Brand Thinking and other Noble Pursuits

We are now living in a world with over a hundred brands of bottled water. The United States alone is home to over 45,000 shopping malls. And there are more than 19 million customized beverage choices a barista can whip up at your local Starbucks. Whether it's good or bad, the real question is why we behave this way in the first place. Why do we telegraph our affiliations or our beliefs with symbols, signs and codes?

Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits contains twenty interviews with world's leading designers and thinkers in branding. The interviews contain spirited views on how and why humans have branded the world around us, and the ideas, inventions, and insight inherent in the search.

Debbie Millman has worked in the design business for more than twenty-five years. She is president of the design division at Sterling Brands. She has been there for nearly fifteen years and in that time she has worked on the redesign of global brands for Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Colgate, Nestle, and Hasbro. Millman is President of the AIGA, the largest professional association for design in the world. She is a contributing editor at Print Magazine, a design writer at FastCompany.com, and co-founder and chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She is the author of three books, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer (Allworth Press, 2007), The Essential Principles of Graphic Design (Rotovision, 2008) and Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design, (HOW Books, 2009). She lives in New York City.