The Greedy Zebra

Everybody has a favourite childhood book, or at least a select few that they remember with fond nostalgia. Mine include 'Peepo!', "The Tiger Who Came To Tea' and 'The Hungry Caterpillar' to name just a few, but another of my very favourites is 'The Greedy Zebra', possibly a lesser known tale but equally as good. Looking back on it now from a design perspective, I wonder if I really had been interested on the effect that design has from such a young age!

The book tells the story of how all animals got their coats, and explains that one day a whole load of different fabric appears in a cave in the jungle. The pictures in the book show that all the jungle animals used to be a white-ish grey colour, and whoever was fastest to the cave determined who would get the nicest coat. The zebra in the story was very greedy, and kept stopping to eat along his way to the cave. Ultimately, he was the last animal to reach the cave, where there was only one tiny piece of black fabric left. The zebra pulls it on nevertheless but because he is so fat from all the eating, the fabric splits in a zig zag fashion, and this is how the greedy zebra got his stripes!

My favourite thing about childhood stories like this is the idea behind the story; in this book the original interpretation by the author for how animals are coloured and patterned in the way that they are. The illustrations are great, too, and really capture the overall tone of the story!

Enneagram

"The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others In Your Life", is a book by Helen Palmer that my aunt Julia introduced me to. My aunt is one of those people who loves self-understanding, analysing personality types and just generally trying to make sense on oneself and those that surround them.

The word 'enneagram' is described in a dictionary as follows: 'a system of spiritual psychology based on an ancient Sufi typology of nine personality types or primary roles with the recognition of one's type tantamount to a spiritual awakening'. Essentially, there are thought to be 9 main personality types in the world, and everybody is supposed to be able to fit one of the types, more than any other type. The book aims to help people by trying to get them to figure out which type they are most like, and the reasons for why they might be as they are. The book explains how different personality types react in different ways, to different situations and towards different people. It also explains what certain personality types' generalised strengths are, what their weaknesses are, what they aspire to be and what they fear most. It is a very interesting book, and from having read parts on the different personality types I did feel as though I could associate myself to one of the types more than the others. It was helpful towards self-understanding, especially at the time that I read it, as for people my age many of us are still finding out who we are, and who we want to be.

The difficulty I have with the book though is the way it does seem to pigeon-hole people. The sheer number of people in this world, and the fact that there are only 9 different types of personality does seem to be fairly ridiculous, and it takes away the idea that each person in the world is said to be unique.

However, pigeon-holing aside, I think overall the book could be very useful, especially for going into a career where one is dealing with many different people and having to communicate effectively. Understanding the different personality types and finding out effective ways of dealing with the different types would, in my opinion, prove to be beneficial to both parties in a professional / working environment. I have not read the whole of the book before, but I think I will make it a personal aim to try and read it within the next year!

"Yes Man" by Danny Wallace

I read "Yes Man" by Danny Wallace a few years ago, and after reading it I was inspired to tell as many people I knew as possible to read it, for its fantastic humour value but also to help people realise how good you feel about yourself when you say yes to opportunities that come up! I told so many people about it, and lent the book to so many friends that I actually have no idea where it is now, but hope that people are still passing it on!

The book tells the true story of Danny Wallace's experience being a 'Yes Man'. He is inspired one day by a man that he meets on a London bus, and decides that from then on he is going to say yes to any opportunity that comes his way. However, only he and his best friend know this so that people won't take advantage of him and ask him for money etc.

The book is very funny. It makes you realise how many opportunities really do come our way every day, whether in the form of questions from friends, invitations, advertisements for products in the form of orders e.g. "Subscribe to *magazine* today!" or things like spam emails. We have so many options these days that it is so easy to say no. E.g. someone from uni that you don't know very well invites you to a party via facebook, purely because you are on their list of friends and you help to make up numbers for their party, but they don't really care if you show up or not. The obvious answer is no, right? Much easier not to go, not to socialise with lots of people that you don't know, not to pay the bus fare to get to their house (which you don't know the location of) and you won't really be missed as the host didn't really care in the first place whether you showed up or not. But what if you did go? You might hear some great music from a band you didn't know about before, or hear some really funny stories, or meet someone you really get on with and end up making a friend for life; it could be anything really. It might be crap, but you'd never know what you'd missed if you didn't give it a go. This is the kind of thing that Danny Wallace was faced with on at least a daily basis, and saying no just wasn't an option anymore.

Saying yes to everything got Danny into various crazy situations, meant he did have to spend quite a lot of money, swept laziness completely of the table but most of all enabled him to have a lot of fun, and really gain something from his experience. I'm not saying that after reading the book that I went out there and said yes to everything though; especially being a student I don't have nearly enough time or money to do something like that, and plus - everyone likes being able to be a bit lazy sometimes! However it is a really inspirational read and after having read it I do try and take more of the opportunities that do come my way, and so far it has paid off!

The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is a book that explores the psychology and meaning behind trends; how some become internationally popular and how others fall to the wayside. For many years people have thought the way that trends occur to be mysterious and inexplicable, however Gladwell's investigations prove that if one looks at the evolution of these trends, the processes involved in each are strikingly similar.

I think back to the major trends that have occurred as I have grown up: the popularity of Converse shoes as opposed to other trainers, facebook as opposed to bebo, UGG boots, and perhaps the biggest trend of all - iPods. Lets take iPods as our example; they were not the first mp3 player to grace the digital market, and looking at the very first models, they were probably not the most attractive either. However, something or someone decided that they were the way forward, and now we see virtually no-one with any music player other than an iPod. This is the sort of thing that Gladwell explores, and explains, and it's very interesting to discover that it's not just good design or good marketing that soars products into international popularity, but that certain types of people play a huge part in getting those products to the top.

Studying a degree where marketing and advertising is a key feature, it is fascinating to learn that a good product alone is not enough to make it sell thousands; knowing lots of the right people (Gladwell describes them as connectors, mavens and salesmen) and making your product appeal to them is really the key to success.

I won't spoil "The Tipping Point" any more for people, but I strongly recommend this book as a thoroughly interesting and insightful read if you are the sort of person that enjoys finding meaning in what before seemed like it could not be explained!

The Time Traveler's Wife

I read "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffeneger two summers ago; it is a book that I frequently think about, and wonder if I'll ever enjoy a book as much as I did this one. It tells the heart - capturing story of Henry and Claire, yet theirs is no ordinary relationship. Henry has a genetic disorder which causes him to time travel, a frequent experience that he has no control over. It is this idea that makes "The Time Traveler's Wife" such a unique book. Claire first meets Henry in 1977 when she is six and he is in his thirties, having travelled back in time. However, when Henry first meets Claire in the present, she is 20 and he 28. At this meeting, Claire has met Henry many times before, in her chilhood, but he has no awareness of who she is, as in his present, he has not yet met her. The man that visited her throughout her childhood is his future self. It takes a while to get one's head around the concept of Henry's time-travelling; it is the same sort of idea present in "Back to the Future", but it is what really makes me appreciate the book from a creative point of view - the fact that the book is so well thought out and so beautifully created; a literary work of art. One of my favourite things when reading a book is to appreciate and experience an author's imagination; discovering scenarios than could not physically exist - yet seem so real. This debut from Niffeneger expresses this wonderfully. A film based on this book is due to come out this August (2009), starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, directed by Robert Schwentke.