Have Fun Inventing: Learn to Think Up Products and Imagine Future Inventions (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781439269053)

Steven M. Johnson was born in 1938 and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. His undergraduate studies were at Yale University and U.C. Berkeley. He lives in Southern California with his wife. His son also lives in the Los Angeles area. He earned his living in careers as an urban planner, newspaper artist and future trends analyst at California companies. His drawings have been featured in newspapers and magazines both nationally and abroad, as well as online in Design Mind (Frog Design), Good, Harper's, Mother Jones, Road & Track, Scion, Sierra, The Atlantic, The Futurist, The New York Times, The San Francisco Examiner, The Washington Times, Tur & Retur (Swedish Railways), Txchnologist, Utne Reader, Whole Earth Review, and also Box and Brutus (Japanese magazines). Two books have been published: What the World Needs Now, Ten Speed Press, 1984 and 2001, and Public Therapy Buses, Information Specialty Bums, Solar Cook-A-Mats and Other Visions of the 21st Century, St. Martin's Press, 1991. In recent years, his work has been shared widely on the Internet. A collection of his images and references to publications and limited edition giclee prints can be found on his Web page, www.patentdepending.com. He has been a consultant with performance artist Michael Portnoy on several exhibits at The Taipei Biennial in Taiwan. Publicly, he has discussed his methods for creating unusual, whimsical or prophetic images with attendees at an art show featuring his work in Palo Alto, and for several years at The Maker Faire in San Mateo and Pasadena in California. He has given workshops and a public lecture at Elon University in North Carolina, and lectures in New York City to classes of graduate students at the School of Visual Arts and to employees at the international headquarters of Smart Design.