You Need a Manifesto

How to Craft Your Convictions and Put Them to Work

By: Charlotte Burgess-Auburn, Stanford d.school

Narrated by: Charlotte Burgess-Auburn, Scott Doorley

An essential how-to for crafting a guiding motto that sets intentions, increases creativity, and helps accomplish your goals, from Stanford University's world-renowned Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, aka the d.school.

We all need agency to feel the power and joy of acting in the face of challenge and opportunity. But we also need humility and restraint to ensure that we guard against hubris and harm. We need trusted and testable navigation tools to give us confidence in our creative power and cautiousness in carrying out our work. Instead of looking for answers, what we are all seeking are tools for navigating the increasingly complex, noisy, conflicted culture that we inhabit. A personal manifesto is one of those tools.

In You Need a Manifesto, Charlotte Burgess-Auburn, the d.school's director of community, first defines the challenges of information overload we all experience today. Then she explains the importance of creating a personal mantra or motto to use in the face of daily tasks and roadblocks, walking you through the steps of creating more purpose in your work.

Explanations and hands-on design-based exercises are interwoven with vibrant quotes and excerpts from a curated collection of designers, artists, writers, scientists, and social activists. These quotes serve both as inspiration and material for the activities.

Each chapter of the book is also preceded by a graphic by artist and letterpress printer Rick Griffith, who created his illustrations in response to the material in each chapter, to guide and inspire you to see what you can produce for yourself.

*Includes a downloadable PDF of images and key exercises from the book

Critic reviews

“I have learned that asking and exploring the simple question, What am I about? is profoundly important, and You Need a Manifesto is the most thorough and powerful guide into that exploration. Aimed at helping us align our choices with what matters most to us, this book is a must-read for anyone looking to exercise more agency in their work and their life.”—Lisa Congdon, artist and author

Take Action & Create Manifestos

A great instructional guide to creating manifestos. The additional content was helpful as well. 4/5 stars

The pacing for the exercises should have been timed

This is a great audio book however it includes lots of exercises that need reflection and pause. It would have been more user friendly (design! Hello!) to have timed the content based on the time it takes to complete each step for the exercises. Or structure it as meditation exercises.. now the speaker is rushing through the content and it’s annoying having to hit pause every 2 minutes