Summer is well upon us and with it (hopefully!) some time to grab a book and relax… but always with an eye on creativity. We are off for a well-deserved break, but we didn’t want to go without sharing a fresh selection of summer reads and a couple of extra ADCE content recommendations. We hope they give you plenty of ideas, tools, and inspiration to keep nurturing your hungry creative selves wherever you are.
Not a bookworm? Not a problem! We’ve made a playlist of our YouTube series ADCE Awards ‘20 Winners Talks and each video offers a way to delve into the DNA of Europe’s best design and advertising awards. Don’t miss this pool of great insights on the awarded works directly from their creators.
If you would rather not rest and prefer expanding your creative network, you can still join our Creative Incubator which will be running until November 2021 with access to a whole lot of resources and the opportunity to engage in weekly digital live sessions, invitations to group and project work, webinars and Q&As that will be hosted by 25 international mentors.
Whatever you choose to fill your summer with, we hope you enjoy it, as that is one of the best creativity boosts you can get. We’ll be back in early September, eager to see your best work fill our award entries to become the very best of the best.
Sho Baraka (Waterbrook Press, 2021)
How can we use creativity to make the world a better place is something we ask ourselves every day, and so did hip-hop artist and creative polymath Sho Baraka. This book offers a deep exploration of the intersection of faith, creativity, and justice.
Learning from the powerful principles of historic movements, Baraka explores why it’s important to cultivate your creative calling (no matter what you do!), and discovers a fresh look at how the gospel can transform how you see God, your neighbour, your work, and your world.
Steve Brouwers (Luster, 2021)
We are always keen to hear other creatives’ takes on creativity, so we can’t wait to delve into Steve Brouwers’ 44 interviews with makers, painters, photographers, graphic designers, conceptual artists, furniture designers, video artists and advertisers from all around the world. A creative director at SBS, Brouwers asks them about their childhood, their creative process, their inspirations, and their most memorable achievements. The question that kicks off every interview — “What is creativity to you?” — results in an inspiring collection of personal conversations that provide an extraordinary insight into the artists’ minds.
Lavender Suarez (Anthology Editions, 2020)
How can thoughtfully and intentionally listening to our world inspire our creative practices? What insights can we gain when we delve into the immersive world of sound, which permeates our every moment? In Transcendent Waves, sound healing practitioner, meditation teacher, and artist Lavender Suarez outlines how listening can unlock moments of creative spark, self-awareness, and mindfulness in a work that is equal parts how-to guide and contemplative artist’s workbook.
Suarez’s illustrated meditations combine the open-ended freedom of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit with the profound psychological insights of Oliver Sacks to offer a modern take on the impact of listening in a world that gets louder every day. Featuring an introduction by Bibbe Hansen―artist, Warhol star, and daughter of Fluxus co-founder Al Hansen―Transcendent Waves compiles scientific evidence, anecdotes, and thoughtful prompts for readers to manifest a sense of wonderment and appreciation for the intricacies of listening and the new perspectives it can bring to our daily creative worlds.
Jeff and Staney DeGraff (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2020)
If you are into how-to advice, tools, and techniques to improve your ability to create and innovate, this book is for you. Master innovators Jeff and Staney DeGraff introduce six essential creative-thinking skills that can be easily mastered with limited practice and remembered as the acronym CREATE: Concentrate, Replicate, Elaborate, Associate, Translate, and Evaluate. These six skills, sequenced as steps, simplify and summarize the most important research on creative thinking and draw on over thirty years of real-world application in some of the most innovative organizations in the world. Rethinking the way we make innovation happen is key to stay relevant in a fast changing world.
Jeremy Gutsche (Fast Company Press, 2020)
In our era of disruption and possibility, there are so many great opportunities within your grasp. Unfortunately, according to top innovator Jeremy Gutsche, your capabilities are limited by the seven traps of path dependency, which cause you to repeat past decisions. These traps can limit you from seeing the potential of what could be. Create the Future teaches you how to overcome these traps and think disruptively, providing specific steps to create real innovation and change. The book combines Jeremy’s high energy, provocative thinking with tactics that have been battle-tested through thousands of his team’s projects advising leading innovators like Disney, Starbucks, Amex, IBM, Adidas, Google, and NASA. It also comes paired with The Innovation Handbook, a revised edition of Gutsche’s award-winning book, Exploiting Chaos.