calls for a rigorous science of mental immune health—what he calls “cognitive immunology”—and explains how it could revolutionize our capacity for critical thinking. A practical guide to spotting and removing bad ideas, Mental Immunity is a stirring call to transcend our petty tribalisms, and a serious bid to bring humanity to its senses.




Nonsense


Book Description

An illuminating look at the surprising upside of ambiguity—and how, properly harnessed, it can inspire learning, creativity, even empathy Life today feels more overwhelming and chaotic than ever. Whether it’s a confounding work problem or a faltering relationship or an unclear medical diagnosis, we face constant uncertainty. And we’re continually bombarded with information, much of it contradictory. Managing ambiguity—in our jobs, our relationships, and daily lives—is quickly becoming an essential skill. Yet most of us don’t know where to begin. As Jamie Holmes shows in Nonsense, being confused is unpleasant, so we tend to shutter our minds as we grasp for meaning and stability, especially in stressful circumstances. We’re hard-wired to resolve contradictions quickly and extinguish anomalies. This can be useful, of course. When a tiger is chasing you, you can’t be indecisive. But as Nonsense reveals, our need for closure has its own dangers. It makes us stick to our first answer, which is not always the best, and it makes us search for meaning in the wrong places. When we latch onto fast and easy truths, we lose a vital opportunity to learn something new, solve a hard problem, or see the world from another perspective. In other words, confusion—that uncomfortable mental place—has a hidden upside. We just need to know how to use it. This lively and original book points the way. Over the last few years, new insights from social psychology and cognitive science have deepened our understanding of the role of ambiguity in our lives and Holmes brings this research together for the first time, showing how we can use uncertainty to our advantage. Filled with illuminating stories—from spy games and doomsday cults to Absolut Vodka’s ad campaign and the creation of Mad Libs—Nonsense promises to transform the way we conduct business, educate our children, and make decisions. In an increasingly unpredictable, complex world, it turns out that what matters most isn’t IQ, willpower, or confidence in what we know. It’s how we deal with what we don’t understand.