Designers Share Their Literary Inspirations

The Goodness blog conducted a little survey of 26 exemplary graphic designers that resulted in some unique answers. They asked participants to recommend a book that they have found particularly inspiring or meaningful to their development as a creative person, with the stipulation that graphic design books could not be mentioned. The end product is a very varied and surprising assortment of titles. Books range from children’s books like Go, Dog, Go!, to Brian Eno’s A Year With Swollen Appendices. Even more interesting is the details of what about the books sparked a creative streak in the designer’s minds.

Here’s one - Michael Doret reminisces about The Color Kittens:

At first your question stumped me, because there really haven’t been many books, per se, that I can point to as being particularly inspiring to my development as an artist. But then I started going back, and even further back in my life and remembered one children’s book in particular that has always stuck with me (don’t laugh): “The Color Kittens” by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen. This was one of those little Golden Books. I cannot tell you in terms too strong how profound an influence the words and images of this book had on my artistic development. For me color is almost the most important element of my work, and I can definitely trace back my fascination with color to the images and words of this children’s book. Whether a children’s book like this could be recommended to adults is questionable at best, but nevertheless I could not avoid the importance of this book to me personally, and feel that I owe a debt of gratitude to it’s creators.

Goodness Blog: Inspired Reading

[via Kottke]