This little book reflects a seventeen-month collaboration between Gordon Mackenzie and our design firm. The challenge was to deliver a serious message in a provocative manner to both corporate management and creative audiences about how to inspire and manage creative people. To start, we chose a quiet, gray blind-debossed chipboard cover with a soft leather spine to provide a hint of the paradox within the book.

Once engaged, the reader finds a quirky combination of traditional text and page design interrupted by drawings, scribbles, and the use of unexpected materials.

Intentionally, the design walks a fine line between clarity and contradiction, and somehow it all comes together.