做好藝術：尼爾·蓋曼藝術大學演講辭

by NI ER GAI MAN ( Neil Gaiman ), 尼爾·蓋曼, 葉昀 (Translator)

最受歡迎的奇科幻作家尼爾．蓋曼，最受歡迎的畢業典禮致辭，最好玩的勵志嘉言！

為什麼會踏上創作這條路？該如何保持靈感？最適合創作的時機？如何源源不絕接到工作？尼爾．蓋曼以最幽默又最平易近人的方式幫你畫重點！剛出校門的社會新鮮人，以及投入藝術、設計、創意產業的新手與老手，都可以從中獲得讓你既開心又開腦的啟發！

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Writing, Essays, Self Help, Design, Inspirational

100 pages, Hardcover

First published May 14, 2013

Reviews

[Jayson · Rating 4 out of 5]

(B+) 78% | Good
Notes: A tonic for timidity and doubt, it balances enthusiasm with expectation, flourishing in spite of its own artistic design.

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is for all creators: artists, writers, photographers, aspiring YouTubers or Instagrammers!

The sad truth is that the best content is not always the most viewed or has the best visibility.

Back in the day, I was looking at makeup tutorials on YouTube. There was a lady who literally just read information from a website. Her channel had more than 10,000 subscribers and was monetized. Yet, I just didn’t understand what value she brought to the internet. The website wasn’t secret—anybody could just go to the website and read the information for him or herself, and you could even view the pictures. Yet, the videos which offered tips for makeup application, and people who actually researched the products were not monetized.

Who hasn’t put up pictures on Instagram lately and had 3 views? It is really disheartening to set-up an incredible flat lay, adjust the lighting, set-up all the props, invest hours of your time, write an engaging caption with a hook and great hashtags to end up with 5 views. You honestly might have even better pictures than other accounts. Even if you posted those exact same pictures with the exact same captions and hashtags, you wouldn’t have the same number of followers.

But you shouldn’t give up if that is your passion. And that’s where this book comes in.

It is a relatively short read, around 20 minutes. Honestly, I will probably read this once a day until I have it memorized.

Being an artist is not about being famous or wealthy. In all honesty, you may never achieve those things, but don’t stop creating, even if people don’t understand it.

My posts might not be world famous, and they may not reach monetization. But I do love learning new things. I love playing around with the lights--bright, low, different positions, different angles, using reflections, shadows, reflectors. I enjoy learning to take pictures at different angles, trying different props, playing around in photoshop with contrast, shadows, blacks, whites, clarity, haze, and exposure. I’ve learned various techniques to light candles, various texts, and animations. Success isn’t guaranteed, but my art is valuable even if it never reaches commercial success.

But the low times, the low visibility does hurt, and this little book will help carry me through those times.

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $12.95 through the now defunct Book Depository
Audiobook – Free through Libby


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[jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. break rules. leave the world more interesting for your being here. make good art.’

continuing my tradition of starting off the new year with some words of inspiration and much needed positivity (see last year).

neil gaiman has such a charm to his words that he could tell me to jump off a cliff and i would legitimately consider it. luckily, his message in this commencement address is nothing to that extreme. instead, he challenges the reader/listener to make, to create, to live and live well, to not pay attention to the doubts but flourish in the dreams. such a message is not only applicable to graduates, but to everyone in all stages of life.

so here is to 2019, to a year of making mistakes, and to a year of making good art. <3

ps. for those interested, here are links to the text and video of his speech.

↠ 4.5 stars

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confession: I often find myself really funny.

A lot of the time this is due to the fact that I have the same sense of humor as myself, so my internal monologue and occasional conversations between me and me have an advantage in being amusing.

But some of the time, I am laughing at my expense.

One such time is right now, because why did I think I needed to write a full review of a book so short it can be, and was, read aloud in under 20 minutes? Including pauses for laughter and introspection?

I just don’t know.

This book was originally a speech, and then it was a little gift book, presumably of the subgenre colloquially known as Things To Give Graduates You Don’t Know Very Well - a group popularized by the Dr. Seuss classic Oh, The Places You’ll Go.

I bought this for myself on Book Outlet, so I can’t say for sure.

This was probably better as a speech, because as a book it’s brightly colored and overly stylized and has altogether too many pages with only a handful of words on them, and also because Neil Gaiman has a gorgeous speaking voice that allows him to record his own audiobooks, which must be very convenient from a moneymaking perspective.

But as a book, it was fine too.

Bottom line: This review might be longer than the full book. (Not the first time I’ve said that about one of my own reviews.)

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was just scared to my very core when i saw i was 1 book behind on my reading challenge...then i realized that i forgot to mark this as read lol crisis averted.

review to come / 4ish stars?

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i'm definitely reading this right now simply because of how much i love neil gaiman, and not at all due to the fact that it's like 6 pages long and i really want to finish my reading challenge

[Jesse (JesseTheReader) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This was amazing. I wasn't going into it expecting much, but coming out of it I feel inspired and motivated. This speech really made me think about my life and what I'm doing with it. I'll definitely be returning to this book when I'm needing something to lift me up!

favorite quotes:

“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.”

"Somebody on the internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? Make good art."

[leynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

UPDATE (2025):
I usually only update my reviews when I reread the book. This is not the case here. Many of you will probably have heard of the numerous sexual misconduct allegations raised against Neil Gaiman. The gruesome details are hard to stomach, and it took me some time to do the research and get a clear picture of the situation.

Believing the victims and standing in solidarity with them should be a given but one other thing this entire situation has got me thinking about is how easily we put authors on pedestals, especially those like Gaiman who use social media in their favor. He curated a very specific image of himself over decades (as "the good guy", "the feminist", "the brilliant mind") and I hate to admit it but I fell for it — as can be easily seen in my original review here from 2016 (when I was merely 20 years old and had "fallen in love" with his work the previous year).

I have grown a lot – as a person, reader, and reviewer – in the past nine years, so I'm more conscious now who I give my flowers to, but it's so easy and tempting to conflate an author's work with the author themselves. And though it should always be possible to praise a work, we as reviewers are not in the position to truthfully praise the person behind it (or attest to their "good character") — we simply don't know these people. I love calling authors whose work I love "kings" and "queens", I compliment them all the time in my reviews, but now, more than ever, it has become clear that this form of praise can backfire quickly. I will try to be more mindful with my words going forward.

I decided to leave my original "review" up, as a testament and reminder to myself to be more conscious of the parasocial relationships that might exist between me and certain authors whose work I love and admire, and how dangerous this can be. This becomes even more dangerous when the author in question (and their possible victims) are still alive – the author profits from the praise, and the victims get more and more intimidated to come out against such a beloved/ reverred/ powerful figure. It is messed up and we as reviewers shouldn't contribute to author cults.


ORIGINAL "REVIEW" (2016):
Whilst reading this I listened to Neil Gaiman's actually speech and it was good. Even made me teary-eyed a little bit. I have to say I wasn't crazy inspired to write a book or make good art after this, no, I was more like super proud of Neil. And I know that sounds crazy because he is way older than me and a critically acclaimed writer but I just recently read the Sandman series by him (and he mentioned that series in his speech) and it made me just so happy to hear that he can finally enjoy his success and not be stressed out over coming up with more clever ideas.

I also appreciated what an intimate look he gave into his mind when he talked about the "fraud police" and his fear that his success was just a farce and one day someone will take it all away.

It had some great comedic moments that had me smiling.

I will def re-read this in the future. I only gave this 4 stars because Jo's commencment address "very good lives" had me bawling like a baby and filled with a new sense of the world and that wasn't happening with Neil, however it was a perfect commencement address.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neil Gaiman is, if you'll pardon the coarseness of my language, a fucking genius.

"So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom.
"And if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would."

Also.

"Make good art."

Seems simple enough, yeah?

[Cari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for the content itself, I saw the speech previously and it is, of course, awesome. Worth having this around, and thank goodness Gaiman's speech is actually why I bought this, because...

...no damn stars for the awful layout and design of the pages. Some are upside down, others have the print too small, and others are designed so they're extremely difficult to read. I've heard Kidd is excellent on other projects, but this one resembles the creativity of a 12-year-old girl back in the heyday of Geocities and Angelfire webpages (I know because, many many years ago, I was one of those girls). Very disappointing on that score.

[Calista · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have learned that I enjoy these words of wisdom speeches that these artist make at graduation services. I read this and the one J. K Rowling gave. They are full of great bits of advice and wisdom.

Neil talks about making your own rules. He says it's ok not to know what your doing, it's usually a good thing. He learned to write by writing. He learns more from his failures and he was scared of success.

It's 19 minutes of good tidbits and advice. I will be looking for more of these and I want to own this little book.

[Kyriaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Διάβαζα για την εξεταστική μέχρι που συνειδητοποίησα ότι το βλέμμα μου περνούσε πάνω από την ίδια σειρά ξανά και ξανά χωρίς καν να τη διαβάζω. Αποφάσισα να κάνω ένα διάλειμμα, βρήκα αυτό, σκέφτηκα ότι ήταν σχετικό και είπα γιατί όχι;
Και τελικά ήταν αυτό ακριβώς που χρειαζόμουν!

Αν και θα μπορούσα άνετα να quotαρω όλο τον λόγο θα καταλήξω σε αυτό:
"And now go, and make interesting, amazing, glorious, fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art."

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good art.
Perhaps the hierarchy is the High Art key?

[Ioanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!!

[Sam Quixote · Rating 5 out of 5]

Make Good Art is the transcript of Neil Gaiman's commencement speech at the University of the Arts, Class of 2012. It's an inspiring message of encouragement to artists everywhere to keep doing what you want to do, no matter what, and contains some nice ideas and quirks that only Gaiman could conjure up to make it a memorable talk.

The whole thing is worth reading as its kind of an instructional manual to creativity by being anti-instructional. If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do, he says at one point, which is both strangely poetic and true. He tells you how he became the successful writer he is today - by writing. If you want to be a writer, be a writer, and keep writing. It's a simple message, one that many writers have stated before, but it's worth hearing again for anyone not doing it but still wishing they could become writers.

He talks about the lessons learned through the years, of dealing with failure, and to never do anything for money. His first book (I think it was on Duran Duran) was written because he thought it would be a commercial success, and was anything but. At least when you make something you love, even if you don't get paid, you've still got the art left. I also really liked the story he told about someone asking him for advice on doing something (I forget the particulars) and the solution was to tell her to pretend she was the kind of person who could do that. That's pretty brilliant. There's also a poignant moment when he reveals the best advice he ever received (from Stephen King no less) - but I'll let you discover that gem for yourselves.

A quick note about the presentation of this book - I generally like Chip Kidd's designs but the way he's formatted the speech in this book makes it less readable than it would be if it were simply straight text, which I would've preferred. Instead it's got varying fonts, colours, and sizes that I suppose takes the message of creativity on board but makes reading it a less pleasant experience. Alternatively, if you haven't the cash for this book, the speech is also on Youtube and Vimeo for free so you can watch Gaiman give the speech instead (recommended).

Make Good Art is a short but delightful message of art, choices, and the courage to do both - whatever happens, an artist makes art, whatever happens, you should make art too: so do it. Well worth a read for anyone really but especially for those who might need a good kick up the bum to get creating, whatever form that takes.

Keep going towards that mountain.

[Anya · Rating 4 out of 5]

“And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

Make good art.

I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Make it on the good days too.”

I'm inspired.

[fer · Rating 4 out of 5]

"People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They'll forgive the lateness of the work if it's good, and if they like you. And you don't have to be as good as the others if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you"

[Marianna Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will never NOT tear up reading or listening to this speech.

[verbava · Rating 4 out of 5]

make good art в оформленні чіпа кідда працює, як скринька з пружинкою: ти приблизно знаєш, що там буде, але воно все одно вискакує на тебе яскраво й несподівано.

гейман пише: робіть те, що любите; не бійтеся падати; не мучтеся синдромом самозванця, навпаки, якщо не певні, чи можете щось зробити, вдайте, що ви якраз той, хто може, і поводьтеся, як він; отримуйте задоволення. і це прості речі, проте він уміє їх говорити гарно й таки натхненно. надихально.

а чіп кідд додає ще трохи пружинок.

[chaity · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.”

You probably need this little book in your life. Just saying.

3 stars.

[Paola Ramos · Rating 5 out of 5]

ALL THE PRAISE TO NEIL GAIMAN!!!!!!!!!!! I literally would read his grocery list if I could.

I feel very inspired rn!

[Kayla Charisse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super inspirational! The typography is outstanding and definitely outside-the-box, which is just an added bonus. This would be perfect to give as a gift to any aspiring creators out there!

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Q:
Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. (c)

[deborah o'carroll (offline during 2026) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread April 2021

Still adore this so much and finally have my own copy so I can read it whenever I want. <3

Original review, 2016

I love this little book so much. I'm so very very glad that I picked it up at the library. Now I want to own a copy of my own so that I can read it whenever I like.

Every writer should read this. EVERY WRITER. Every artist of any kind. Read this.

Or, if you don't, at least go watch the video of the author speaking (in a fabulous British accent) all of the words in this book and a few more, at the commencement address at which he presented this speech. It's 19 minutes long, and well worth every second. https://vimeo.com/42372767

Four things:
-Inspiring.
-Funny.
-Fraud police.
-Make Good Art.
This has all of those, and I'm extremely glad I read and listened to it. :)

However you consume it, whether through reading the delightfully original and art-like arrangement of the words in this book, or listening to the author saying them online, I do hope that you will take 20 minutes out of your day to absorb these words.

Because they are inspiring and funny and just a little perfect, and it will be some of the best 20 minutes you've spent.

That's what I think, anyway.

[Jessica (Books: A true story) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked how Neil Gaiman talked about how he made life choices. He had a goal of becoming an author that he imagined as a mountain in the distance. He looked at the choices in front of him and decided whether they got him closer or farther to that mountain. I thought that was great advice. This is a great gift book. It has beautiful typography. In a nutshell, here's the six pieces of advice he gave:

1. When you start art you have no idea what you are doing. This is great.
2. If you have an idea, do that.
3. Deal with the problems of failure
4. I hope you make mistakes
5. Make your art.
6. Get work how you can and do two out of these three things: good work, easy to work with, work on time.

Other tidbits of advice that I liked: make up your own rules since you don't know what you are doing. Pretend to be the person you want to be. Enjoy where you are.

[ashleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

For 2019: I saw this going around on my dash, and felt a very strong urge to watch it again. I then went back and looked at a transcript as well. This is just such a wonderful speech. I think I need to print out bits a hang them up. I forgot about my work for a larger part of 2018, and thanks a class I found my way back to it. There truly is nothing I love more than I love creating even when it's difficult and not turning out how I want it to, and this speech is a great reminder of that. That even when it isn't working out, that it's worth it because I can do it and I love doing it. I'm thinking this will be a new tradition of mine to watch/read every year.

For 2018: I actually just watched the speech cus heard the typography in the physical edition was shit. Maybe I'm cheating but I like to think of it as audiobooking but I get to look at a moving picture. Anyway, I adored this. It was inspiring and clever and wise, and I'm glad I have this to think about going into a new year. Maybe it's cheesy and time is just something humans made up, but I'll always think the new year as a beginning and a means to start again. I find comfort in that. Here's to 2018 and to making good art :)

[Ian D · Rating 4 out of 5]

“So be wise. And if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise and then just behave like they would. Now go, and make interesting mistakes. Make Interesting. Mistakes. Make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for you being here.
Make good art.”

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully designed, hardbound edition of Gaiman's famous commencement address. Inspiring for authors, artists, anyone who is or wants to be in a creative field. The design of the book is sumptuous and fun, and makes for a perfect gift.

[Richard Wright · Rating 2 out of 5]

A written transcript of a speech Gaiman delivered in 2012 (and which is easily found online, but I wanted a copy over of it). The speech is a glorious thing, about courage, and choices, and art. Everybody should read it. The book? It's basically an attempt to practice what Gaiman preaches, a exercise in visual design. It fails on every front to impress, or even just to FUNCTION, because it makes reading the actual speech extraordinarily difficult. It gets in the way. It's a barrier, where if it were to work it would have to be a complement. Deeply, deeply annoying.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Neil Gaiman commencement speech to artists, designed and illustrated by Chip Kidd. The advice is solid from someone who has written dozens of books, comics, screenplays, without going to art school or even college to become a writer. HE LEARNED TO WRITE BY WRITING, and failing, and not following whatever rules art/writing programs seem to put in place, which is why he has been particularly successful. He's unique. You can see the speech on Vimeo or Youtube if you want, too.

[Rosangela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely edition! Nice quick read! It's Gaiman’s inspiring speech designed by the graphic artist Chip Kidd.

It's a really good book to read when you feel sad.

It'll cheer you up.

"The old rules are crumbling, and nobody knows what the new rules are, so make your own rules."

[Eric Novello]

Curtinho (curtíssimo?) e na medida para dar uma animada.
Autoajuda para autores e profissões que lidam com criatividade.