{"id":45126,"date":"2025-11-18T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=45126"},"modified":"2025-11-17T16:45:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:45:15","slug":"the-creative-architect-how-to-talk-to-girls-at-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/the-creative-architect-how-to-talk-to-girls-at-parties\/","title":{"rendered":"The Creative Architect \/ How to Talk to Girls at Parties"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

THE CREATIVE ARCHITECT \u2013 AN ICONIC \u201850S CREATIVITY STUDY FINALLY COMES TO LIGHT IN BOOK FORM<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study<\/em>
by Pierluigi Serraino
Monacelli Press
2016, 248 pages, 7.7 x 9.25 x 1.1 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1958 and \u201859, an unprecedented study was conducted by the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research at the University of California, Berkeley. The idea was to apply the latest psychological tests on the world\u2019s most famous and accomplished architects to try and determine what makes them so creative and successful. In studying them, could some magical key to creativity be discovered?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Astoundingly, some 40 major architects volunteered, including Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Philip Johnson, George Nelson, Louis Kahn, and A. Quincy Jones. The group spent three days being subjected to a battery of tests, sitting for interviews, even evaluating the creative and design prowess of each other. While the idea was to publish the results of the tests at the time, besides some news and fluff pieces about the study, and some superficial conclusions about the nature of the creative impulse that drove these design superstars, the full results of the study have remained unpublished until this impressive new release from Monacelli Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study<\/em> is a lovely and thought-provoking time-capsule of a book. Through its numerous black and white photos and reprints of the research materials, correspondences between the subjects of the study and the psychologists, and news clippings of the day, the book paints a surprisingly evocative picture of this unique study and the era in which it was conducted. Reading the test results, in the architects\u2019 own hands, and the evaluations of the researchers, is fascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what conclusions did the study finally reach? Nothing earth shattering. Going into the study, the research group had circulated a list of \u201cgenius\u201d attributes from a 1957 book about Freud, which included things like \u201cthe power of deep concentration, tremendous patience, and self-discipline\u2026\u201d and \u201cability to generalize from the particular and to separate the significant from the unimportant\u2026\u201d Drawn from the data, the conclusion of the study: \u201cWhat propels creativity is the unfettered expression of the self,\u201d \u201cfinding the solution to a problem is not sufficient to bring them personal satisfaction: there is a further demand for the solution to be elegant,\u201d and the discovery that creative individuals \u201cconsistently safeguard their self-determination in order to stay their course and pursue what interests them no matter what, in a fierce escape from conformism of thought and behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study<\/em> doesn\u2019t contain any easy, replicable recipes for living a creative life, for becoming a design god. But what it does do is curate a captivating collection of literal and figurative snapshots from a peak time in design history and the creative genius that drove it. And that is ultimately very inspiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[RELATED: Here\u2019s an excellent podcast episode about the study<\/a> from 99% Invisible. \u2013 Mark] \u2013 Gareth Branwyn<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES \u2013 NEIL GAIMAN AT HIS BEST WITH FANTASTIC CHARACTER MOMENTS<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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How to Talk to Girls at Parties<\/em>
by Neiman Gaiman (author), Gabriel B\u00e1 (illustrator), and F\u00e1bio Moon (illustrator)
Dark Horse Books
2016, 64 pages, 6.9 x 10.5 x 0.4 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to Talk to Girls at Parties<\/em> is an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman short story of the same name, originally published in his collection Fragile Things<\/em>. As adaptations go, this one tells the story pretty exactly as it was done by Gaiman. Two teens named Enn and Vic go to a party with the intention of picking up girls. Vic is handsome and confident, while Enn is shy and awkward. Enn doesn\u2019t know how to talk to girls, and this becomes the central problem of the story. His attempts to seem cool and desirable are both humorous and relatable to anybody who has ever tried talking to a potential love interest. As the night moves on, it becomes clear that something is amiss at this party, but exactly what<\/em> is unknown to Enn, and a little ambiguous to the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really like this book. At first glance it might seem like an odd choice for a comic \u2013 the story doesn\u2019t reach the heights of some of Gaiman\u2019s other work, for example. But it\u2019s short and sweet and so unique. The story is Gaiman at his best in terms of information release and character moments. You\u2019re never completely ahead of the plot and it is so easy to sympathize with Enn\u2019s awkwardness. The charm of the original story was Gaiman\u2019s ability to play with a young man\u2019s feeling that girls were practically another species, and that aspect thrives in this version. In terms of visual storytelling and artistic prowess, F\u00e1bio Moon and Gabriel B\u00e1 are absolute masters, and I cannot recommend their work here enough. They have an incredible ability to draw worlds that look like reality, but maybe just a few degrees more fantastic. What perfect partners for Gaiman\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to Talk to Girls at Parties<\/em> gets my highest recommendation, both for fans of Gaiman and\/or Moon & B\u00e1 as well as fans of unique sci-fi. It\u2019s a short book you can breeze through pretty quickly, and then immediately restart to find more hints of what\u2019s really going on. A film adaptation directed by John Cameron Mitchell (Rabbit Hole<\/em>) is set to debut in 2017, so at the very least this interesting comic will prepare you for the film. \u2013 Alex Strine<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Issue No. 93<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45141,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45126\/revisions\/45141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}