Hegarty on Creativity

February 3, 2014
“Creativity should encourage, enthuse, engage, and entertain.” This and other aphorisms are on offer from advertising vet Hegarty, award-winning founding partner and Worldwide Creative Director of Bartle Bogarty Hegarty (BBH). The slim volume contains 50 “provocations on creativity”—creating room for creativity, exploring it, and ushering it along. Peppered with charming and lighthearted cartoons, the provocations themselves are true enough—respect the blank page and its potential, associate with only the best in your field, beware the creativity-killing threat of hubris, reject the possibility of failure—but don’t add up to any great whole in the end. This serves more as a devotional for the converted; it’s hard to imagine the advice being of any great interest or benefit to readers unfamiliar with Hegarty’s work. Understandably, the book’s greatest strength is its design; playful text and graphics and plenty of white space make this a good choice to pick up and grab inspiration at random. 50 illus.