Courier Issue 35

From leadership principles for troubling times, to tips on refreshing (and reopening) your business, our June/July issue is packed with all the stories and tools you need to reemerge from the global health crisis with confidence, inspiration and a solid plan. 

Also in this issue:

-How to be a resilient (and better) leader

-Tips on boosting your emotional intelligence

-From craft breweries to taxi firms, why are worker-owned co-ops on the rise?

-Business opportunities in the post pandemic world

-On the frontline of managing a chocolate supply chain

-What short-term pivots will become permanent?

-Sustainability’s godfather on the top principles to follow

-Lessons from Mexico’s first zero-waste supermarket

User Friendly

How the Hidden Rules of Design are Changing the Way We Live, Work & Play

By Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant

USER FRIENDLY is a must-read for anyone who loves well-designed products—and for the innovators aspiring to make them.

It seems like magic when some new gadget seems to know what we want before we know ourselves. But why does some design feel intrinsically good, and why do some designs last forever, while others disappear? User Friendlyguides readers through the hidden rules governing how design shapes our behaviour, told through fascinating stories such as what the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island reveals about the logic of the smartphone; how the pressures of the Great Depression and World War II created our faith in social progress through better product design; and how a failed vision for Disney World yielded a new paradigm for designed experience.

Published: 07/11/2019
Length: 416  Pages
Dimensions: 234mm x 29mm x 153mm
Weight: 539g

Courier Issue 34

Making it in the world of food and drink – a jam-packed special edition featuring the latest trends, brands, people and opportunities.

 Also in this issue:

 -The business model of ghost kitchens
-Seaweed’s superpowers
-Dealing with geopolitical shifts
-Australia’s croissant queen
-An eating tour of Tel Aviv
-Fascinating food media
-A renegade urban winery
-Find funding in your supply chain
-Yakitori 101
-A portrait of Joe Holder
-Speciality stores from Lisbon to Tokyo
-Building trust online
-Direct-to-consumer cookware
-The economics of cafes
-Living with LA’s larb king

This book is about disruption. About doing things differently. About having ideas that will change the world. That will at least change your world. It’s also about delivering those ideas.

Do Disrupt is an interactive workbook that will help you create or refine your business idea and take it from concept to market. It will encourage you to define your customer, identify the competition... and then outsmart them. You’ll also find out why you need a chat with your Nan and a tape measure.

Newly updated for 2017, this expanded edition features a new introduction, a brand new chapter on how to create positive change from within a larger organisation, fresh insight on global trends driving disruption, how to generate ideas, boost creativity and define your purpose. 

If you're starting a new business or you're the rebel inside, it's not enough to shake things gently. It's about thinking big. Being innovative. Making a difference. 

Author: Mark Shayler

How can we make sense of a world where we have both too many billionaires and too many foodbanks? We're supposed to go to university, forge a career, get wealthier, buy a house - but why is that so hard for most of us to achieve?

Split makes sense of our world by looking at class society - delving into the deep-rooted economic inequalities that shape our lives. From the gig economy, rising debt and the housing crisis that affects the majority of people, to the world of tax havens and unfair inheritance that affect the few…

Now is the time to fight back against the 1%.

The Author: Ben Tippet is an educator, activist, and writer. He is currently doing a PhD at the University of Greenwich, researching the causes of wealth inequality in the UK. He is a researcher for The Transnational Institute and has written for Novara, Stike! and Economy.

Scaling up is something most founders aspire to, especially once the tricky start-up phase has been navigated. It can increase your reach and futureproof your business. But how do you ‘scale’? And how does it differ from ‘flipping’ for a quick profit or slower organic growth?

 Les McKeown advises industry leaders on how to achieve scalable, sustainable growth. In Do Scale, he draws from his decades of experience to provide a clear understanding of what’s involved, and the strategies needed to take your business (or not-for-profit) to the next level. You’ll find out: 

• What if means to scale – and if now is the right time
• Why founders need to 'get out of their own way'
• How to develop winning teams
• Your secret weapon for decision making

With practical advice and clear guidance, Do Scale is an essential manual for anyone looking to grow a successful and sustainable organisation – and turn it into something truly remarkable.

Author:  Les McKeown

A guide to greater productivity, insight and creativity

We know that our minds are capable of great things because, every now and then, they come out with a brilliant idea or two. However, our minds are also unpredictable, spending large stretches of time idling or distracting themselves. This is a book about how to optimise these beautiful yet fitful instruments so that they can more regularly and generously produce the sort of insights and ideas we need to fulfil our potential and achieve the contentment we deserve. Among other things, we learn how to grasp fragile and flighty thoughts before they disappear through anxiety and fear; at what times of day to try to work and for how long; how to make use of our boredom and instincts, and how to overcome timid and predictable approaches to the largest problems. The result is an operating manual to that most wondrous, though intermittent and always baffling, organ: the human mind.

Thinking Types Include:

• Strategic Thinking
• Cumulative Thinking
• Independent Thinking
• Philosophical Thinking
• ‘Mad’ Thinking
• Envious Thinking
• Analogical Thinking
• Empathetic Thinking
• Love Thinking
• Sceptical Thinking

About The School of Life for Business

These essays are thought pieces based on the topics covered by The School of Life for Business. We teach twenty emotional skills to help businesses thrive in the modern economy. We work with businesses to help employees function better together - to form more engaged teams, be more productive, dynamic, and work together in more innovative and entrepreneurial ways. We build emotional skills programmes for each organisation we work with, delivered by a world class faculty.

How to

by Michael Bierut

The first monograph, design manual, and manifesto by Michael Bierut, one of the world’s most renowned graphic designers—a career retrospective that showcases more than thirty-five of his most noteworthy projects for clients as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Yale School of Architecture, the New York Times, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the New York Jets, and reflects eclectic enthusiasm and accessibility that has been the hallmark of his career.

Protégé of design legend Massimo Vignelli and partner in the New York office of the international design firm Pentagram, Michael Bierut has had one of the most varied and successful careers of any living graphic designer, serving a broad spectrum of clients as diverse as Saks Fifth Avenue, Harley-Davidson, the Atlantic Monthly, the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, Billboard, Princeton University, the New York Jets, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Morgan Library.

How to, Bierut’s first career retrospective, is a landmark work in the field. Featuring more than thirty-five of his projects, it reveals his philosophy of graphic design—how to use it to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world. Specially chosen to illustrate the breadth and reach of graphic design today, each entry demonstrates Bierut’s eclectic approach. In his entertaining voice, the artist walks us through each from start to finish, mixing historic images, preliminary drawings (including full-size reproductions of the notebooks he has maintained for more than thirty-five years), working models and rejected alternatives, as well as the finished work. Throughout, he provides insights into the creative process, his working life, his relationship with clients, and the struggles that any design professional faces in bringing innovative ideas to the world.

Offering insight and inspiration for artists, designers, students, and anyone interested in how words, images, and ideas can be put together, How to provides insight to the design process of one of this century’s most renowned creative minds.

Dear Client
This Book Will Teach You How to Get What You Want from Creative People

Bonnie Siegler

In a world where every business, brand, product, and service needs a strong visual identity, it’s critical for clients and creative professionals to work together. And the key to success, as with any relationship, is communication. In Dear Client, award-winning graphic designer Bonnie Siegler offers an invaluable step-by-step guide to how to talk so creatives will listen, and how to listen when creatives talk.

Written as a series of honest, friendly lessons—“Know What You Like,” “Decide Who Will Decide,” “Focus Groups Suck,” “Don’t Say ‘Make It Yellow,’ Say ‘Make It Sunny,’” “Serve Lunch During Lunchtime Meetings”—it shows exactly how to deal with the subjectivity, emotional pitfalls, and occasional chaos of a creative partnership. Here’s how to articulate your visual goals and set a clear, consistent direction. How to give feedback that works and avoid words that inhibit creative thinking. How to be open to something you didn’t imagine. And most of all, how to have fun, save money, and get the results you want.

Courier’s ‘Work Better + Live Smarter’ issue is packed with stories, inspiration and tips for working and living on your own terms, plus a special 16-page step-by-step guide to launching a new business.

 Also in this issue:

 -20 observations and opportunities for 2020
-How to do business in China
-Portrait of an etiquette queen
-Inside the passion economy
-Audio porn heats up
-Making olive oil in Joshua Tree
-Trouva’s shopping spree
-Japan’s DIY chop stick brand
-A facelift for a Parisian shopping district
-Art co-ownership
-Design hotels from Venice to Edinburgh