The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “the creative spark”

Trinity: A Graphic History of the Atomic Bomb
Trinity: A Graphic History of the Atomic Bomb

From Marie Curie to Hiroshima, or what uranium isotopes have to do with moral philosophy.

read article

Going Solo: A Brief History of Living Alone and the Enduring Social Stigma Around Singletons
Going Solo: A Brief History of Living Alone and the Enduring Social Stigma Around Singletons

“Despite its prevalence, living alone is one of the least discussed and, consequently, most poorly understood issues of our time.”

read article

5 (Mostly) Vintage Children’s Books by Iconic Graphic Designers
5 (Mostly) Vintage Children’s Books by Iconic Graphic Designers

Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, Paula Scher, Bruno Munari, Paul Rand.

read article

Little 1: Paul Rand’s Sweet Vintage Children’s Book About Numbers, Soulmates, and Belonging
Little 1: Paul Rand’s Sweet Vintage Children’s Book About Numbers, Soulmates, and Belonging

A mid-century love story about the loneliest number, its quest for belonging, and its eternal soulmate.

read article

This Will Make You Smarter: 151 Big Thinkers Each Pick a Concept to Enhance Your Cognitive Toolkit
This Will Make You Smarter: 151 Big Thinkers Each Pick a Concept to Enhance Your Cognitive Toolkit

The importance of “the umwelt,” or why failure and uncertainty are essential for science and life.

read article

We Got Merge: Noam Chomsky on the Cognitive Function that Made Language Evolve
We Got Merge: Noam Chomsky on the Cognitive Function that Made Language Evolve

“You got an operation that enables you to take mental objects … already constructed … and make bigger mental objects out of them.”

read article

Dancing About Architecture: A Field Guide to Creativity
Dancing About Architecture: A Field Guide to Creativity

“It is the ability to spot the potential in the product of connecting things that don’t ordinarily go together that marks out the person who is truly creative.”

read article

The Age of Insight: How the Cross-Pollination of Art and Science in Early 20th-Century Vienna Shaped Modern Culture
The Age of Insight: How the Cross-Pollination of Art and Science in Early 20th-Century Vienna Shaped Modern Culture

What Freud has to do with Klimt and the neuroscience of a Beethoven symphony.

read article

A Brief History of Children’s Picture Books and the Art of Visual Storytelling
A Brief History of Children’s Picture Books and the Art of Visual Storytelling

From cave paintings to Maurice Sendak, or what modern ebooks can learn from mid-century design icons.

read article

How McLuhan, Agel, and Fiore Created a New Visual Vernacular for the Information Age
How McLuhan, Agel, and Fiore Created a New Visual Vernacular for the Information Age

The rise of the experimental paperback and how ‘typophotography’ paved the information superhighway.

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)