Speeches and Books

Ted Talks is a video site promoting 'ideas worth sharing', with thousands of videos from speakers around the world the site is a useful resource to share and learn about others ideas, opinions and attitudes.

"You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart. Even when it leads off the well worn path."

The most inspirational video I found was 'How to live before you die' by Steve Jobs. Jobs has always been someone who inspires me for his strong belief in doing what you love. 

In this particular speech to Stanford University graduates he tells three stories, the first being how he dropped out of university and took a calligraphy course which in later years helped him put a range of types onto the Apple Mac. "You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart. Even when it leads off the well worn path."

A quick sketchbook piece inspired  by Steve Jobs quote "You have to believe in something your gut, destiny life, karma whatever. Believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart. Even when it leads off the well worn path."

The second story was how he got fired from Apple "I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love."

And finally, the third describes how, when he was in his forties  he had a cancer scare which doctors believed gave him only a month to live. "If you live each day as if it were your last, some day you will most certainly be right".

Jobs through his speech and the key quotes listed above, stresses to the audience how important it is to do what you love and not what you think others expect of you. You can only achieve success and great work through working at something you love. Life is too short to waste precious time on things you hate. So you must have beleive even though the path you take may not be the safest it will be the one that eventually helps you 'connect the dots'.

100 ideas that changed Graphic Design by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne. 

Aim: To chronologically order big ideas that have added mass to the design world and significantly helped build graphic design into what it is today. For example Gutenberg's introduction of moveable type in the form of a book.

I found '100 Ideas that changed Graphic Design' in Magma, a London book store not so many months ago. Initially I had picked it up just as a reference book, something that would help build my contextual knowledge and add weight to my design work. However, I found the book to be much more impactful than I had first expected. With over 100 pages Heller and Vienne screen shot a moment in time. Taking bite size chunks of design mediums, styles and characteristics they explain exactly where they came from and their role in today's design world. 

Each Idea has its own page and the ideas included cover all aspects of design. The book can be used at any time, on any project to look up almost any key idea or aspect of graphic design. 

             Appetite For Design: Eat Me, Viction:ary

Aims: To show a range of recent design work, events and products that have take on the topic of food and its relationship with mankind. 

Inspiration: A large range of innovative and humorous ideas, documented in both a beautifully and topically designed book. 

After Thoughts: Excellent as a source of inspiration or just to read leisurely. However, the book lacked contextual information of any sort or information about what inspired the individual projects.  

Whatever You Think Think The Opposite, Paul Arden 

Aim: To encourage individual thought and risk taking. 

Inspiration: Arden uses humour and a whole lot of personal insight to communicate the benefits of individual thinking. The book was both insightful and funny, encouraging a great deal of thought and debate. 

After thoughts: I loved Arden's encouragement to have faith in yourself and your individuality. However, I felt more often than not it was just about him telling you to think the complete opposite to everyone else, as opposed to believing in what is true to you. 

The majority may think it and the minority may tell you not to think it, but this should not effect your own opinion or personal beliefs. 

Blogging for Creatives 

Aim: To help designers like myself set up design blogs! 

Inspiration/usefulness: The book was full of lots of key terminology and took the reader through each stage of blogging very carefully.