On a recent trip to San Diego, my wife bought me this book: “101 Things I Learned in Architecture School” by Matthew Frederick, and I love it.

It’s a quick and fun read.  Many of the things Matthew learned are applicable to other fields as well. Here are some of my favorite entries:

#28  “A good designer isn’t afraid to throw away a good idea.”  This is an idea I’d like to learn to use more often in photography.  As I’m coming up with ideas for a shoot, I suddenly get married to one and don’t want to let it go.  But I’m getting better at putting these ideas in my quiver of concepts to use down the road.

#98 “The Chinese symbol for crisis is comprised of two characters: one indicating ‘danger,’ the other, ‘opportunity.’”

#100 “Give it a name.”  Matthew goes on to write about how giving ideas a name will help you explain them to yourself, and I imagine to others eventually.

Get it from Amazon here.

I think an office like this would help creativity.  Or maybe it would help creativity, but everything you create would start having an Jules Verne theme.

I’ve had a real interest in people’s workspaces for a few years.  Hopefully I’ll soon get a post going on that topic and have people send in photos of their unique spaces.