By Gyles Lingwood and Turner Duckworth
272 pages, softcover, $39.95
Published by Phaidon
phaidon.com

In time-honored attempts to quantify creative output, instinct is one of those elusive qualities that perennially frustrates bean-counters and bureaucrats. It also informs this delightful collection of stories, images and essays that comes courtesy of Turner Duckworth, the UK-headquartered creative agency that works with the world’s most recognizable brands.

Billed as an antidote to ever-increasing data, analytics, algorithms and AI, this smartly packaged anthology stars contributions by industry big-hitters from inside and outside Turner Duckworth. Each shares a unique perspective on the power of instinct, outlining what co-author Gyles Lingwood, former adman and director of education at the University of Lincoln, describes as “what happens when you listen to your inner voice rather than following the MBA textbook.”

Accompanied by compelling campaign imagery for everything from breakfast cereals to toilet cleaner to tequila, I love it. What is it? explores logo creation for Amazon—which remains unchanged after 20 years—consensus building at Coca-Cola, tackling the daunting brief of modernizing an iconic brand and crafting album artwork for Metallica. Elsewhere, Minott Wessinger, chief executive officer of beverage marketing firm McKenzie River Corporation, questions whether instinct is best informed by insight, while a personal essay from creative director Chris Garvey shares how scribbling rough-and-ready Post-It cartoons to cheer up a colleague made him question the perfectionism that drove him and affected other areas of his life.

As Lingwood explains how instinct helps us tap into our unconscious mind to discover unexpected and unique solutions, so each contribution highlights the potential—at every level—of courage, passion, heart-over-head decision-making as well as doing what feels right. —Ben Olsen ca