Books

Product

What are your favorite product/design-related books?

Books I learned from the most on how to create a product:
- Let My People Go Surfing (Chouinard)
- Thinking Architecture (Zumthor)
- Free Play (Nachmanovich)
- S, M, L, XL (Koolhaas)
- How Buildings Learn (Brand)
- Sculpting in Time (Tarkovsky)
- LOTR series

But honestly, one of my favorite books was…

It’s a book by a famous comedian / philosopher/ artist, Beat Takeshi. In Japanese there is a concept of mā, which is sort of like timing, or space. In Japanese if you say you are 「間抜け」(without mā) it means you don’t have mā, it means you don’t get it (I.e. you’re in idiot)

But it really gets into what mā is. I think art, products, marketing, comedy - it’s all about spacing and timing. And how difficult that is, because getting the spacing and timing means both understanding your environment and executing it (practice and discipline) I think about this book. Loved this book tbh

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building roc.camera, writings: july.rocks

oddly, or not, my favorite book about the creation/entrepreneurial journey and process is also by a comedian - Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

I think there’s a lot of similarities between making an audience laugh and making a product that’s a hit with your customers!