Thursday, February 1, 2007

Caffeine for the Creative Mind by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield

I just got a book from Amazon the other day called Caffeine for the Creative Mind by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield and it is awesome!! I got it because it looked cool. Yes, I tend to judge books by their cover...sometimes I end up disappointed, but not this time.


Here is the description from Amazon:
*Chock-full of useful exercises designed to help readers tap into a daily creative buzz
*Features an edgy sketchbook design (by the authors) for visual allure
*Appeals to anyone looking for easy ways to jump start their creativity
For any designer or creative type who wants to quickly limber up their imagination on a daily basis, Wired helps readers get into the creative zone, from which all their best work springs. Packed with 15-minute simple and conceptual exercises, this guide will have readers reaching for markers, pencils, digital cameras, and more in order to develop a working and productive creative mindset.
It is certainly what it says! I started tabbing all the exercises that I especially wanted to try right away. Well, let's just say the book looks like it's growing some very colorful hair with all tabs sticking out of it! A lot of them that struck me initially seemed to be photography challenges, but I guess that makes sense since that is one of the things I'm really hoping to improve on this year.

It addition to the exercises, they also have numerous short interviews with some leading designers across a spectrum of website, logo, promotions, illustration, animation, etc. In these, I found numerous ideas and concepts to ponder, some of which I will be sharing with you here in the coming weeks.

Although this book is certainly not specifically geared towards scrapbookers, I think any serious 'creative' would find great value in this book.

MY RATING: 5 STARS
Caffeine for the Creative Mind by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee OldfieldSocialTwist Tell-a-Friend