Science

Tom Vanderbilt - You May Also Like

You may also like, taste in age of endless choice.

Why we like the things we like, why we hate the things we hate, and what our preferences reveal about us.

With a voracious curiosity, Vanderbilt stalks the elusive beast of taste, probing research in psychology, marketing, and neuroscience to answer myriad complex and fascinating questions. Comprehensively researched and singularly insightful, You May Also Like is a joyous intellectual journey that helps us better understand how we perceive, judge, and appreciate the world around us.

Check out this video to see him talking about the book


Self fulfilling prophecies by Li Edelkoort

Self fulfilling prophecies:

 

When you have as much clout as Li Edelkoort, your prophecies become self fulfilling. However, it took her almost a lifetime to get there.

'It's the end of fashion as we know it'

Lidewij Edelkoort

Fashion is dead:

Trend forecaster Li Edelkoort has declared, describing the fashion industry as “a ridiculous and pathetic parody of what it has been”

Lidewij Edelkoort, one of the world’s most influential fashion forecasters, used her annual presentation at Design Indaba in Cape Town to fire a broadside at the industry. “This is the end of fashion as we know it.”

Edelkoort said her interest in fashion had now been replaced by an interest in clothes, since fashion has lost touch with what is going on in the world and what people want.

“Fashion is insular and is placing itself outside society, which is a very dangerous step,” she said in an interview.

Edelkoort listed a number of reasons for the crisis in fashion, starting with education, where young designers are taught to emulate the famous names. “We still educate our young people to become catwalk designers; unique individuals,” she said, “whereas this society is now about exchange and the new economy and working together in teams and groups.”


Brand Sense - Martin Lindstrom

The definitive book on sensory branding, shows how companies appeal to consumers’ five senses to sell products.

Did you know that the gratifying smell that accompanies the purchase of a new automobile actually comes from a factory-installed aerosol can containing “new car” aroma? Or that Kellogg’s trademarked “crunch” is generated in sound laboratories? Or that the distinctive click of a just-opened jar of Nescafé freeze-dried coffee, as well as the aroma of the crystals, has been developed in factories over the past decades? Or that many adolescents recognize a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch jeans not by their look or cut but by their fragrance?

In perhaps the most creative and authoritative book on how our senses affect our everyday purchasing decisions, global branding guru Martin Lindstrom reveals how the world’s most successful companies and products integrate touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound with startling and sometimes even shocking results. In conjunction with renowned research institution Millward Brown, Lindstrom’s innovative worldwide study unveils how all of us are slaves to our senses—and how, after reading this book, we’ll never be able to see, hear, or touch anything from our running shoes to our own car doors the same way again.

An expert on consumer shopping behavior, Lindstrom has helped transform the face of global marketing with more than twenty years of hands-on experience. Firmly grounded in science, and disclosing the secrets of all our favorite brands, Brand Sense shows how we consumers are unwittingly seduced by touch, smell, sound, and more.


Is it me? Mark Mieras

Brain research touches on our entire lives. It sheds light on phenomena such as love, empathy, ambition, consciousness, forgetfulness, friendship, addiction, appetite, enjoyment and happiness. On stages of life as childhood, puberty and old age. Ben ik dat? / Is it me? does all this. With this new edition Mark Mieras watches brain research closely. The book is updated with the most recent research and expanded with seven new chapters on: stress, creativity, meditation, sport, intuition, brain stimulation and subliminal influence. A book for anyone with brains.

(Dutch only)

On Creativity:

Get creative!
Creativity is the art of letting go. Creative minds dimm their control centers and keep their attention off-focus. Just a matter of turning the right buttons.

Doe eens creatief!
Creativiteit is de kunst van het loslaten. Creatieve geesten dimmen hun controlecentra en houden hun aandacht off-focus. Gewoon een kwestie van aan de juiste knoppen draaien.