How to Have Great Ideas - John Ingledew
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Author: John Ingledew
Publisher: Lawrence King
Year Published: 2016
Dimensions: 7.1in x 9.5in
Pages: 184
How to Have Great Ideas focuses on curating a collection of idea generative activities that can spark inspirational ideas in any creative individual. Written for designers of any background, Ingledew mixes theory and practice to help, literally, anyone come up with ideas.
This book is structured so almost every spread focuses on a new concept, followed by a short blurb, images of examples, and quotes about relevant topics. Due to this format, this book makes for quite an easy read. It also means that this book is not ideal to read through entirely, but is ideal for picking and choosing select concepts to read through. That being said, readers may choose to read through this book through entirely the first time to learn about all of the generation concepts, and then refer back to this book, one section at a time, as they need it.
The design of this book is very nice. The typographic hierarchy is beneficial and very clear so readers know the order of which information to read in what sequence, and it helps readers pick and choose which pieces of information they want to read because each type of information is coded in a way. All headers are bold, text is regular, and quotes are italics. Another great selling feature to this book is all of the imagery. There is so much unique imagery on each page that correlates so perfectly to the concepts being mentioned. The imagery is unique because a lot of it is not traditional or stock photography that is used in every other design book, but imagery that was taken specifically for this book. Granted, because of this, some of the imagery revolves around students that were utilizing these concepts in their studio classes.
The last amazing thing about How to Have Great Ideas is every concept is followed up with some sort of project to help encourage the reader to put the concept into practice. These projects usually focus on some sort of small project or scenario that can either be done on a piece of paper or in a sketchbook, or made wit materials that can be found around the house, classroom, or studio. And if they cannot be easily accessed, there is always something that the material can be substituted with. One example of these projects can be found in, “Trust Your Hunches” on page 124, in which the reader is asked to collect and collate their intuitive ideas, and then think of a name for the collection.
One pain point for this book was the grammar and spelling. Although there are only a few errors in the beginning, due to missing words and misspellings, it does not take away from the larger content at hand. But, overall, these errors should not be present.
This book is ideal for any novice individual who is not familiar with brain storming and idea generation techniques. It serves as a perfect companion for those who are either just starting their educational career or hobby. This book is less ideal for those who have either already attended some design or art education, or are currently working in the fields for some time simply because none of these concepts are entirely new. Each concept is relatively common sense, and any person in the design/art fields for several years have heard of each one at one point or another. That being said, these projects in the book are fresh, and serve as great warm up exercises for readers of any skill. It is also nice to be able to keep this reference on the shelf and pull out whenever one is in a creative jam. This book is highly recommended for all.