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Boring Postcards Phaidon Press Limited 2000 An entire book of postcards so boring that they border on the beautiful. Images of Hotel Rooms, Woolworth locations, and aerial photos of  highway cloverleafs in static  "why-did-they- take-this" mystery.   The tempting tray shown is a handsome example of culinary communication. The unmelted butter pats are a beautiful touch, but for my money, the best element is the molded nest for the silverware! More coffee?

Whoever Makes The Most Mistakes Wins - The Paradox of Innovation Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes - The Free Press In just 127 pages, these authors examine the nature of mistakes and how it affects personal and corporate innovation. We have all heard how "mistakes" like post-it-notes glue turned into major success stories. Inventors like Edison considered failures to be attempts on the way to result. What is at stake is something that affects the ability of a company to innovate and create value. This book efficiently covers interesting questions about fear, praise, management culture, and the idea that every product is an experiment. "Comments by colleagues are not listened to, but considered a good opportunity to organize one's own thoughts......Research has found that critics of new ideas are assumed to be smarter than advocates of those ideas ...at what price, however?"

Open Here - The Art of Instructional Design Paul Mijkenaar and Piet Westendorp        Joost Elffers Books This large paperback features pages of every type of instruction manual imaginable. On one level, it is beautiful and fascinating - engine assembly, vacuum cleaners, model helicopters, Betamaxes, airplane evacuations. There are also plenty of warning and safety icons of every kind. Many of the symbols and diagrams are wonderful, and many are confusing. This is a book about beauty and communication, and also the lack of either. Consumers own more sophisticated products than ever, yet our methods of communicating assembly and use remains relatively primitive. Studying this vast historical collection of visual instruction helps remind us that our dialog with the customer does not end with the product, it is just beginning.

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson Putnam Sci-Fi author Gibson, renown for coining the term "cyberspace", has written several interesting novels like MonaLisa Overdrive and Virtual Light. In Recognition, he tells us about a woman with an amazing marketing talent - she can tell, with a single glance, if a corporate icon will "work". A problem - she is allergic to logos - can't wear them (I know the feeling) and is nearly killed when viewing Monsieur Bibendem,  the Michelin Man.. A mystery with spies, computers  and motorcyles ensue - a very entertaining read.

Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy Vintage Books 1985 Some people may be foolish enough to create advertising without having read what David Ogilvy has said on the subject. Don't be one of them. The creator of modern, effective campaigns including the famous Hathaway Shirts and Rolls Royce campaigns remains among the most insightful thinkers of marketing communications. "Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything"

The Design of Everyday things - Donald A. Norman Basic Books - 1998 - 2002 Know what a Norman Door is? It's a door that cannot be opened without experimentation, because the design offers no clues to how to use it. Norman rages against the poor (and praises the great) designs that surround us. Among his findings are that people are trained to fault themselves when things are difficult to work, instead of design. "User Error", he feels, is almost always the result of poor design, including the 3 Mile Island incident. "Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating."

Design - An illustrated historical overview - Thomas Hauffe Barron's 1995 This little volume serves as a neat historical overview of design from DaVinci to present times. Most major historical trends are described and illustrated, with an emphasis on Furniture and Industrial Design. Not a scholarly text, Design is a nice reference guide to the major designers and movements of the last two centuries.

Jimmy Corrigan - The Smartest Kid on Earth F.C. Ware Pantheon Books You have simply never seen a graphic story remotely like this book - it must be about 300 and covers a great deal of artistic territory. Best looked at in small doses, many pages are worth framing, they are so beautiful. "...the book need not be read at all, but simply placed on display as a symbol on one's youthful exuberance, like a flashy motorcar, or the music of the American South, as performed by an aristocrat."

The Size of Thoughts   Essays and Other Lumber by Nicholson Baker Random House 1997 Novelist Nicholson Baker writes passionate articles about everything from saving the library card file system to wondering how books are chosen as props in retail catalogs. His chapters on the design and function of nail clippers and movie projectors are a great fun. "Those gigantic, dumb, benevolent erasers (which always bounce in unforeseen directions when dropped, and always seem so selfless, so apolitical, so completely uninterested in doing anything besides erasing large mistakes for which they were not responsible)"

Purple Cow by Seth Godin Portfolio Books 2003 Seth Godin's slim tome can be read in a hour or so, but needs to be reviewed regularly. Innovative and energizing, this book is a call to the Brave grow their business by taking risks.

Blue Ocean Strategy W. Chan Kim and Renee' Mauborgne Harvard Business School Press A landmark statement in business strategy. The authors spent a decade studying companies who were wildly successful in creating profitable new businesses formed outside the traditional realms of competition. This fascinating book challenges traditional competitive thinking and backs it up with extensive case studies. The authors move beyond theoretical discussion and anecdotes to provide forms and chart grids to fill out, in order to identify market positions and begin thinking in profitable 'Blue Ocean" spaces. "...a focus on benchmarking and beating the competition leads to imitative, not innovative approaches to the market ..."