Here’s a book all creatives should get their hands on. Best of all, it’s a giveaway in celebration of the 100th post on my blog Blogging For dot INFO. I thought I’ll share it with the readers here on Designer’s Digest and pass along this awesome gift. Details will be below but first, what is this book about?
Making Ideas Happen is written by Scott Belsky who is the founder of Behance, a company that provides products, services and resources for organizing ideas to those who are in the creative industry. You’ll think that creative people don’t need much organizing because that’s how they work but Scott argues that isn’t true. They need it much more than we think.
In fact, sparked by early visits to companies during his studies at Harvard, Scott observed and noticed how unorganized creative organizations are. Later on that thought catapulted into a full fledged obsession after he graduated and on towards his first few jobs. He later made it his mission to devote his work towards helping the creative manage their efforts and in turn unleash more of the creative abilities which comes as a result of it.
That’s interesting because there’s three points which Scott presents make ideas happen:
As he leads you to the reasons why and how ideas can be made effectively through the means above, I’m convinced the information age we’re in also brought upon it the age of organizing ideas efficiently. The Action Method alone is an exercise worth practicing. It asks you to become bias towards your ideas.
Now this is great because not only will it help you as a creative practice viewing ideas as projects but through filtering out what’s actionable and prioritize it to a focus, your success will depend on feedback which means your team’s efforts. Yes, as a blogger this is also true.
I find the Action Method a great tool for brainstorming blog ideas along the lines of producing valuable content. You can download a sample sheet at Creative Outfitters, Behance’s online store. Overall, as Scott moves on towards community and how it influences your ideas to you becoming the voice of reason in managing your team, one sentence explains it all.
You have a responsibility to make your ideas sustainable. p. 211
As a whole, the book is filled with scientifically proven tips, case studies and action steps on how you as an individual can benefit from organizing your thoughts and turn them into reality. It reads very easily and the chapters are broken down into smaller sections which helps with keeping your reading on target. Well known figures like Seth Godin, Chris Anderson, Walt Disney and more are also featured with interesting examples.
How to Get This Book
For this giveaway, it’s really simple, tweet or dig this post and through a random drawing the winner will be announced in the first week of August. To make this event more sweet, I will throw in a secret gift unannounced just for participating.
The winner will be contacted and the gift will be shipped out via Amazon.
Good luck to you all!
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July 28, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Sounds interesting and thanks that this book was made. I bet if they read on this, they’ll know what is the real purpose of organizing and how it really works. I believe that an individual can benefit from organizing their thoughts and turn them into reality only if they have faith and believe to their selves.
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Thu Nguyen Reply:
July 29th, 2010 at 11:26 pm
@Roses, Yes, ideas without organization have no purpose and that’s the point behind this book. As creatives we’re led by ideas everyday, when you don’t learn how to tackle them to your advantage, you’re actually losing the potential to make it happen. Thanks for the comment.
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August 27, 2010 at 1:46 pm
It seems that I perceive myself from what you say “Thu Nguyen” as having ideas but without organization. I am office staff and always have problems about proper organization of anything such as my daily works, my schedule, and etc..I really appreciate this post and I realized that everything needs to be organized to make it gonna happen in a gracious way.
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September 18, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Nice book! I wish I could have one.
This will be of great help in working out useful ideas in mind. Many have the great views yet still remains as itself. And ideas are useless if it’s not going to happen.
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September 20, 2010 at 11:51 am
The title of the book itself already tells what it is all about. It is true that organization in everything that we do is very important especially when it comes to our ideas. Good to know that this book is giving information that are base on scientific proven tips and case studies. Thank you! I really learned a lot from this site. I wanna have a copy of this book to learn more about it.
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September 20, 2010 at 12:10 pm
It is nice to know that this book is focusing more on the positive side. We cannot deny the fact that many of the people today have great ideas, but those ideas are not put into practice. It is true that one of the main reason why it happens is because we lack organization of ideas.
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October 2, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Nice book! I do love not only the title of the book but as well as the main idea of which.The title itself really sounds interesting! Even if I don’t have the copy yet I got an idea that its going to be informative.It simply tells us the importance of organizing our ideas to make things happen. Yes, I agree that ideas without organization is useless. Organizing is the easiest way to make our ideas turn into reality.
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January 27, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Beautiful and informative book!..thnx for share
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