3 books will spark your creativity
Reading about creativity is a great way to kick-start your own creative juices. However there is no shortage of books as Amazon hold +5000 books on the topic, so where to start?
Here are three suggestions that hold a solid foundation of how creativity works, and how you can be more creative yourself.
For the Creative: Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
You can quickly get wrapped up in trying to be super original but at the same time relevant to your audience. There is a sort of paradoxical social pressure on that front. Austin Kleon takes off some of that pressure of being a creative. Just forget originality for a moment and make something. Everything has been done before, so focus on how you can contribute to those ideas that came before you. To get a sense of the logic behind this, I recommend you watch the YouTube documentary Everything is a Remix.
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants - Isaac Newton.
For the Manager: Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull
Catmull is a legend in the animation industry. He made the software that made Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Up possible. In his book Creativity, Inc, Catmull explores how to foster creativity in an organisation and what allows employees to stay creative when the company grows and go corporate. Hereare a little taster on it This is what makes Pixar so successful according to Ed Catmull.
For the Graphic Designer: An A-Z of Visual Ideas
You are stuck. You have a job to do but the creative juices are just not flowing today. So what should you do ... close your laptop, sit down by the coffee machine and read this. It is packed with ideas to spark your imagination and works time and time again. It even explains the ideas to you, so it is not just a pixie-book for creatives. The work in this piece is so good, that you cannot leave richer than you came.
For more book recommendations you can either follow me on Quora or sign up for my Monthly Reading List, where I go through the books I have read the last month.
Senior Content Writer, Digital Copywriter, and Brand Strategist
8 年I have to plug Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. Practical and inspiring!
Empowering companies to become digital leaders @ BCGroup | IT Strategist | Technical Hobbyist
8 年I'm a huge fan of your updates - they always spark a "I wanna read as much" feeling. Anyhow, I would like to nominate the "Damn good advice (for people with talent)" by George Lois which is a really easy to read book, with some "Damn good" points. Keep up the good work! Kind regards