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When Hugh MacLeod was a struggling young copywriter living in a YMCA, he started to doodle on the backs of business cards while sitting at a bar. Those cartoons eventually led to a popular blog-gapingvoid.com-and a reputation for pithy insight and humor, in both words and pictures. MacLeod has opinions on everything from marketing to the meaning of life, but one of his main subjects is creativity. How do new ideas emerge in a cynical, risk-averse world? Where does inspiration come from? What does it take to make a living as a creative person? Ignore Everybody expands on MacLeod's sharpest insights, wittiest cartoons, and most useful advice. For example: -Selling out is harder than it looks. Diluting your product to make it more commercial will just make people like it less. -If your plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain. -Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether. There's no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one. -The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. After learning MacLeod's forty keys to creativity, you will be ready to unlock your own brilliance and unleash it on the world.… (more)
User reviews
Ignore Everybody is a lively self-help pep talk for people who want to achieve some kind of success in a creative field. MacLeod was an artist in New York who paid the bills by working in an advertising agency, and from this archetypal vantage point he managed to collect a few gems of good advice: do your own work diligently, don't care what other people think about you, don't waste your energy worrying about selling out. Basically, don't buy into the whole adolescent idea of the romantic artist who wows naysayers with a single burst of effortless genius. It's nothing that hasn't been said before, but since there are new eighteen year-olds coming on line all the time it can't hurt to have it said again.
The one novel detail in Ignore Everybody is MacLeod's cartoons. These are sarcastic line-drawing doodles originally done on the backs of business cards about how hard it is to make art and/or get laid in New York City. Throughout the book MacLeod comes back to his business card cartoons as a case study of how to make it in the art world. The fact that they were done spontaneously, for his own amusement, with no thought of pleasing anyone else or achieving commercial success is the reason why they became so successful and he became famous as the back-of-the-business-card guy. The what? The hunh? The book seems to take for granted that we've all heard of the back-of-the-business-card guy and are curious to hear how he made it so big. So add to MacLeod's list another useful piece of advice for aspiring creative types: always overestimate your own importance.
It's like a hip, funny, zen and ultra-condensed version of Rollo May's "The Courage to Create". With pictures!
I especially loved his concept of "sovereignty" over your art / creative pursuit.
Hugh shares how he took ownership of his own work and tells that the desire for success prevented him from just doing the work that he wanted to do. In the end he explains it is about sitting down and doing the work and taking risks and being authentic to yourself and ignoring to some extent, the world around you and those voices.
Hugh points out “The more original your idea is, the less good advice people will be able to give you.”
The book is full of Hugh’s cartoons. I found myself reading, laughing and nodding my head from the first page to the last. While the book will not teach you how to be creative, it has a good chance of inspiring you.
My recommendation is to read the book, then put it down and get back to creating something wonderful.
There are anecdotes from MacLeod's life that illustrate the point of every chapter and there are his business card cartoons that either drive that point home, entertain, or give more food for thought. These make the already short book a fast and easy read that avoids being stuffy or preachy or even overly serious while talking about a subject that's very serious for a lot of people.
With all that said by the time I got to the 40th tip I felt that the book was much too long, that some of the tips were essentially the same and could have been combined without doing the book any harm. I even went through the chapter titles trying to remember which stories went with them and found that a few were interchangeable.
This is a decent read, especially if you want a fresh shot of motivation or to switch gears. It is also a great reminder that not every creative endeavor needs to rival the work of Beethoven, Da Vinci, Rowling or Jobs, it simply has to be yours.
Back it up a second: Who is Hugh MacCleod? Well, he is an ad guy who found an interesting niche.
I have been a follower of Hugh's daily emails for a couple of years. I've never read any of his other books, so I can't speak to you about tribes or any of his other concepts. I can say that more than one of his cartoons have been important to me, and that is why I got this particular book.
Now, if you aren't a fan of Hugh's, I'm not sure this is the book that will convince you. (I'd suggest you go to the web site first and get to know him.) That being said, I don't think you go wrong with this book. As mentioned at the outset, these may well represent the little prods that get you thinking just a little differently about where you are at.
And, for me, starting my own consulting business after 30 years in the real world, it was a nice reminder of the fun and sheer terror that awaits me.
MacLeod does not sugar coat what it means to be a creative person and the prices we all pay for that, as well as
Yes, he had some pretty good points. Heck, at times he had some really great points! But what was more difficult for me to get past was the fact that every other sentence was about how he drew on the back of business cards. I get it. Can we
If you're looking for an easy sunday afternoon read, pick it up. It's decent and certainly easy to get through. If you're looking for life changing though, maybe try something else.
Don't get me wrong, MacLeod is not wrong, far from it. It's just the book does not do a very good job of supporting his argument in a compelling way. I hate to say this, but I wish I had taken a look at it in the bookstore before downloading it to my Kindle (the sample chapters for this book in the Kindle store was just the Table of Contents). Had I taken a closer look before hand, I probably wouldn't have spent the $10 on it.