John Maxwell & Page One

One of the best things about working in my current place is the peculiar collection on books that we have amassed throughout the years. Fortunately for me, most staffs decided to leave their treasures behind as they move on (hopefully to bigger and better things), and I have located many books belonging to no one in particular –  just sitting on the shelf waiting for a curious cat to pick it up and devour its content.

That I did.

John C. Maxwell

The book I'm currently 'borrowing' is titled 'The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership' by John Maxwell, which has proved to be quite an interesting read. My initial attraction was two-fold: the topic of the book (leadership) is one that I felt a strong attraction towards, and the name Maxwell was one that I distinctly remembered as one with a reputation.

As I perused a random chapter from the book I was amused by his thoughts on Apple's very own Steve Jobs, and how his intuitive leadership turned Apple around and "gave them a fighting chance":

"Prior to Job's return, the company had posted net quarterly losses the previous year totaling more than $1 billion. However, in the first fiscal quarter of 1998, Apple finally recorded a net profit of $47 million. In the long run, it's hard to know whether the company will ever recapture its former success. But at least it now has a fighting chance"

And then it hit me – this book is old! A flip through revealed it's published (or written) in 1998, about 10 years back. And then I realized that Maxwell is writing good things and applauding Steve's leadership qualities even before it was evident. Even before the iPod. Even before the conversion into Intel-based Macs. Even before many others talked about Steve's charismatic presentational skills – interestingly, there's even a 'name' for this particular skill of Steve, it's called the 'reality distortion field', how cool is that? That's when I really wanted to bring this book home and read through this. If the guy could speak (or perhaps predict is the right word?) good things about Steve and Apple at a time where PC's were so totally dominating the market (97% market share). I really wanted to see what else he's got to say!

Page One

On the more 'legal' side, I have been buying books left and right recently. It's the newer influences that keeps pumping me up to create visuals, a lot of very inspiring new artists out there, and thanks to Page One in Vivo City, I was exposed to all this wealth of talents. A recent outing there saw me forking out SGD50 for this design book by :phunk studio.



Pimping hot local artist! Blind UV Spot, Black on Black! Unique binding! How could I resist? They had me at "Japanese Binding with 5mm Cardboard Box"!


And not long after that, even after spending hard-earned money in Batam, I saw myself forking out another SGD60 for two books (which I felt was, like, damn totally worth it. Totally) – one by the always amusing Monster Children, and another by Pie Books, a compilation of who's who of Japan's illustrators.



One hundred and fifty of the hottest illustrators in Japan today. Need I say more?



I've always loved this Australian Streetmag. Plenty to admire – the photography, the lifestyle, the stunts. It's basically the Australian version of Juice, with the addition of Extreme Sports and directed by a Kick-Arse Art Director. The result of this blatantly unholy union of perversion and psychotic sensibilities is a Child that is so Monstrous, he embodies the word itself. Thus the name Monster Children!

I've been drawing too, and was very lucky to find this 12 pieces of COPIC markers. These babies are high-grade markers, each costing up to SGD8, and once again, I was fortunate to have neglectful ex-colleagues. And luckily, I am the 'Designated Illustrator' in the office, so naturally these delightful resources were mine by right of heredity. Watch this space tomorrow, I'm going to post another piece. This time done along to the tunes of Creed's One Last Breath, definitely one of my all time favorites!