Hasta La Ideas

A quick note here to support a friend of UnBeige. We had the good fortune to have just received Steven Heller‘s latest book, Design Disasters: Great Designers, Fabulous Failures, & Lessons Learned. It’s a great collection of stories from a who’s who in the design world, from Marian Bantjes to Stefan Sagmiester, all talking about when everything that could go wrong did and what each contributor learned from what happened. As a special plug, former UnBeige editor, Alissa Walker, has a terrific piece in the book as well, which is worth the price of admission all by itself. Also, the book’s design is about as clever and fun as it gets, playing so well off the subject at hand. So, in short, we recommend that you run, not walk (unless it’s icy out or you have some sort of leg or joint condition) to your local bookstore to give Steven Heller your money in exchange for this terrific piece of work. Or do it online (because there’s a fairly high probability that he might not be at your particular store when you get there). Here’s from the introduction:

“In the best situations, failure is a trigger. But this is different than ‘trial and error,’ whereby a designer plays with forms until the perfect (or near perfect) one is achieved and actually results in something that will, as our Wiki states, ‘meet a desirable or intended objective.’ But many times what a designer thinks is perfect, and so releases to the world is a flop. With luck, even this will provide a lesson for what not to do the next time or the time after that…”

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