Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills [Paperback]

David Sherwin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 24, 2010 | ISBN-10: 1600617972 | ISBN-13: 978-1600617973 | Edition: 1

Have you ever struggled to complete a design project on time? Or felt that having a tight deadline stifled your capacity for maximum creativity? If so, then this book is for you.

Within Creative Workshop, you'll find 80 creative challenges that will help you achieve a breadth of stronger design solutions, in various media, within any set time period. Exercises range from creating a typeface in an hour to designing a paper robot in an afternoon to designing web pages and other interactive experiences. Each exercise includes compelling visual solutions from other designers and background stories to help you increase your capacity to innovate.

This book also includes useful brainstorming techniques and wisdom from some of today's top designers. By road-testing these techniques as you attempt each challenge, you'll find new and more effective ways to solve tough design problems and bring your solutions to vibrant life.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"This book will help you connect the eye to the brain to the hand, so you won't have to search for inspiration the next time you generate a design."
--Michael Surtees, DesignNoted.com

"This book strikes me as a collection of exceedingly useful exercises; not just as a means for practice and exploration, but useful to developing designers in discovering processes that work best for them. In that regard and others, much of what is offered here will serve designers throughout their careers."
--Andy Rutledge, Principal and Chief Design Strategist at Unit Interactive

"Creativity really is mostly perspiration, but it still starts with inspiration, and with this energizing book David Sherwin provides plenty of ways to spark that next great idea. Creative Workshop gives you a toolbox of methods for everything from coming up with an idea to refining and executing it. Just like today's real world of design, the tools freely cross boundaries between graphic, product and interaction design. And because innovative ideas never happen in a vacuum, Sherwin gives each design challenge a clear goal, meaningful context, and some inspirational examples."
--Adam Richardson, Creative Director at frog design and author of Innovation X

About the Author

David Sherwin is a Senior Interaction Designer at frog design, a global innovation firm, where he helps to guide the research, strategy, and design of novel products and services for some of today's leading companies. He has worked at a wide range of design firms--from large marketing consultancies to smaller interactive agencies--for clients such as AT&T, Cingular Wireless, Holland America Line, Onyx, Microsoft, Toshiba, and many others.

David is an active speaker and teacher of design, and his writing has appeared in A List Apart, Design Mind, and other periodicals. He maintains a well-read blog on the business and process of design, ChangeOrder, which has been noted as "a factory of fresh ideas... producing thoughtful, useful entries covering all corners of the design industry" by ElbowRoom Design.

He currently lives in Seattle with his wife, the poet Mary Paynter Sherwin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: How; 1 edition (November 24, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1600617972
• ISBN-13: 978-1600617973
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Arts & Photography > Design & Decorative Arts > Graphic Design

More About the Author

David Sherwin is a Principal Designer at frog, a global innovation firm, where he helps to guide the research, strategy, and design of novel products and services for some of today's leading companies and nonprofit organizations. He has worked at a wide range of creative agencies, from large marketing consultancies to smaller interactive agencies for clients such as AT&T, Cingular Wireless, Holland America Line, Onyx, Microsoft, Toshiba, American Diabetes Association, and many others.

David is an active speaker and teacher, and his writing has appeared in A List Apart, PSFK.com, Imprint, HOW Magazine, Design Mind, and other periodicals. He has recently spoken at South by Southwest Interactive, Interaction 11, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Savannah College of Art and Design, and Carnegie Mellon University. He is a Senior Lecturer at California College of the Arts in the BFA in Interaction Design program.

David is the author of Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills (HOW Books, Nov 2010) and Success by Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers (due out November 2012).

David lives in Oakland, California with his wife, the poet and writer Mary Paynter Sherwin. In his free time, he maintains a blog about design, ChangeOrder, at http://changeorderblog.com/