How do we foster the next Steve Jobs or Albert Einstein so as to compete in a global marketplace that rewards innovation? How do we cultivate creativity in our children so they grow up happy and self-fulfilled? How do we nurture the next Picasso? Award-winning architect, educator and author Donald Rattner answers these questions in his new book The Creativity Catalog: play with stuff, he says.
Not just any stuff, but a special class of household products specifically designed to cultivate creative thinking via hands-on interactivity, limitless reconfigurability, and problem-solving functionality. Drawing together 300 of the finest examples of this type of product, THE CREATIVITY CATALOG provides the reader with an invaluable resource for exploring and finding tools that build the imagination while often serving pragmatic needs.
All the products in THE CREATIVITY CATALOG are conceived for personal and home use and are available in the marketplace. Categories include furnishings, accessories, shelving, cookware, jewelry, and toys. Products are illustrated with 550 high-quality photographs and explanatory text, and supplemented by the author’s essay on the history and future of interactive, touch-based design. Profiles of the designers and brands represented, and a list of further resources, round out this distinctive book.
When a child receives a toy, say a set of building blocks, s/he is expected to use it in a creative manner, playing with it, rearranging it, making new discoveries. Unfortunately, in today's adult consumer world, too many products are given to us with the design "carved in stone," and only to serve a utilitarian function. In this colorful, ingeniously selected and well-designed catalog, Donald Ratner gives us products - lighting, furniture, shelving, storage and organizing modules; wall and floor coverings; jewelry, accessories, and apparel; toys for kids and adults; tools - that require or permit creativity on the consumer end, and which can be rearranged, reconfigured, or adapted in many ways, serving not only to encourage creative play but as a call-out to designers to incorporate a bit of imagination into their products as well. It would be difficult to go through this catalog and not find a number of things that would make your life that much brighter.
