It isn't enough to just do your job anymore. In order to thrive in today's marketplace, all of us-even the accountants-have to be ready to generate brilliant ideas on demand. Business creativity expert Todd Henry explains how to establish effective practices that unleash your creative potential. Born out of his consultancy and his popular podcast, Henry has created a practical method for discovering your personal creative rhythm. He focuses on five key elements: *Focus: Begin with your end goal in mind. *Relationships: Build stimulating relationships and ideas will follow. *Energy: Manage it as your most valuable resource. *Stimuli: Structure the right "inputs" to maximize creative output. *Hours: Focus on effectiveness, not efficiency. This is a guide for staying inspired and experiencing greater creative productivity than you ever imagined possible.

    For the revised edition, a new final chapter covers all the recent international developments in graphic design, including the role of the computer and the Internet in design innovation and globalization. In the last years of the twentieth century, at a time when "designer products" and the use of logos grew in importance, the role of graphic designers became more complex, subversive, and sometimes more political—witness Oliviero Toscani's notorious advertisements for Benetton. Digital technology cleared the way for an astonishing proliferation of new typefaces, and words began to take second place to typography in a whole range of magazines and books as designers asserted the primacy of their medium. Designers and companies discussed here include Neville Brody, David Carson, Design Writing Research, Edward Fella, Tibor Kalman, Jeffery Keedy, LettError, Pierre di Sciullo, Tomato, Gerard Unger, Cornel Windlin, and a host of others.

    Ironically, I must recommend that you read her every word so that you can find out why your customers won't read very many words on your website -- and what to do about it.-- Jakob Nielsen, Principal, Nielsen Norman Group"There are at least twelve billion web pages out there. Twelve billion voices talking, but saying mostly nothing. If just 1% of those pages followed Ginny's practical, clear advice, the world would be a better place. Fortunately, you can follow her advice for 100% of your own site's pages, so pick up a copy of Letting Go of the Words and start communicating effectively today."--Lou Rosenfeld, co-author, Information Architecture for the World Wide WebOn the web, whether on the job or at home, we usually want to grab information and use it quickly. We go to the web to get answers to questions or to complete tasks - to gather information, reading only what we need. We are all too busy to read much on the web.This book helps you write successfully for web users. It offers strategy, process, and tactics for creating or revising content for the web. It helps you plan, organize, write, design, and test web content that will make web users come back again and again to your site.Learn how to create usable and useful content for the web from the master - Ginny Redish. Ginny has taught and mentored hundreds of writers, information designers, and content owners in the principles and secrets of creating web information that is easy to scan, easy to read, and easy to use.This practical, informative book will help anyone creating web content do it better.Features* Clearly-explained guidelines with full color illustrations and examples from actual web sites throughout the book. * Written in easy-to-read style with many befores and afters.* Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents.* Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs.Janice (Ginny) Redish has been helping clients and colleagues communicate clearly for more than 20 years. For the past ten years, her focus has been helping people create usable and useful web sites. She is co-author of two classic books on usability: A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (with Joseph Dumas), and User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (with JoAnn Hackos), and is the recipient of many awards.

    Peterson stresses the importance of metering the subject for a starting exposure, and then explains how to use various exposure meters and different kinds of lighting. The book contains lessons on each element of the exposure-aperature, shutter speed, iso-and how it relates to the other two in terms of depth of field, freezing and blurring action, and shooting in low light or at night. A section on special techniques explores such options as deliberate under- and overexposures, how to produce double exposures, bracketing, shooting the moon, and the use of filters. Understanding Exposure demonstrates that there are always creative choices about how to expose a picture-and that the decision is up to the photographer, not the camera.

    Long before the advent of computers, human beings were collecting, storing, and organizing information: from Ice Age taxonomies to Sumerian archives, Greek libraries to Dark Age monasteries.Today, we stand at a precipice, as our old systems struggle to cope with what designer Richard Saul Wurman called a "tsunami of data." With some historical perspective, however, we can begin to understand our predicament not just as the result of technological change, but as the latest chapter in an ancient story that we are only beginning to understand.Spanning disciplines from evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology to the history of books, libraries, and computer science, writer and information architect Alex Wright weaves an intriguing narrative that connects such seemingly far-flung topics as insect colonies, Stone Age jewelry, medieval monasteries, Renaissance encyclopedias, early computer networks, and the World Wide Web. Finally, he pulls these threads together to reach a surprising conclusion, suggesting that the future of the information age may lie deep in our cultural past.

    We multi-task, switch between screens, work faster. When was the last time you paused to consider a beautifully made object or stunning natural landscape? Yet this is when our spirits lift, our soul is restored. Designer Alan Moore invites us to rethink not only what we produce – whether it’s a website, a handmade chair, or a business – but how and why. With examples including Pixar, Apple, Yeo Valley and Blitz Motorcycles, we are encouraged to ask: Is it useful and considered. Is it a thing of beauty? Do Design will inspire you to: • Improve your creative process • Raise the quality and craft of your work • Consider the experience as much as the product • Adopt simplicity, utility and honesty as guiding principles We are creative beings. We love to make things. This book will inspire you to create better things for better reasons. Things that people will love – for a long time to come. Some say beauty is a luxury. But what if it is key to creating a better world for us all? Alan Moore has designed and created everything from books to businesses. He has a unique grasp on the forces that are reshaping our world and how to creatively respond to them. Working on six continents, Alan has shared his knowledge in the form of board and advisory positions at companies such as Hewlett Packard, Microsoft and Coca Cola, workshops and speaking as well as teaching in institutions as wide ranging as MIT and Reading University’s Typography Department, Sloan School of Management and INSEAD. He is the author of four books on creativity, marketing and business transformation including No Straight Lines: Making sense of our nonlinear world (2011). He still works as an artist. He tries everyday to lead a life as beautifully as he possibly can.

    Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion. Inclusive design methods--designing objects with rather than for excluded users--can create elegant solutions that work well and benefit all.Holmes tells stories of pioneers of inclusive design, many of whom were drawn to work on inclusion because of their own experiences of exclusion. A gamer and designer who depends on voice recognition shows Holmes his "Wall of Exclusion," which displays dozens of game controllers that require two hands to operate; an architect shares her firsthand knowledge of how design can fail communities, gleaned from growing up in Detroit's housing projects; an astronomer who began to lose her eyesight adapts a technique called "sonification" so she can "listen" to the stars.Designing for inclusion is not a feel-good sideline. Holmes shows how inclusion can be a source of innovation and growth, especially for digital technologies. It can be a catalyst for creativity and a boost for the bottom line as a customer base expands. And each time we remedy a mismatched interaction, we create an opportunity for more people to contribute to society in meaningful ways.

    This internationally recognized standard provides the essential tools to practice project management and deliver organizational results.

    A generation ago, Christensen revolutionized business with his groundbreaking theory of disruptive innovation. Now, he goes further, offering powerful new insights.After years of research, Christensen has come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim—that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation—is wrong. Customers don’t buy products or services; they "hire" them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does. The "Jobs to Be Done" approach can be seen in some of the world’s most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes—it’s about predicting new ones.Christensen contends that by understanding what causes customers to "hire" a product or service, any business can improve its innovation track record, creating products that customers not only want to hire, but that they’ll pay premium prices to bring into their lives. Jobs theory offers new hope for growth to companies frustrated by their hit and miss efforts.This book carefully lays down Christensen’s provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory and why it is predictive, how to use it in the real world—and, most importantly, how not to squander the insights it provides.

    But the truth is that the world's most successful artists did not starve. In fact, they capitalized on the power of their creative strength. In Real Artists Don't Starve, Jeff Goins debunks the myth of the starving artist by unveiling the ideas that created it and replacing them with timeless strategies for thriving, including:steal from your influences (don't wait for inspiration),collaborate with others (working alone is a surefire way to starve),take strategic risks (instead of reckless ones),make money in order to make more art (it's not selling out), andapprentice under a master (a "lone genius" can never reach full potential).Through inspiring anecdotes of successful creatives both past and present, Goins shows that living by these rules is not only doable but it's also a fulfilling way to thrive.From graphic designers and writers to artists and business professionals, creatives already know that no one is born an artist. Goins' revolutionary rules celebrate the process of becoming an artist, a person who utilizes the imagination in fundamental ways. He reminds creatives that business and art are not mutually exclusive pursuits. In fact, success in business and in life flow from a healthy exercise of creativity.Expanding upon the groundbreaking work in his previous bestseller The Art of Work, Goins explores the tension every creative person and organization faces in an effort to blend the inspired life with a practical path to success. Being creative isn't a disadvantage for success; rather, it is a powerful tool to be harnessed.

    Everyone wants them, whether to sell more products, spread good ideas, or win more funding. In our busy digital world, the way to results is influencing people on the web. But how?An ad campaign won't cut it. A Twitter account doesn't guarantee it. Manipulative tricks will backfire. Instead, you need quality, compelling web content that attracts people and engages them for the long haul.Clout explains the key principles of influence and how to apply them to web content. Along the way, those principles come to life with lots of practical examples. With this book, you'll: Discover why a technology feature, marketing campaign, SEO effort, or redesign aren't enough to influence online. Understand the business value of compelling web content. Learn 8 principles for influence from the art of rhetoric and the science of psychology. Find out what context is and why it's so important to influence. Jump start your planning for content over time with patterns and diagrams. Learn the basics of evaluation to determine whether your web content is making a difference.

    His ideas on optimizing your creativity, doing wow work, and building a life that inspires will devastate your limits. And show you how to win. Read this book fast." —Robin Sharma, bestselling author of The Monk Who Sold His FerrariBegin before you're ready and other lessons on living a happy and creative life: Renowned designer and professional hell-raiser James Victore wants to drag you off your couch and throw you headfirst into a life of bold creativity. In Feck Perfuction, Victore will guide you through all the twists, trials, and triumphs of starting your creative career, from finding your voice to picking the right moment to start a project (hint: It's now). Bring your biggest, craziest, most revolutionary ideas, and he will give you the kick in the pants you need to make them real.Filled with humor and stern advice, Feck Perfuction provides "dangerous ideas" for unearthing your authentic self, including "the things that made you weird as a kid make you great today," "the struggle is everything," and many more.No matter what industry or medium you work in, this book will help you live, work, and create freely and fearlessly.James Victore is an award-winning designer for bold believers, an advocate for creativity, a sought after teacher and speaker, and an artist whose work is exhibited around the globe.Fans of Austin Kleon's Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad and Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative will love James Victore's inspiring book on embracing authenticity and unleashing your creative self. Begin before you're ready, live dangerously, take a risk, and other lessons on living a purpose-driven lifeA perfect coffee table or bar top conversation-starting bookMakes a great gift for a new graduate or someone embarking on a personal or professional adventure