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Summary: The Art of Disappointment
Review: Judging from the title, "The Art of Looking Sideways" seems to offer a fresh perspective on things. This is definitely not the case.The book is cram packed with everyday trivialities, boring anecdotes and utterly useless stuff. To top that off, the layout of the book is simply unappealing, uninspiring and nowhere near the standard of similar books on the market. Some people might consider it mind food. Personally I just consider it a waste of money, time and paper.
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Summary: Alan's Great Big Book Of Visual Acuity.
Review: Look, I'll make this short, if you have anything to do with visual creativity get this book! In 532 pages Alan Fletcher presents a cornucopia of visual and semantic ideas, beautifully designed and printed. Expect the unexpected on every 'page'. The publishers describe this as a 1064 page book but the author, uniquely, makes each spread a page and it is numbered accordingly. Perhaps page forty-two will give you an idea of what to expect, it shows a sculpture made from 848 knives, forks and spoons, created by Japanese artist Shigeo Fukuda but when a spotlight shines on it the shadow it creates is clearly a motorbike. A glorious book for a word in your eye!
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Summary: The art of looking with your heart!
Review: No adjectives suffice to capture Alan Fletcher's amazing book. It is a breathtaking experience for eye, mind, and heart. It is the quintessential ode to human creativity and the imagination. In his forward, Fletcher mentions how most books make you "analyse rather than experience", how they are concerned "with the match rather than the fire". The spirit of this book in a nutshell! What a labour of love! This is a book I would take with me on that proverbial deserted island!
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Summary: The Meaning of Life
Review: Not quite. But a 1000+ page brain dump from a graphic designer. Browsing through the bookstore in NYC's Grand Central Station the other day, this book caught my eye. Every page I looked at had something of interest. Broken into about 70 sections, the book covers a myriad of topics, some related to graphics, some to art, some to life, some to other things. This book is impossible to classify, except to say that there's something engaging on every page and each page leaves you with a slightly different outlook. This can be a great tool to jumpstart creativity, change perspective, alter rigid in-the-box thinking. I'm not an artist or graphic designer, and don't know who Fletcher is (aside from the information in the book). However, he seems to have been around the corner a few times, and this is a what he found there.
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Summary: Encyclopedia of Inspiration
Review: Sometimes I am tempted to take a few days off from work and attempt to read "The Art of Looking Sideways" from cover to cover. Then I remind myself that I have my whole lifetime to enjoy it. I think of it as my encyclopedia of inspiration. An incredibly extensive collection of facts, quotes, images, anecdotes, concepts... anything a designer needs to get the gears turning and the ideas flowing. I would recommend it to anyone who desires a creative boost. I promise, it hasn't failed me yet.
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Summary: You can't do without this book.
Review: Stop what you're doing. Buy The Art of Looking Sideways right now. Read it, view it, participate in it. It will change the way you see the world.
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Summary: be a more interesting person
Review: The Art of Looking Sideways is a gem. Rather it is a bible of gems, notes, quotes and keen perceptions on a wide spectrum of topics relating most frequently to design and communication. If you are an extremely boring and ininteresting person, buy this book and memorise it, you will soon be drinking cocktails with the best of innovators and visionaries. If you're the best of them you already have this book or are named Alan Fletcher.
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Summary: I'm buying one for all my friends.
Review: The Art of Looking Sideways is an instruction manual of sorts for adults to deconstruct their preconceived belief systems of reality. Readers are encouraged to look, see, explore, turn upside down, rip apart, and to ultimately rebuild that which everyday people believe to be true through a series of word plays, found quotations, paradoxes, and unusual truths. There are no answers. Just questions, and differences of perception. The book challenges, enlightens, entertains, and ultimately inspires. It's absolutely not a book of gee-whiz optical illusions, a la psychedelic "Mind's Eye" pointillism or perception bending Escher, but rather a playful, witty scrapbook of collected thoughts, newsprint clippings, poetry, photographs, illustrations, and assorted junk found on globe trotting vacations by the book's compiler. The design of the book itself is a work of art. No two pages are the same. Each idea, or question, is presented with it's own lyrical typeface and placement to further convey the essence of the topic at hand. At my count, there are well over 1,000 different original works of typography and layout -- a stunning feat in and of itself. "Sideways" is quite simply a fringe experience that is impossible to label, describe, or place in a particular section of a bookstore. As a designer, I felt more inspired, more aware, more energized after just a handful of pages than I can remember feeling in years of buying design and art related books. It's big, heavy, and worth its weight in gold. A classic.
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Summary: What The?
Review: This book found me one day and now has me totally in it's pages.
Every little thing that was ever said and every problem ever created has some form of simplistic answer within it. What is Left, Right, Up or Down, Sideways Backwards, Full or Empty has some form answer and deffernce to it. But then again what is It? All those funny sayings that pass our lips everyday are included and a full on assult on your brain senses really makes the old grey matter think. It is a book to be picked up and put down as you simply cannot read it through without causing your brain to pass out!!!
Rating:
Summary: Constantly stimulating
Review: This book is a battery - pick it up anytime, anywhere, any page and you start zooming along with your own creative ideas.
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