The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher

Words and pictures on how to make twinkles in the eye and colours agree in the dark. Thoughts on mindscaping, moonlighting and daydreams.

Have you seen a purple cow? When less can be more than enough. The art of looking sideways. To gaze is to think. Are you left-eyed? Living out loud. Buy junk, sell antiques. The Golden Mean.

Standing ideas on their heads. To look is to listen. Insights on the mind's eye. Every status has its symbol. 'Do androids dream of electric sheep?'

Why feel blue? Triumphs of imagination such as the person you love is 72.8% water. Do not adjust your mind, there's a fault in reality. Teach yourself ignorance. The belly-button problem.

Visual charades. What has an ox to do with the letter A? The art of looking sideways. How to turn knots into bows. When does 1 and 1 add up to 3?

Why sit with your back to the view? Notes on the Blue Tit Syndrome, letterplay and visual puns. Patterns of chaos. Kissin' cousins to camp. Half a word is enough for a quick ear. Some people think computers can't. Civilization is chaos taking a rest.

Too far east is west. Writing is the geometry of the soul. Why look at things upside down? Squaring the circle. 'If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain'. The sympathy of things. How to think by jumping. Never wait for yourself.

A word in your eye. The art of looking sideways. Beauty is a flavour of quark. Cerebral acrobatics. By the way, what's it like living with a paper bag over your head? Not referring to you of course - the uncommon exception to universal bondage.

A talisman can be protective, preventive, evocative, curative. Taoist drawings are a secret writing which influences supernatural forces, or looked at in another way, diagrams the cartography of superstition. The calligraphic gesture illustrated here establishes contact with the Spirits of Earth and Wind through the Spirits of the Five Chinese Emperors - at least, at the moment of rendering. If you have need of their assistance you write, then burn the paper in front of the altar and mutter an incantation of eight words. I don't know which words, but maybe they're not important. Anyway there you go.

Despite what Alan says in the video the book only counts 535 pages. It has has 73 sections. Each section contains a wealth of quotes, articles, curiosities, anecdotes, stories, pictures, drawings, doodles, scribbles, art work, poems, challenges, language games or a tiger.

Alan Fletcher reportedly worked for more than 20 years on this book and I'm glad he did. In the book there's a full page saying:

writing is thinking in ink.

Alan should know. He not only exposes his collection of every little piece of knowledge and insight he ever collected. He also exposes how he arranged this gigantic collection. Take a look at the section list. Each section is at least 20 pages dedicated to the topic.

You'll find Alan's thoughts but also the words of famous and less famous people. You'll also find art and contrary thoughts and opinions.

This is a book for people who are looking for inspiration. It's a book that's will lay next to you and that you will grab whenever you feel like it.

I remember when I first bought this book. I liked it so much I bought another copy as a birthday present for a friend. I started reading it cover to cover and I came across stories I simply couldn't find back.

There's one such story about sheep in Australia that discovered they could roll their bodies over grooves in the ground that prevented them from escaping.

Novelist Sir Walter Scott thought of a smart turn of phrase while out hunting. Frightened of forgetting, he shot a crow, whittled a quill from a feather and jotted down a note in its blood on his sleeve. This anecdote may seem dubiously related to design yet recycling, often for a comically different purpose, occupies a central place in the creative process.

Every page that opens in front of you unveils something you couldn't expect. This book is not a continuous narrative. It's a collage. It's not even you average Phaidon book. This book indeed belongs in its own category.

But what you have to know about this book is that which I can't show. This book is designed meaning what you're seeing is meant to be there. It requires you to think about what you see and how it influences you.

... if our brains were simple enough to be understood, then we would be too simple to understand them.

This such a colorful and fun book to read, look at and browse through. There's a surprise on every page and you can randomly open any page and be surprised.

'Punk was just a way to sell trousers.'

prologue

'We are no more than God's curiosity about himself.' Thomas Mann

culture

'By means of the sign man frees himself from the here and the now for abstraction.' Umberto Eco

tools

'Every tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created.' Werner Karl Heisenberf

creativity

'Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality.' Arthur Koestler

wit

Humour is the enemy of authority.

improvisation

'I work with things left over from other things.' Julian Schabel

colour

'Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet.' Paul Klee

dreaming

'It may be those who do most dream most.' Stephen Leacock

ideas

'An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.' Don Marquis

synchronicity

Snap

mutation

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' George Santayana

learning

'If I don't know I know, I think I don't know' R.D. Laing

noise

The bark is the song of the dog.

paradigms

Fish are the last to recognize water.

automation

'The hen is only the egg's way of making another hen.' Patrick Hughes

intelligence

Curiosity is the mother of intelligence.

brain

'I am my brain's publisher.' Philippe Starck

mind

'The mind can also be an erogenous zone.' Raquel Welch

senses

'The soul has no secrets that conduct does not reveal.' Chinese proverb

thinking

Thinking is drawing in your head.

problems

'If you don't know where you are going all roads lead there.' Roman Proverb

chance

'If you want to get lucky ... it pays to be ready.' Micheal Bierut

imagination

A person without imagination is like a teabag without hot water.

visualizing

'The man who can't visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.' Andre Breton

alphabet

'Music has seven letters, writing has twenty-six notes.' Joseph Joubert

seeing

'The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.' Goethe

places

'It's always better to be looked over than overlooked.' Mae West

perception

'Realism is a corruption of reality.' Wallace Stevens

stereotypes

'I had always assumed that cliche was a suburb in Paris, until I discovered it was a street in Oxford.' Philip Guedalla

value

'Good design is good business.' Thomas Watson Jr

illusion

'Who are you going to believe, me or your eyes' Groucho Marx

paradox

'I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.' Graffiti

figure ground

'The answer is "yes" or "no", depending on the interpretation.' Albert Einstein

symmetry

'Symmetry is static - that is to say, inconspicuous.' William Addison Dwiggens

reflections

'A mirror has no heart but plenty of ideas.' Malcolm de Chazal

pattern

'Pattern, the fruit of design, can be seen as the measure of culture.' William Feaver

camouflage

'Interpretations of interpretations interpreted.' James Joyce

economy

'I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.' Gertrude Stein

measure

'Man is the measure of all things.' Protagoras

composition

'Music is noise submitted to order by wisdom.' Puccini

leys&lines

'To you, to me, Stonehenge and Chartes Cathedral are works by the same Old Man under different names: we know what He did, what, even, He thought He thought, but we don't see why.' W.H. Auden

aesthetics

'I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.' Stendhal

taste

'As flash as a rat with a gold tooth.' Aussie observation

style

'God ... invented the giraffe, the elephant, the cat ... He has no real style. He just goes on trying things.' Pablo Picasso

perfection

'There is no such thing as a pretty good omelette.' French proverb

meanings

The person you love is 72.8% water.

symbols

'Every status has its symbol.' Advertising slogan

numbers

'Take from all things their number, and all shall perish.' Isidore of Seville

typography

'Typography is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.' Steve Byers

skill

'The end of all method is to seem to have no method.' Lu Ch'Ai

perspective

'Perspective is a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress.' Georges Braque

space-time

'Whatever exists is in a place - Therefore place exists - Therefore place is in a place - and so on - ad infinitum.' Zeno of Elea

figuring

'... my name means the shape I am - and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.' Humpty Dumpty

language

'If a lion could speak, we would not understand him.' Ludwig Wittgenstein

rhetoric

'All art is propaganda; on the other hand, not all propaganda is art.' George Orwell

design

'Who ever said pleasure wasn't functional?' Charles Eames

process

Gold mining consists of shifting three tons of rubbish for each ounce of gold extracted.

copying

Many a scarecrow serves as a roost for the enlightened crow.

words

'Words are pegs to hang ideas on.' Henry Ward Beecher

imaging

'Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.' Paul Valery

pictureplay

'Pink is the navy blue of India.' Diana Vreeland

wordplay

'A pun is two strings of thought tied with an acoustic knot.' Arthur Koestler

handedness

'Crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavour.' Louis Calhern

pictograms

'Many tongues - one eye.' Navaho proverb

scripts

'Writing is the knife and fork of the mind.' Gnomic observation

letters

'Letters are signs for sounds.' Eric Gill

identity

'Did Beethoven look like a musician? No, of course she didn't.' Tony Hancock

names

'... a child is made known to itself by its name.' Karen Blixen

signatures

Hancocks

insignia

Insignia: Marks or tokens indicative of anything. Oxford English Dictionary

trademarks

'I never forget a face, but I'll make an exception in your case.' Groucho Marx

writing

'Writing is the geometry of the soul.' Plato

protagonists

Bios & credits etc

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