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Hugh MacLeod does marketing, cartooning, blogging, and now
writing. He is best known for
drawing cartoons on the back of business cards, for his blog –
gapingvoid.com. Now he has
released a best selling book of his blogs, Ignore
Everybody, and 39 Other Keys to Creativity. This is not so much a book on how-to-create as much as it is
a book on being successful with your creation.
Much of his advice on being successful can also be found in
books by Anthony Robbins or Donald Trump.
What sets him apart from these books is how he says it. He states this advice in a shorter more
humorous way than his predecessors.
He also does it from the viewpoint of the artist/writer rather than the
viewpoint of the educator or business mogul, which appeals to a totally
different readership than most how-to-be successful books. He also uses his drawings to
accentuate his points.
From the organization of the book, I would say that MacLeod
could be a student of Marshall McLuhan’s – The Medium is the Message. In that the meaning conveyed on
the page is so much more than the text alone. MacLeod has taken the dynamic material from his website blog
and transferred it to a static medium, the book page. In the process though he did not loose the message, but
instead used his drawings and spacing to maintain the meaning.
I enjoyed Ignore
Everybody And 39 Other Keys to Creativity. It is a short book about 159 pages with lots of white space
so it is a quick read. It is
definitely worth reading, and enjoyable.
Bruce G. Smith 10/17/2009
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