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September 14, 2004
The Art of Looking Sideways
| Title | The Art of Looking Sideways | |
| Author | Alan Fletcher | |
| Publisher | Phaidon Press, London | |
| Date | 2001 | |
| ISBN | 0-7148-3449-1 | |
| Reviewed by | John Thackara | |
| What would happen, if a designer’s memory could be downloaded onto a computer? If it could be done, you’d have to hope that the result might resemble Alan Fletcher’s book. Veteran graphic designer Fletcher has spent a lifetime acquiring experiences, anecdotes, useless information, quotes and citations, jaw-dropping facts and statistics, images, observations and impressions relevant to his craft — and to life in general. In The Art of Looking Sideways, he empties out his personal archive, orchestrating the many snippets, jokes, interludes, diversions, non-sequitors, soundbites and set pieces into a singular book exploring the workings of the creative process. Far from producing a manifesto or a prosaic how-to, the result is a kind of stream-of-consciousness commentary, sometimes contradictory and often challenging, on the many influences affecting our eyes, hands and brains. Fletcher demonstrates an astonishing breadth of reference, an ability to contemplate all the sides of a topic at once and a talent for focussing on the big picture and the telling detail simultaneously. The book itself is an inspired sampler of book design and an example of sustained creative thinking — a design manual as it might have looked if written by Laurence Sterne. The whole thing is put together with what seems like an effortless lightness of touch, even while it whips up page after page of profound insight and telling connection — a tour de force of mental organisation and lucid writing, as well as design thinking. | ||
Posted by Books Editor at September 14, 2004 09:33 PM