Michael Johnson
Michael Johnson is the award-winning creative director of branding agency Johnson Banks. The agency is known for the way it defines and designs purpose-driven brands that want to make a difference. Michael has written 3 books, including the global bestseller Branding in Five and a Half Steps, and contributed to several others. He is also a visiting Professor at Glasgow School of Art and ex-president of D&AD.
If you could recommend 3 books to anyone, what would they be?
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
This is an astonishing book on many levels. As a biography it goes further and deeper than most others, but it’s also incredibly insightful with regards to creativity, design and customer insights. You learn more about branding, innovation and ‘thinking differently’ from this book than you do from an entire shelf of textbooks. Jobs personally commissioned Isaacson to begin this whilst he was still alive – off the back of his Einstein biography – itself another fascinating insight into the sheer chutzpah of one of the 20th century’s great thinkers.
The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross
I’ve always been a closet fan of modern classical music, but hadn’t quite worked out how to draw the musical lines between Wagner, Stravinsky, Copland and Philip Glass. This book was a revelation, amazingly written, forensically dense but also continually inspiring. It forces you to cue up, re-listen and re-appraise dozens of pieces, armed with fresh insights and new knowledge.
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle / Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
I nearly suggested all of Murakami’s work, and having read pretty much all of them I still can’t split these two apart. I actually see Murakami’s work as one long, interlinked novel in a way, since there are recurring themes throughout his fiction – lonely men, music, talking animals and bizarre, surreal twists that, after a while, seem entirely commonplace. I’d start with these two then attack the others if you enjoyed them. If, like me, you struggle to escape the real world at times, a dose of Murakami should do the trick.
What are you reading now?
I’m always reading multiple books at one time, so here goes. A friend and colleague, Jacqueline Novogratz recently finished her ‘Manifesto for a Moral Revolution’ which I’m reading deliberately slowly, turning page corners and making copious notes. In parallel and interlinked are Obama’s first memoir (A Promised Land) and Bill Gates’s piece on climate change (How to avoid a climate disaster) – all of which align with my work and my view of the world. I’ve become slightly obsessed with photography, and have just finished Russell Miller’s great book on the Magnum photo agency (Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History), while dipping into David Campany’s ‘On Photographs’ and a fascinating old Magnum project: ‘America in Crisis’ from the late sixties. ‘Architecture Depends’ by Jeremy Till is opening my eyes to more contemporary architecture criticism whilst ‘Armin Hoffman. Reduction. Ethics. Didactics’ is a timely reminder why I’m still, deep down, a graphic designer. Rick Poynor’s book on David King and Citizen Designer (Steven Heller and Véronique Vienne) are being analysed in preparation for a future project. When I finally get a bit of time off my double-dose of ‘inspire and inform’ will be David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue and Alex Ross’s epic new tome, Wagnerism.
Whose reading list are you most curious about?
"Living? I’d go for Obama, please. Dead? Leonardo Da Vinci’s list would be quite something...”
— Michael Johnson
