If you want to succeed in life or business, this book is a must.

    Erik Kessels celebrates imperfection and failure and shows why they are an essential part of the creative process.Failed it! celebrates the power of mistakes and shows how they can enrich the creative process. This is part photobook and part guide to loosening up and making mistakes to take the fear out of failure and encourage experimentation.It showcases the best and most hilarious examples of imperfection and failure across a broad range of creative forms, including art, design, photography, architecture and product design, to inspire and encourage creatives to embrace and celebrate their mistakes.We live in an era when everyone is striving for perfection and we have become afraid of failure, which limits our potential. Mistakes help us find new ways of thinking and innovative solutions, and failures can change our perceptions and open up new ways of looking things. This book transforms mistakes from something to be embarrassed about into a cause for celebration.It includes over 150 visual examples drawn from Kessels personal collection of artworks and found photographs, along with tips, quotes, anecdotes and wisdom for celebrating with failure. To quote Kessels: 'the ubiquity of Apple + Z, means that we can literally undo any mistake before it has had time to breathe, be considered and — perhaps — evolve into something else: a fascinating, strange, provocative or even original piece of work. This book asks readers to embrace their fuck-ups, learn from them and celebrate their tawdry glory'.

    Alyson B. Stanfield, the art-marketing guru behind ArtBizCoach.com, shares self-promotion tools that have enhanced the careers of thousands of artists. You'll learn how to: (1) Introduce yourself as an artist so people want to know more; (2) Nail your artist statement to discover the right words for all of your marketing messages; (3) Expand your mailing list and use it to cultivate collectors; (4) Create marketing materials that outshine the competition; (5) Become a media magnet so buyers come to you; (6) Take advantage of your Web site and blog to build a bigger audience; and much more. It would be great if there were a precise formula for getting your art into galleries, museums and private collections. But every artist's path is different. That's why I'd Rather Be in the Studio! provides easy-to-follow self-promotion practices that help you find your way at any point in your career. Match Internet marketing strategies with sincere personal skills to take charge of your career.

    We arrive at this crossroads over and over again, and every day. And we get to choose. Starting out or starting over, making a career change or making a life change, the most life-affirming thing you can do is to honor the voice inside that says your have something special to give, and then heed the call and act. Many have traveled this road before. Here’s how you can, too. #choosemust An inspirational gift book for every recent graduate, every artist, every seeker, and every career change.

    This book is about giving yourself the space—the mental margin—to reconnect with your creative self by trying new things and, yes, even by failing sometimes. With lush illustrations, empowering interactive prompts, and inspiring personal stories, Give Yourself Margin is the perfect gift for anyone who is looking to rediscover their spark.

    Workmanship is key to today's visual arts, when high ‘production values' are becoming increasingly commonplace. Yet craft's centrality to contemporary art has received little serious attention from critics and historians. Dispensing with clichéd arguments that craft is art, Adamson persuasively makes a case for defining craft in a more nuanced fashion. The interesting thing about craft, he argues, is that it is perceived to be 'inferior' to art. The book consists of an overview of various aspects of this second-class identity - supplementarity, sensuality, skill, the pastoral, and the amateur. It also provides historical case studies analysing craft's role in a variety of disciplines, including architecture, design, contemporary art, and the crafts themselves. Thinking Through Craft will be essential reading for anyone interested in craft or the broader visual arts.

     In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and with many of the world's top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, and allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems.  It is a book that will help each of us be more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers.

    Now in book form for the first time, their simple method will teach you how to use basic design tools to create a life that will work for you.Using real-life stories and proven techniques like reframing, prototyping and mind-mapping, you will learn how to build your way forwards, step-by-positive-step, to a life that’s better by a design of your own making.Because a well-designed life means a life well-lived.

    During his more than forty years in the business, Williams has been one of the true innovators, winning three Academy Awards and serving as the link between Disney's golden age of animation by hand and the new computer animation exemplified by Toy Story. Perhaps even more important, though, has been his dedication in passing along his knowledge to a new generation of animators so that they in turn could push the medium in new directions. In this book, based on his sold-out master classes in the United States and across Europe, Williams provides the underlying principles of animation that every animator--from beginner to expert, classic animator to computer animation whiz --needs. Urging his readers to "invent but be believable," he illustrates his points with hundreds of drawings, distilling the secrets of the masters into a working system in order to create a book that will become the standard work on all forms of animation for professionals, students, and fans.

    Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture. 8 illustrations.

    No, it's the subtle kind of curse. It's the kind you might not notice until you're 46 years old at a desk job wondering why you let the best years of your life slip away. It's the kind that keeps you paralyzed at 18 when you know you have something special to offer the world but everyone says you are too young.This book is not about overcoming that curse.It's not about outgrowing the curse.It's about learning to live with it. What if loneliness is not something to be defeated, but an incredible source of power and inspiration? What if that vision you have nobody else can see is the very thing which will set you apart from the rest of the world? What if what makes you weird also makes you unique?The Creative's Curse is real, it's here to stay, and it shows up in all 3 phases of the creative journey:- Discovery -When the voices in your head are telling you nothing you create will ever be good enough.- Discipline -When you start to taste success, but freeze with the challenge of replicating that success.- Destiny -When you feel you've reached your artistic potential... and now have to figure out what on earth to do with your life. Because the Creative is afraid of success and failure and obscurity and fame all at the same time. She is beautiful and bold and timid and courageous. He is unique to the core, so will never be understood by anyone. This is the Creative's Curse.

    Rather than focus on art techniques that build skills or overcome creative blocks through playful activities or writing, this guide walks the artist through exercises designed to develop the personal qualities critical to being an artist in the world, such as courage, the ability to look and see, and connection to the true creative self. This is a hands-on, experiential action book designed to get the reader creating art and exploring a variety of possibilities for being an artist. According to the teachings of this handbook, engagement with art is less about end results or products and more about the self-awareness and competence that frees the artist to seek out and create work that is vital. This is a rigorous programme that allows artists of any skill level to deepen their creative habits and be the best artists possible.

    We’re each trying to describe what we know about life, to create a collective sense of “safety in numbers.” When we reach the end of our traditional descriptive powers, it’s time to weave collective meaning from poetry, painting, writing, dancing, photographing, filmmaking, storytelling, singing, animating, designing, performing, carving, sculpting, and a million other ways we daily create Order out of the Chaos and share it with each other for comfort.On this journey we need a creative philosophy which will help us find our voice, discover our message, deal with the responses to our work, maintain inspiration, and stay mentally healthy and motivated creators as we strive to find “the meaning in the making.”

    But what about the elements that make up a picture? Using the tale of Little Red Riding Hood as an example, Molly Bang uses boldly graphic artwork to explain how images -- and their individual components -- work to tell a story that engages the emotions: Why are diagonals dramatic? Why are curves calming? Why does red feel hot and blue feel cold?

    Always striking at the worst moment, it can leave you feeling completely paralyzed. Take solace in knowing that you are not alone. It happens to everyone and is actually an inevitable part of the creative process. Breakthrough!is a lively compilation of strategies for combating creative block offered by a who's who of leading graphic designers, typographers, cartoonists, photographers, illustrators, musicians, writers, and other creative professionals. Because every block is different, they offer a wide variety of solutions—from cleaning the house and eating spicy food to making a plaster cast of your hands and feet—that are surprising, amusing, at times weird, but always inspiring. Breakthrough! is rocket fuel for any creative individual in need of a catalyst to get ideas flowing again.