Beryl McAlhone

Nick Asbury

Greg Quinton

David Staurt

Forty years of "witty thinking" from over 500 designers, including hundreds of visual examples and interviews with the world's top practitioners First published in 1996, A Smile in the Mind rapidly became one of the most influential books in graphic design – a rich sourcebook of design ideas and an entertaining guide to the techniques behind witty thinking. Now extensively revised and updated, this book explores the powerful role of wit in graphic design, making the case for wit, as the magical element that builds the world’s biggest brands and engages people with messages that matter. Packed with illustrations showcasing the use of wit by today’s practitioners alongside classic examples, A Smile in the Mind brings together the best projects from around the world and across the decades. The different routes designers can take are examined and illustrated with inspirational examples, exploring wit by technique (such as ambiguity, substitution and double takes), application (including posters, packaging and data visualization) and business area, spanning digital, retail, arts and culture, politics and even matters of life and death. The book also features interviews with legendary designers past and present, answering the biggest question of all: how did they get the idea? Designers offer a glimpse into their private working methods and thought processes, and reveal the inspiration behind classic pieces of work. Showcasing forty years of witty thinking and including over 1,000 projects and 500 designers and creative thinkers, A Smile in the Mind is an essential compendium of contemporary designs and a celebration of classic pieces, resulting in the definitive guide to wit in graphic design. Written with humour and insight, it offers designers a friendly read, a helpful sourcebook and a trigger for ideas.

Witty Thinking in Graphic Design

A Smile in the Mind - Revised and Expanded Edition

Perpetual Disappointments Diary is a downbeat journal for pessimists, cynics and losers everywhere. You'll love it.*Ground yourself with a weekly demotivational proverb ('If ignorance is bliss, why are you so sad?', 'Crappe diem') *Reminders of Notable Deaths. * Travel the world with Useful Phrases translated into four languages ('A table for one, please', 'I have destroyed my hire car'). *Save time with templates for Apology and Passive-Aggressive Notes.This may not be your year. But this is definitely your diary.

Perpetual Disappointments Diary

We are engaged in performing four shows by night and restaging four different shows by day. And restaging all the understudy work as well. This is a lot of work. And my mind has turned to slush. Nick Asbury was in the ensemble from the Royal Shakespeare Company who, over the course of two and a half years, performed eight history plays by Shakespeare in repertory, beginning with the overthrow of Richard II and ending with the death of Richard III: a sequence of productions both critically acclaimed and watched by over 250,000 people. To keep a record of his involvement in this extraordinary and ambitious project, Nick wrote a Blog which was posted on the RSC website. This in turn became a massive success, regularly notching up 6,000 hits a week from avid followers around the world. Through Nick's engaging, observant, often hilarious words, we experience the camaraderie of actors, the terror of forgetting lines, technical difficulties, money problems, finding strange things in the bath, thirty-three broadsword fights and, and, of course, the ever-present threat of being assaulted by demented badgers after a performance. Nominated as one of 'Six Inspiring Biographies or Memoirs Every Actor Should Read' by Drama Bookshop New York, this really is a must have book for all actors and theatre fans.

Nick Asbury

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