Book review: Hegarty on Creativity: There are no rules

**Update:**Sir John Hegarty wrote to to_Firstbiz_and clarified that all the illustrations in the book are his own.

It’s taken me all of two days to read this illustration-heavy 127 page book. That’s crazy, because all the content is so simple and easy to read.

[caption id=“attachment_85960” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] So much learning in 120-odd pages of provocation[/caption]

It’s the simplicity that makes it complex and heavy - because you know that it can’t be as easy at it seems.

Sir John Hegarty, one of the greatest advertising professionals ever, writes a book on creativity. It’s called “Hegarty on Creativity: There are no rules”. Knowing Hegarty, the name that he would have suggested and preferred, most likely, is “There are no rules” – the prefix would have been foisted on him and the readers by the publisher.

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Forget the title, it hardly matters. What matters is the content - both the words and the presentation. If the simplicity of the words makes you pause as you resist the urge to race away, the complementary design, illustrations and graphics courtesy Sid Russell slow you down to a crawl.

To the book.

Hegarty makes it easy for us as he first defines creativity in the introduction to the book. “There are many ways of defining creativity but the one I like best is ’the expression of self.’ It’s a definition that captures my belief that we’re all creative - though some are better at it than others.”

I would have preferred the line to read “…we’re all creative - though some are more creative than others”, but that’s a quibble.

The book contains 50 provocations by Hegarty (he reminds us that there are no rules) on creativity, each provocation taking no more than 3 pages, including the generous illustrations and layouts. The provocations force you to stop and think about everyday things, stuff you obviously know, till you read Hegarty’s take on the subject. Then you realise that there’s so much you do not know. I’m not listing the chapter headings and the topics that Hegarty touches on, but share a sampling of a great mind at work.

Take technology, an area that currently consumes all the stakeholders in advertising.

“Sometimes we forget technology should be the handmaiden of creativity,” Hegarty writes.

Huh? What was that again? You read the line again and again in an attempt to make sense of it.

Then, you give up and read on.

And you see a simple line illustration of a pencil.

Below the illustration, you read these words:

“Needs no batteries, wires or chargers. Easy to use. Transportable. Doesn’t activate airport security. Works anywhere. Cheap.”

Read on. “Gutenberg may have invented the printing press and movable type, but he didn’t create the publishing industry.” “The Lumiere brothers may have invented the motion picture camera, but they didn’t invent the movie industry.”

“It was creative people…who realized the potential of these new technologies and dreamed up the groundbreaking, imaginative ways to harness them.”

Technology receives an upper cut to the chin, knocked out by creative people. Ouch, that hurt.

And now you understand the pencil illustration and the copy better.

And now you understand the allusion to tech being a handmaiden of creativy. The next time I look at any gizmo, I’ll stare at it and reduce it to a handmaiden, not the thing of awe that I might have viewed it as before I read this book.

But Hegarty remains a thing of awe. For distilling so much learning into 120- odd pages of provocation. I’m not sharing more, for two reasons. The first is that I cannot do justice to the book. The second is that even a badly written review will be a bit of a spoiler.

By the way, some lucky readers will receive an edible copy of the book. I’m not kidding.

That’s a provocation for you to go buy this book. You could just search for the title on your handmaiden, the iPad, and it’ll be in your hands in a couple of days.