Hasta La Ideas

Rian Hughes’ new book Cult-ure is bound in faux leather and gold trim. The biblical references don’t stop there, as the author handily provides a fabric page marker for the reader to keep track of what page/psalm they’re on. Interestingly, the yellow and black dust jacket barely covers the front. On the back of that caution-strip, explanatory prose clarifies the allusion, stating that Cult-ure is meant to be “Gideon’s Bible for the boutique hotel.”

Positioning the strip one way presents the reader with a fragment of the title “CULT,” followed by the phrase “IDEAS CAN BE DANGEROUS.” While he spends very little of the book addressing the Bible itself, the rational free-wheeling fount of ideas spilling from this book could easily be taken as an affront by people with religious memes. Indeed, even the word meme (which Hughes uses a lot) was coined by atheist commentator Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, and refers to the survival of the fittest of ideas in the forest of the human mind. When Internet entrepreneurs refer to ideas spreading virally, they’re talking about memes, and they, along with Hughes, owe quite a debt to Dawkins.

Hughes is a former comic book artist currently practicing in graphic design, but what makes Cult-ure relevant to design readers is not Hughes’ background, but its connection to non-hyphenated “culture.” Hughes references Tim Hewell’s comment that, “the battle for ideas is far more complex than the battle for territory — and likely to last even longer.” Culture is where it will take place; every product designer thinking about market share should be thinking about share of mind. Especially in the wake of recent events in Egypt, new media resources allow for the spread of ideas faster than ever before.

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