sona khosla

I loooove this book. Yes, loooove with 4 o’s.

The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation is the third of Marty’s “whiteboard books” in which he takes a deep and complex topic on branding and simplifies it so that it just makes plain sense.

The powerful concept that Marty (I feel like we’re on a first name basis) presents here is that design is change. Wowzer. That’s so powerful. Mainly because it takes the power out of the hands of the few people who know how to use Photoshop and puts it in the hands of every individual in an organization. There are so many kinds of designers. People who re-engineer process. People who design ads. People who dream up new solutions for customers. People who champion the people in their company. People in Marketing. People in Product. People in Customer Service. People in HR. People everywhere.

What I love about this book is that it reminded me of a part of myself I sometimes lose. The creative, the designer, the one who cares so much about beauty, harmony and integrity. The one who fusses over typography and prides herself on guessing the typeface being used in the movie credits. It’s so easy to lose this part of myself. I get caught in typical left-brain ideals like the bottom line, rules, margins, KPIs, standards and start to lose touch with that part of myself that knows with something other than my logic. Then, even worse, I lose respect for my intuition, my instincts, my desire to make things better and different and I become part of the “system” that I myself don’t respect.

Anyways, this book reminded me that designers and creatives are to be respected, if not understood. And it reminded me to trade in the “or” for the “and” to find creative solutions to “wicked problems” that all organizations face like: balancing long-term goals with short-term demands; predicting the returns on innovative concepts; combining profitability and social responsibility. It’s true, these can be solved, albeit not easily.

Admist the simple aesthetic of the book lies some revolutionary ideas that have the power to transform people and corporations. Don’t be fooled. This isn’t just another little book on branding.

I’ll admit, I thought twice about counting this as a legitimate 95 books book. But after thinking about it again and again over the last 24 hours (since my husband asked last night, “what’s that Yellow Square book on the shelf all about?”), I figured, what the hell?

When I set out to write this post, I decided I was going to conclude by saying that I didn’t like it and wouldn’t recommend it. I was going to write how I didn’t think it had value for children, I didn’t know who it was written for (“all ages” is a cop-out”), it doesn’t teach anything, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just kind of pretty. 

Then I actually started writing this post. And I kept finding myself challenging my conclusions. Do children’s books have to teach? Am I just looking for a formulaic children’s book and that’s why I don’t like this one? Is my aversion to this book related to the fact that it just doesn’t fit nicely into the “children’s book” category in my head? Guilty.

Yellow Square is a beautiful book. As a former book designer myself, I can appreciate the intricate die-cuts, the interactive pulls, twirls and slides and the idea of the whole book. The first line is “Paper noodles wrestle and a yellow square.” I can just see that fight going down in my soup bowl. The last line in the book is ”Square tubes bloom and a yellow square.” I can see the paper flowers that my nephew brings home from school for his mom after days of work leading up to mother’s day. This book teases you to think creatively, to imagine quirky metaphors, to think abstractly, to indulge in the playfulness of simple shapes.

Yellow Square forces you to think outside the box.