Presents full-color illustrated instructions to creating twenty unique card and envelope projects using colored pencils, stamps, stickers, and more.

This is a major work by three international scholars at the cutting edge of new research that investigates the emerging set of complex relationships between creativity, design, research, higher education and knowledge capitalism. It highlights the role of the creative and expressive arts, of performance, of aesthetics in general, and the significant role of design as an underlying infrastructure for the creative economy. This book tracks the most recent mutation of these serial shifts - from postindustrial economy to the information economy to the digital economy to the knowledge economy to the 'creative economy' - to summarize the underlying and essential trends in knowledge capitalism and to investigate post-market notions of open source public space. The book hypothesizes that creative economy might constitute an enlargement of its predecessors that not only democratizes creativity and relativizes intellectual property law, but also emphasizes the social conditions of creative work. It documents how these profound shifts have brought to the forefront forms of knowledge production based on the commons and driven by ideas, not profitability per se; and have given rise to the notion of not just 'knowledge management' but the design of 'creative institutions' embodying new patterns of work.

Calvino’s Combinational Creativity examines the various ways combinatory processes influence the work of the Italian author Italo Calvino. Comprising chapters by six literary scholars, the volume asserts that the Ligurian writer’s creativity often stems from his contemplation of literature even as it investigates the intersection of his work with poets, writers, and literary movements. Each chapter explores a different aspect of Calvino’s creativity. Natalie Berkman examines Calvino as a reader of Ariosto and provides an analysis of mathematical combinations inspired by Vladmir Propp in Il castello dei destini incrociati. Discussing the poetic and scientific influence of the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar on Calvino, Sara Ceroni then presents Palomar as a modernist work of epiphanies. This is followed by two chapters investigating different influences on Cosmicomics: Elio Baldi demonstrates how Calvino’s collection of stories appropriates various conventions of the science fiction genre, while Elizabeth Scheiber provides a close reading of two tales to show how Calvino uses science as a metaphor to comment on the poetics of Italian authors Gadda, D’Annunzio, Ungaretti, and Montale. Cecilia Benaglia then proposes Calvino as a reader of Gadda, who served not only as an aesthetic influence, but also as an epistemological one. Finally, juxtaposing Calvino with his contemporary, Umberto Eco, Sebastiano Bazzichetto examines the two authors’ use of figures of speech as ways of constructing labyrinths. Calvino’s Combinational Creativity takes Calvino studies in new directions as it rethinks how the author’s work can be classified, and delves into the sources of his inspiration.

Even in this current day and age, where we are all senders and receivers of voluminous emails, handmade greeting cards, stationery, and invitations never lose their charm or fail to touch the heart. This book is a delightful showcase of 1000 exciting and contemporary hand-designed greeting cards, with examples that feature a wide array of paper craft techniques, including: paper cutting, paper stencils, stamping, punching, stitchery, monoprints, screenprints, paper piecing, and more.

For a Western world anxious to understand Islam and, in particular, ShiÕism, this book arrives with urgently needed information and critical analysis. Hamid Dabashi exposes the soul of ShiÕism as a religion of protestÑsuccessful only when in a warring position, and losing its legitimacy when in power. Dabashi makes his case through a detailed discussion of the ShiÕi doctrinal foundations, a panoramic view of its historical unfolding, a varied investigation into its visual and performing arts, and finally a focus on the three major sites of its contemporary contestations: Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. In these states, ShiÕism seems to have ceased to be a sect within the larger context of Islam and has instead emerged to claim global political attention. Here we see ShiÕism in its combative modeÑreminiscent of its traumatic birth in early Islamic history. Hezbollah in Lebanon claims ShiÕism, as do the militant insurgents in Iraq, the ruling Ayatollahs in Iran, and the masses of youthful demonstrators rebelling against their reign. All declare their active loyalties to a religion of protest that has defined them and their ancestry for almost fourteen hundred years. ShiÕsm: A Religion of Protest attends to the explosive conflicts in the Middle East with an abiding attention to historical facts, cultural forces, religious convictions, literary and artistic nuances, and metaphysical details. This timely book offers readers a bravely intelligent history of a world religion.

Cross-cultural means not only the differences between ethnic, racial or national groups. It is more. Cross-cultural confrontations arise by the differences of genders, educational levels, differences in thinking of diverse companies departments (e.g. production versus research & development, marketing versus finance), the mix of musicians or styles of painting. However, there is a lot of danger in cross-cultural collaboration: Diversity means different views, opinions, values and objectives easily generating misunderstandings and quarrels possibly ending up with serious conflicts. The conflicts may trigger new approaches and breakthroughs or lead to a state of frozen relations and stagnation. Sensitivity to the values and views of other cultures, open communication and aware leadership are traits helping to capitalize on cross-cultural influences. In further discussions with our friends of the EACI board we changed our mind for the new conference topic to CROSS-CULTURAL INNOVATION. Cross-cultural Innovations are new and origin problem solutions, which are generated in confronting problems with cross-cultural aspects. In many cases such solutions are breakthroughs and the start of a paradigm shift. Another advantage of such solutions is that they even influence the subconscious of stakeholders problems. Only cross-cultural solutions minimize the risk of hidden problems which develop under the surface in merger projects. Especially mergers of big companies are successful if change-managers are able to transfer cross-cultural conflicts in new challenging objectives. Bridging cultural gaps by visionary leadership is the way to bring people together and to create new common innovative enterprises or departments."

International business correspondence is not simply writing or information exchange. It is something that you want others to know about you – to know about your business and the way you deal with business transactions. It is by the way you create your letter that your reader can identify whether you are friendly, rude, or you just simply want to do business. Your letter shows your attitude. This is one reason why it is important to consider your way of writing, write professionally and with courtesy. Success of business transactions is not only dependent on your ability to talk and communicate verbally, but also the way you communicate in letters. How important is learning the proper way of writing business letters? This book will help you to improve your written communication by guiding you through the steps and guidelines of making an effective letter. Aside from that, you will learn to see that planning is important. Gathering information and doing some research will help you. As you go through answer complaints, it will save you to make adjustments, it is important and friendly to reply to inquiries, it is good to be precise in your quotations, it is proper to acknowledge placed orders or acknowledge payment, it is worth to check all outgoing orders for shipment and delivery, it is important to have an insurance policy, it is tedious to deal internationally without bank transactions, and it is by connection that you can increase your sales. You need to connect to your customers and readers in order to build a good working relationship. If you are able to establish a good relationship, they will value you as their business partners. Skills in creating business letters are important for the success of your business. Business letter writing skills will also boost your confidence as a businessman and will help boosting your business as well. This book aims to help students to develop their skills and confidence in writing international busi-ness letters. It can also serve as a reference for students at college and university levels.

My most cherished childhood memories of my grandparents are not those centered around occasional family celebrations. Rather, my memories reflect the routine of daily living, for my grandparents were a constant part of our family life. Here are dozens of ideas, tips, and suggestions to help long-distance grandparents develop a lasting bond with their grandchildren.

The volume describes a virtual tour of the cities in which Franz Brentano and his pupils worked and lived, with a reconstruction of the intellectual climate of their time. After the Introduction, the intellectual life of Wurzburg, Munich, Vienna, Prag, Lvov, Warsaw, Cambridge, Florence and Milan is presented and analyzed. The papers collected in this volume propose several answers to the following question: to what do we refer when we speak of Central European philosophy?. Interpretations of Central European philosophy have developed in at least two broad directions. An interpretation fashionable during the 1970s lumps specific philosophical achievements, especially those of Mach and Wittgenstein, characterized by research into and development of new languages, of new philosophical, scientific and artistic grammars. In this situation, literature was seen as the exploration of meanings moving towards frontiers in which reality and possibility, science and metaphor, meet and merge. On the other hands, the theme of a Central European philosophy, connected with but independent of literature, has recently been given more thorough development. The two outstanding figures to have emerged from this inquiry are those of Bernard Bolzano and Franz Brentano. With reference to Brentano in particular, it is almost as if the collapse of the Empire also erased awareness of the common origin of many diverse components of Central European philosophical and scientific thought. The Polish logical school, logical neopositivism, phenomenology, the Prague school of linguistics, analytic philosophy, Gestalt psychology, the Vienna economics school - as well as a number of individual thinkers - are all movements and groups connected in some manner with Brentano's work and teaching. Although in some respects these are movements still at the centre of interest, the overall effect, the pattern of their common and unifying aspects have been neglected if they have not entirely disappeared. It seems that the unity of this philosophical tradition was lost with the end of the geographical and political unity of the Danubian empire and with the events that accompanied its downfall. After 1918 the centres of that tradition - Vienna, Prague, Lvov, Graz - belonged to different states, and its rich network of exchanges, contacts and relationships was dismantled forever. However, there still remained something of its philosophical style in each individual school; traits which enable us to speak, as the Authors have done in this volume, of Central European philosophy."

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.