Customer Reviews

Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book read more like a long marketing piece about how awesome the book is. Littered with quotes from people who obviously found previous editions useful, it just gets in the way of what I think it was built to do - excite and energise creative thought.

Some exersices are useful, some are good fun, but a lot are rather plain and boring. If you have no imagination at all, this book may be a useful kick-start to any brain storming or creative session. I would suggest that it might be useful for school teachers too - as some of the ideas leverage a lot of imagination which kids would be great at.

On the good side, the typographic treatment of the content is exciting and inspiring, each page has something new to look at and read, if nothing else it's a nice example of how unconventinal type treatment can enhance an otherwise bland book.

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.

Some of the creative exercise books out there are kind of....well, lame. This one isn't. It's got its share of silliness, but the exercises in this book really get the right-brain working. For most, you don't need anything more than pen, paper, and imagination. A handful of the exercises call for items that you can find around the house or office.

Although they aren't necessarily designed with a team in mind, it's easy to adapt the exercises for a group. Plus, the range of exercises makes the copywriters and the designers happy. My group, a corporate creative team, frequently pulls from this book for our weekly creative stretch. Everyone usually has a good laugh at the end results.

Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain

Well, as a graphic designer, this one good book to have in your arsenal. It is NOT, an inspirational picture book or a how to book. It's more about exercising your creativity, one exercise per day, so that the next time you're confronted with a problem you'll have less trouble coming up with a solution or solutions. The layout in itself is beatiful and fun; a very pleasant reading. If your a graphic designer looking to stretch and exercise your creativity this an excellent way to start, and with 250 fun-packed exercises it'll be a blast.

After reading the reviews and product description, I was looking forward to some fresh activities that would inspire some creativity for Graphic Design projects that I work on constantly. So when the book arrived I flipped through scanning activities and quotes to get a feel for the book and what it had to offer. I was surprised. To my disappointment this book almost had nothing to do with Graphic Design. It was filled with activities that lent themselves more to Elementary school creative activities -Build something out of "_", describe your favorite "_" without using the words like or as. The book design itself even became tough to read as well with various typefaces, multiple type sizes scattered through the pages. In conclusion not what I was looking for.

It's a nice book to browse when you're feeling like doing something, but you don't really want to start anything. Grab the book, flip to a random page and do the exercise!
Some exercises are similar to others but since you won't be doing these on a daily basis, you probably won't notice anyway. Fun and entertaining, though you might as well come up with a lot of these ideas yourself. Also, this book tends to be more inspiring for graphic artists than other creative minds (like for instance musicians).

I'm a hobbyist and thought this book would be good to help me out of my creative rut sometimes. Most of the exercises applied to people working in a creative field, not those that are creative in their spare time.

I manage a small group of creative designers. We take turns picking out an exercise on a monthly basis, and at our meeting share what we came up with. It's a great way to relieve stress and makes everyone loosen up and have a little fun. I recommend this even if you work by yourself, as long as you have self-discipline to follow through.

I have to say that even after working through all of the exercises, I want to go back and do them again! The book inspired us to write our own exercises.

To the person who posted about the sideways layout--I think that's the point. Get out of your cube, look at things differently. A 45 or 90 degree turn works wonders sometimes. :)

It is definitely NOT just a book for designers. I work with engineers--ENGINEERS! And they had a great time stepping out of their normal linear day.

When's the next book coming out?

I was elated to find a book with the kind of exercises I can use in my classroom. I teach graphic design and design in a high school setting, and my brain is fried at the end of the day after thinking for 120 people. This book offers quick and thought-provoking exercises my students enjoy and, get this, they actually learn something! Thank you, thank you, thank you. It truly made my life easier, and more fun.