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6 Fabulous Free Books to Boost Creativity & Inspire Your Best Work

Longtime readers know that we offer a series of free books for Adobe software with over 30 different titles that anyone can download on how to best use the different major products… These books are very popular and well-received.

But since Adobe software is all about creating, for a long time there was a missing piece: a collection of free books simply about building your creativity – something that everyone in the world can use and benefit from… So here is that set! You can legally download and use the six PDF e-books below to inspire your own creative process and help improve your work, no matter what you do in life. They are (in our view) all easy, enjoyable, and enriching reads.

Book #1: The Creative Aid Handbook (142 Pages)

Download "The Creative Aid Handbook" Free!

Co-creators Richard Tapp and Nicole Smith of Kooroo Kooroo rightly describe The Creative Aid Handbook as a outside-of-the-box resource to get your creative juices flowing: “We wrote, designed, and illustrated a book featuring unusual tips to nurture your creative well-being, boost your creative intellect and foster internal inspiration. Meant to serve as a mini-resource for your creative projects and food for your creative thoughts. We’ve included our own valuable refer­ences and resources we know and trust as a means to help you get your projects done. We want to give you the creative push from a direction you may not have thought of, be it informative, inspirational, or simply entertaining.”

And included with this must-have volume for creatives is free companion artwork you can download as well (in AI format): “In keeping with our principles and an open-source ideology, all of the art featured, plus extra concept work for this book is downloadable in vector (.AI) format. This means you are free to download, keep, re-use and alter all art for whatever creative needs, purposes or endeavors you may have.”

Book #2: Creative Turnaround (69 Pages)

Free Book: Download & Begin Your "Creative Turnaround"

CreativeLive was founded on the principle that every­one should have the right and the means to pursue their creative aspirations. That includes you. They offer many great online classes, and the live ones are always free. And in this spirit, they’ve also put together a terrific book for you: Creative Turnaround – Advice & Inspiration for Artists + Artisans.

Within these pages, they’ve assembled inspiring and practical advice from world-class experts on how to take your own vision for the coming year and turn it into a reality. They offer this guide as a free gift to you in the hopes that something here will move you to open your heart and take a risk: start a project, share your work, leave your day job, follow your dream, start your own business.

Wherever your creative passion takes you, this can be a helpful resource for you at every step of the journey. So what are you waiting for? Go for it and good luck!

Book #3: The Creative Self Workbook (23 Pages)

Get "The Creative Self Workbook" by Tina Essmaker

When was the last time you felt connect­ed to your creative self? The Creative Self Workbook is an invitation for you to engage with your creative self as a practice, over five days of exploratory exercises designed by creative coach Tina Essmaker.

You’ll explore: What does the Creative Self mean to you? Have you clarified your purpose? Are you in touch with your creative voice? Are you in alignment with your chosen career? How do you connect to the community around you? And where is this all taking you tomorrow, next month, next year?

In these pages, you’ll begin with discovering, or rediscov­ering, your voice and purpose. Then you’ll think about how you can best nurture the parts of yourself that support your creativity. You’ll be encouraged to consider people who are a source of strength to you and communities where you can thrive creatively. Ultimately, you’ll be asked to lay the foundation for an ongoing practice that embraces actions and truths to sustain you into the future and continue long beyond today.

Book #4: What Is Creativity? (75 Pages)

Download "What Is Creativity?" the Book - Free!

“Be more creative” is a phrase often used within business and marketing with little consideration given to its meaning. Many fields have seen seismic shifts over the last few years and being creative is now an essential ingredient to success. But what does it mean to be creative?

What Is Creativity? is a 75-page ebook written and illustrated by Shelli Walsh. The book is an intro­duction to what creative thinking is, with nine chapters to teach thinking skills and techniques on how to be more creative. It’s chock full of helpful tips and inspirational quotes from luminaries that you probably have never heard before.

The second half of the book asks noted industry thought leaders five key questions about what inspires them, entitled “What does creativity mean to you?” Chapter contributors include: Rand Fishkin, Wil Reynolds, Dave Trott, Lee Odden, Paddy Moogan, Neil Patel, Bas Van Den Beld and Chris Brogan, who all share their perceptive insights within.

Book #5: How to Be Creative (49 Pages)

Download "How to Be Creative" the Free Book!

Author Hugh MacLeod, an advertising executive and popular blogger with a flair for the creative, gives his 26 tried-and-true tips for being truly creative. Each point illustrated by a cartoon drawn by the author himself.

Written in irreverent and provocative style, How to Be Creative highlights the value of authenticity and hard work, and reveals the challenges and rewards of being creative. Notable chapter titles include: Ignore everybody, Everyone is born creative, Sing in your own voice, You are responsible for your own experience, Keep your day job, Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside, Avoid the Watercooler Gang, and Write from the heart. Caution: this book does contain some colorful language.

If you’ve ever felt the draw to do something creative but just haven’t been able to pull it together, you’ll love this manifesto.

Book #6: Time Management for Creative People (29 Pages)

Download the "Time Management for Creative People" Book Free

In order to create anything well, you’ve got to have the time to get it done. And while our increasingly digital and con­nect­ed world brings great promises, it also brings great distractions. Happily for us, longtime business coach and trainer Mark McGuinness has learned a lot about what it takes to get original work done in the midst of the demands and distractions of the 21st-century workplace – and he shares it freely in his ebook, Time Management for Creative People.

This book has been downloaded over 100,000 times, and has received enthusiastic feedback from people all over the world who say it has transformed their working habits and helped them achieve their artistic and professional goals. It’s full of practical advice for creatives, including: Finding the method in your creative madness, Identifying and prioritizing your most important work, Getting in the right state of mind for focused work, How to minimize interruptions and distractions, Managing e-mail effectively and How to remember – and fulfill – all your important commitments.

Download Now for Free (387 Pages Total)

So there you have it – six amazing and inspiring titles to download, read and share – all completely for free. You can download all of them here… hope they help let your creativity soar!

Download now

More Free Adobe Books (2,000+ Pages)

And to continue learning, don’t miss the dozens more free books for many Adobe products, covering recent versions of all major applications – learn how to best use Creative Cloud (CC), Creative Suite (CS6 and older), Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, XD, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Animate, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Lightroom, Elements, and more… Get them here!

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33 thoughts on “6 Fabulous Free Books to Boost Creativity & Inspire Your Best Work”

  1. For Adobe Team,

    On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Photoshop and I don’t have words but thanks to all the employees of the company for their beautiful message of creativity, which are characterized more than any other company and to achieve art message of truth, goodness and beauty. Wishing you more creativity and success.

    My Greetings,
    Saad el-Din Ahmad
    2/21/2015

    Reply
  2. Your links to all these books point to the Adobe Forums. You may not be aware that there is a serious bug with the Adobe Forums (colloquially known as The Redirect Loop of Death) which prevents many users from accessing them at all.

    See this page.

    As you can see from this thread, this problem has been going on for over 4 years. I still have this problem, and cannot access this book from any of your links. Presumably the Adobe Forum posts you reference have links to the book. Perhaps you could divulge the link without passing through the inaccessible-to-me Adobe Forums.

    (And yes, not being able to access the Adobe Forums AT ALL is a major problem for me as a Creative Cloud user.)

    Reply
    • Sorry you’re having trouble Deborah. We have not heard of that before – and from the link you posted, it appears to be quite rare (only 8 people reported having the same issue in 4 years).

      It seems to be something funny with your account, most likely an unusual data conflict of some sort. The reason is because changing browsers or computers (or clearing your cache/cookies) doesn’t help you.

      Did you try modifying your Adobe ID names(s) on Profile tab of your Adobe account, as suggested? Several people there said that worked, and fixed the redirects they had.

      If not, you could just create a brand new Adobe ID and then contact Customer Service about transferring your licenses over. To create a new ID while keeping your same original email address, follow the 2-step process here. That should hopefully solve it for you.

    • PS: But just to clarify – you don’t even need an account to read the Forums! They are public and open for everyone to view. with no Adobe ID necessary. The only time a log in is required is if you want to post.

      You can test this yourself by opening any web browser, clearing your cache & cookies (to reset), and visiting any page there yourself. There is no access restriction.

    • Not sure what you mean, Ian. Are you having difficulty accessing the books? If so, is there any error or message you received?

      And if you’re having trouble accessing them using your regular browser, did you try with a different web browser – or using another computer or device?

      Also, are you blocking or filtering anything with your browser(s) – like cookies, downloads, or any sites or URLs? Adobe recommends turning those things off for downloads…

      Or are you running any utilities that might restrict your web surfing – like Ghostery, AdBlock, or Disconnect? Or possibly your firewall, antivirus program (esp. Kaspersky), or other third-party security software? It could be because of over-aggressive software or utilities like these.

      An alternative would be to try downloading the book PDF’s for mobile usage and reading with a tablet/iPad or smartphone/iPhone… That would avoid any issues with the desktop and then you could then share the books back to your computer using Dropbox, Box, or Creative Cloud online storage.

      Hope that helps!

  3. Please be advised that the five links and the download all link take you to unavailable.adobe.com. How can I download the free books? Thanks!

    Reply
    • Hey Dale, just tested the links and everything works fine for us, as well as the vast majority of readers who come to this page… No problems at all using any browser. Please see our previous reply above if you have any further difficulties.

  4. While I sincerely appreciate being able to use good software and download free books and tutorials that may be of assistance, I find it cloying that Adobe has fostered a pretentious lot of users who now call themselves ‘creatives.’ Many of these folks are undoubtedly creative people ( I have seen the evidence thereof), but it doesn’t make them special or entitled. Many others in all productive walks of life exhibit creativity, too. Should they be called ‘productives’ so they can feel special, too? Besides being pretentious, it is a bit silly. I understand Adobe is using the term ‘Creative’ for its commercial or business value as they are entitled to do. Users do not need to give themselves an ‘exalted’ title or category. Their works should speak for them.

    Reply
  5. Good day,

    I need some help from any CS5.5 guru out there. I have had a paid-for CS5.5 ever since it came out and have never had any upgrades applied to it. Today I got a 5.5 file from a friend but it will not open, the warning message stating: “Cannot open [file name]. Please upgrade your plug-ins to their latest versions, or upgrade to the latest version of Adobe InDesign.”

    I am lost running around in the various Adobe webpages, and need some direction in having my 5.5 updated (assuming that it is “old” plug-ins that are not allowing me to open the file).

    Thanks you you or anyone else out there who can help.

    Reply
  6. Heads up!
    One of the free books, “Creative Aid Booklet” (2013) is from a website that doesn’t exist.
    I found out because I clicked a link in the book to download free vector files and my firewall shouted a big alert. The link goes somewhere but not to koorooblog or koorookooroo.

    Reply
  7. hello. You have a good website, but tell me whether it’s fair to have download links disabled for me who is Iranian? I swear I found your website for several nights and days. It is cruel that all good things are not accessible to us Iranians and most people around the world are bad with Iranians. I am a poor boy who is really interested in graphic design that is not supported in my country itself just because I am Iranian and the income of life is hard to obtain, please free up free download links for Iranians 😭😭😭😭

    Reply
  8. Hello again. Incidentally, I know what I went to (Update Photoshop 2014.2) but when I clicked on the download link, I encountered an error (the server does not allow you to download this file). Dear friend, please if you can send to my email this update, God help us all. I really need this update, even my computer is built in 2007 and it works very poorly. I can’t even provide a good system in Iran and finally thank you for your good website and that you answered. 🌹💝

    Reply
    • Hmm. We have not ever seen that message before.

      So we looked into that, and it may be that Adobe blocks their downloads to certain countries:

      By downloading or using an Adobe software product you are certifying that you are not a national of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, or any country to which the United States embargoes goods …

      We’re very sorry, but there’s nothing we can do about that! Only Adobe controls it.

  9. hello. I downloaded the Photoshop 2014.2 update, but when I installed this update, Photoshop encountered an error of not responding, deleted my Photoshop and was not reinstalled.

    Reply

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