Designers Don't Read

Austin Howe is a creative director, writer, advocate, and cheerleader for design-but not a designer. He believes "in the wonder and exuberance of someone who gets paid-by clients to do what he loves." Howe places immense value on curiosity and passion to help designers develop a point of view, a strong voice. He explores the creative process and conceptualization, and delves into what to do when inspiration is lacking. If there's a villain in these elegant, incisive, amusing, and inspiring essays, it's ad agencies and marketing directors, but even villains serve a purpose and illustrate the strength of graphic design "as a system, as a way of thinking, as almost a life style." Howe believes that advertising and design must merge, but merge with design in the leadership role. He says that designers should create for clients and not in the hope of winning awards. He believes designers should swear "a 10-year commitment to make everything we do for every client a gift." If this sounds like the designer is the client's factotum, not so. Howe also argues in favor of offering clients a single solution and being willing to defend a great design. Organized not only by topic, but also by how long it will take the average reader to complete each chapter, Designers Don't Read is intended to function like a "daily devotional" for designers and busy professionals involved in branded communications at all levels. Begun as a series of weekly essays sent every Monday morning to top graphic designers, Designers Don't Read quickly developed a passionate and widespread following. With the approximate time each chapter might take to read, Designers Don't Read's delight and provocation can be fit into the niches in the life of a time-challenged designer. Or it may be hard to resist reading the entire book in one sitting!
About the Author: Born and raised in Vancouver, Austin Howe'spersonal mission is to help inspire and bring together the collective strengths of the different creative disciplines. Howe was a creative director in Portland when he met his future business partner, Mike Doherty. Together they launched the hybrid advertising agency AKA which Advertising Age's "Creativity "magazine called "the next hot shop to watch." After selling the agency, Howe spent the next 8 years freelancing as a writer and creative director for firms like Wieden+Kennedy, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, TBWA\Chiat\Day and Deutsch and gained a unique "fly-on-the-wall" perspective of some of the best advertising firms in the business which helped him develop a vision for a true hybrid company--one that integrates all of the creative disciplines across all media. Howe has worked on naming, branding, print campaigns, posters, packaging, websites, digital advertising, TV, radio and viral campaigns.