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wkbryant2021's review against another edition
3.0
“The world doesn’t need more millionaires. We need more creative people who give a damn about something other than theirselves.”
Simple but fabulous reminders on living a creative life.
Simple but fabulous reminders on living a creative life.
bookish2024's review against another edition
3.0
Nothing I haven’t heard or read before, but that doesn’t necessarily make Victore’s advice wrong.
The one line that stuck with me while reading this book was in the first few pages: “Inspiration without action is bullshit.”
The one line that stuck with me while reading this book was in the first few pages: “Inspiration without action is bullshit.”
megansmith's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
fast-paced
1.0
If you're reading this and you're one of my coworkers, no you aren't, back out of this page and leave please <3
---
I did NOT like this book. I have not had to brute force myself through a book in a long time, much less one this short and easy to read, but fuck this was bad. I did not choose this book myself, one of my coworkers put this in a list of book club reads and I voted for it was intrigued by the title and honestly, just preferred it over some worse options on the list.
As a general principle as a graphic designer with many identities that are opposite to "white, straight, cis-male", I try to avoid taking too much advice from creatives in this category since on top of the advice that comes from a place of deep privilege, I find this group of designers to be laden with some of the thickest egos in our industry and lo and behold, that is all I found in the pages of this book. Advice was contradictory at best, insensitive at worst. Much of it centered around this whole narrative that boiled down to more or less, "fuck the 9-5, if you have the 9-5 you're a sad sap who needs to get a life because you're awful and boring and not fun". There's so much missing nuance here and I think this just taps back to this really specific group of designers that feel so rejected by the lifestyle they initially pursued that they rebel against it so much and try pursuing their own thing, and in the process become so bullish about living THEIR specific life and encourage other people to do so, that they've become the thing they hated. What's the difference in shaming 9-5er's as a person with a "unique" career vs shaming someone who doesn't pursue a traditional 9-5? There's a lot of ways to have a fulfilling, sustainable life and career and this book misses that point tenfold. Some takes were so full of privilege and seeping with selfishness that by the time I got to chapter 5, all my notes were just "man, I really hate this."
There were very few passages I did resonate with, but I will give my small amount of credit where credit is due, not EVERYTHING was a complete hate. But this book was full of basic platitudes you could find in a Home Goods, strewn with just a bunch of "fucks + shits + asses", sexual metaphors (no joke, one section ended with "junk food, no cardio, and stale sex life make Jack a dull boy"), and a lot of "if I pulled myself out of poverty by my bootstraps and my raging hard on for creativity (also "raging hard on for creativity" was direct from the book), you can do it too if you're not SCARED of totally ruining the lives of yourself and everyone around you in favor of being cReAtIvE!" (he did quite literally brag about how he chose to print 5000 posters with his design with his rent money and got himself and his girlfriend evicted from their apartment, but he's now so glad he has a wife that is willing to sacrifice it all for him to be creative). So all that in mind, I'm not surprised I found at least a few things to resonate with. Because nothing was groundbreaking. That's all this boiled down to, someone that tried so hard to be outside the box that he found himself in a new box of his own making. And it just has a lot of curse words written on the outside in bad handwriting, but looks like the original box.
Lastly, as a designer, this book bothered me so much. Which I wouldn't think I'd be saying but I am! Some illustrations paired with the writing were interesting, and I will give him credit, James' handwriting is unique. But it is HARD to read. We're in an era of design where there's a spotlight on accessibility, now more than ever before, and you're a communications designer who communicates your personal work primarily through your own handwriting, and it's difficult to read? If this is a test, like he says in the book, everything is a test, you failed to even fill in your name in the right place and thus failed the exam. The page numbers were also placed so deeply in the gutter of the book that I didn't even notice there were any until page 67, otherwise I would've tracked my progress sooner. And the printing process made each page number uneven, which I don't know if that was intentional due to the title of the book, but it bothered the shit out of me. I am assuming it was intentional because of the back of the book. This is another thing that drives me so wild with this era of male designers, they're so caught up in why the curtain is blue that they don't realize the house is burning down behind them. Good design isn't so caught up in finding "artistic meaning" that it becomes difficult and inaccessible for a majority of audiences - it just becomes a personal exercise in ostracizing the people you're supposed to be working for.
I'll end on this - one passage I noted said,
---
I did NOT like this book. I have not had to brute force myself through a book in a long time, much less one this short and easy to read, but fuck this was bad. I did not choose this book myself, one of my coworkers put this in a list of book club reads and I voted for it was intrigued by the title and honestly, just preferred it over some worse options on the list.
As a general principle as a graphic designer with many identities that are opposite to "white, straight, cis-male", I try to avoid taking too much advice from creatives in this category since on top of the advice that comes from a place of deep privilege, I find this group of designers to be laden with some of the thickest egos in our industry and lo and behold, that is all I found in the pages of this book. Advice was contradictory at best, insensitive at worst. Much of it centered around this whole narrative that boiled down to more or less, "fuck the 9-5, if you have the 9-5 you're a sad sap who needs to get a life because you're awful and boring and not fun". There's so much missing nuance here and I think this just taps back to this really specific group of designers that feel so rejected by the lifestyle they initially pursued that they rebel against it so much and try pursuing their own thing, and in the process become so bullish about living THEIR specific life and encourage other people to do so, that they've become the thing they hated. What's the difference in shaming 9-5er's as a person with a "unique" career vs shaming someone who doesn't pursue a traditional 9-5? There's a lot of ways to have a fulfilling, sustainable life and career and this book misses that point tenfold. Some takes were so full of privilege and seeping with selfishness that by the time I got to chapter 5, all my notes were just "man, I really hate this."
There were very few passages I did resonate with, but I will give my small amount of credit where credit is due, not EVERYTHING was a complete hate. But this book was full of basic platitudes you could find in a Home Goods, strewn with just a bunch of "fucks + shits + asses", sexual metaphors (no joke, one section ended with "junk food, no cardio, and stale sex life make Jack a dull boy"), and a lot of "if I pulled myself out of poverty by my bootstraps and my raging hard on for creativity (also "raging hard on for creativity" was direct from the book), you can do it too if you're not SCARED of totally ruining the lives of yourself and everyone around you in favor of being cReAtIvE!" (he did quite literally brag about how he chose to print 5000 posters with his design with his rent money and got himself and his girlfriend evicted from their apartment, but he's now so glad he has a wife that is willing to sacrifice it all for him to be creative). So all that in mind, I'm not surprised I found at least a few things to resonate with. Because nothing was groundbreaking. That's all this boiled down to, someone that tried so hard to be outside the box that he found himself in a new box of his own making. And it just has a lot of curse words written on the outside in bad handwriting, but looks like the original box.
Lastly, as a designer, this book bothered me so much. Which I wouldn't think I'd be saying but I am! Some illustrations paired with the writing were interesting, and I will give him credit, James' handwriting is unique. But it is HARD to read. We're in an era of design where there's a spotlight on accessibility, now more than ever before, and you're a communications designer who communicates your personal work primarily through your own handwriting, and it's difficult to read? If this is a test, like he says in the book, everything is a test, you failed to even fill in your name in the right place and thus failed the exam. The page numbers were also placed so deeply in the gutter of the book that I didn't even notice there were any until page 67, otherwise I would've tracked my progress sooner. And the printing process made each page number uneven, which I don't know if that was intentional due to the title of the book, but it bothered the shit out of me. I am assuming it was intentional because of the back of the book. This is another thing that drives me so wild with this era of male designers, they're so caught up in why the curtain is blue that they don't realize the house is burning down behind them. Good design isn't so caught up in finding "artistic meaning" that it becomes difficult and inaccessible for a majority of audiences - it just becomes a personal exercise in ostracizing the people you're supposed to be working for.
I'll end on this - one passage I noted said,
What’s important about what you think of my work is not how you feel about it, but what you do about it.
Which, in this case, I know James will therefore not care what I think about his work. As he says earlier in the book too, despite working for clients, he doesn't give a shit what they think, so long as he's happy (but also, later mentions that you have to have a purpose in life and if you aren't doing things for others than you're wasting your life, more or less). BUT what I will do in response to this work of his, is this: is push way harder to not read books by privileged designers with outdated views when presented with a really bad list of reads at work, and continue pursuing work and passages written by creatives that interest me and look more holistically at the world we live in. This book is outdated at best, harmful at worst, and worth nobody's time. There's far better books out there in the world that can get you motivated to create without taking in all this harmful bullshit in the process.
poot182's review against another edition
3.0
A collection of platitudes and pithy quotes in a well designed package. Some chapters seemed contradictory, some were shallow, but a handful of them had some great thoughts and inspiring ways to look at the world. It was about as substantial enjoyable as a bowl of popcorn for dinner, which isn't a bad thing once in a while!