Our friend Kat recommended Portfolio of Inspirations, a book by Dorte Nielson and Kiki Hartmann.

If you get yourself this book, it’ll be dog-eared in no time. Tons of great photos, tons of great information. Very entertaining.

The authors "set off across Europe to interview creative thinkers from a wide variety of disciplines … they showed us their sketchbooks, notepads and bottom drawers. They told us how they motivate themselves, what makes them tick and what gets their creative juices flowing.”

Fun way to read it is randomly -- just open the book to any page and see what's there. Here’s a golden nugget on page 60 from creative directors Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth at the London ad agency Wieden+Kennedy:

Everyone should have a digital camera. Inspiration is all around you. We take pictures of things like broken car wing mirrors and how people have fixed them.

Collecting things stimulates the brain. It helps you think of something fresher. We see something and keep it without knowing what we’ll use it for. Rather than file them all online, we keep them in scrapbooks. There’s something quite nice about opening a book. We use them for reference when we work.

Portfolio of Inspirations was published in Singapore and Amsterdam in 2006. For inquiries in Asia: enquiries@pageonegroup.com or www.pageonegroup.com For inquiries in The Netherlands: bis@bispublishers.nl or www.bispublishers.nl
-Ugo