"Orbiting the Giant Hairball" A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie

(WK5)

Orbiting the Giant Hairball is a great read so far. It is easy to read, fun and refreshing. It is written in a spontaneous, stream of consciousness style with child-like drawings and pictures throughout the book, even hand­ written in places. It really engages the readers by having visuals to look at. Gordon defines “hairball” as the companies that are created through endless rules, policies, procedures, management layers and practices. Each “rule” is like a little hair that gets connected or knotted to the other hairs, and the result is a giant hairball. I can definitely relate to this simply because we all get wrapped up in following the rules and therefore it limits out creativity and little freedoms. But I want to talk about the book itself and all the process behind it. It is not your typical traditional style of business books or material in it.

I love books like this simply because Gordon went back in with his hands to edit his material. It’s collaged with different fonts (large and small) that are handwritten, stamped and typed out. As a Graphic Design major I see both good and bad layouts with this book. Knowing my major is geared toward simplicity and clean layouts, I love texture and patterns. Which a lot of my fellow peers do not relate to. I am intrigued that Gordon was able to pull it off and still have it be an overall interesting read in both visuals and content. At first glance the pages seem cluttered and overwhelming but Gordon’s experience and ideas are definitely obvious with his placement of everything and how it flows. All of his lines, marks, designs, type etc is intentional and he thought about all before hand. For example on page 75, the WHUP! WHUP! Etc is so simple but so effective by the type sizes and type face as well as the simple gestured qualities and movements he added behind it. What I like most is that whether a child, teen or adult the visual elements can relate to everyone and make it fun. This book is so inspiring and has actually helped me with outside ideas to do for fun. It comes from the position of a true artist, Gordon himself, who was very creative and also inspired by everything he saw. Almost all his work in this book I can see in posters, magazines, and other art related assignments. It is directed for people like us “artists” and is very lose and inspiring. (374)