Creativity: utility+novelty=book+bottle

When I first read the topic of this post I thought it would have been very difficult to come up with creative solutions to combine two inanimate objects, but after some time of brainstorming, ideas started to come up on their own. Here is the outcome:

First word: BOOK

 Pages, cover, study, homework, school, desk, pen, words, characters, plot, author, pictures, scrapbook,  novel, literature, history, relax, time, boring, exciting, library, title, hobby, collection, paper, shelf, bookcase, e-book, newspaper, magazine, journal, print, ink, writing, computer, thick, encyclopedia, detective story, children, Feltrinelli, Mondadori, Barnes & Noble…

The word “book” makes me immediately think about school. Reading has never been my favorite hobby unfortunately, then many of the books I read when I was a child or a teenager had been suggested by my teachers for specific school subjects. Maybe that’s the reason of my negative bias against books. Every time that I’ve to start a new one, I look at the number of pages to calculate how much time I need to finish it.

Although I’ve always preferred to hang out with friends than to lay on the bed and read a book, I’m fascinated by libraries. The amount of different books that you can find there, the smell that you perceive when you go inside, the faces of people concentrated on the reading activity…has an indescribable effect on me.

The same happens when you enter a bookstore: you feel it! You feel the wooden shelves, the bright colors of hundred different book covers, the soft music in the background, the signs indicating the sections (children, novels, best-sellers…), it can be defined a customer experience and personally I don’t think that the modern e-book would replace it so fast.

Second word: BOTTLE

 Water, full, empty, wine, shape, caps, cork, glass, plastic, container, recycling, beverage, supermarket, shelves, lunch, sport, thirsty, hot, ice, mountain, perfume, sugar, cellar, alcohol, vending machine, bottle neck, jar, liquid, sodium, pieces of glass, drinking, eating, family, friend, fun, coca cola…

A bottle is something that we bring with us without even realize it: when we have breakfast, there is the bottle of milk or juice on the table, when we go to university, we take a bottle of water with us, at lunch we need a bottle of coke and when we work out, a bottle of water is necessary.

Each product has a different shape: water, wine, milk and some of them are the symbol of specific brands (Coca Cola, Dasani, Absolut Vodka…).

A bottle can serve several functions: it can be used to satisfy a basic need (I’m thirsty and I drink something), but can also be a design object (a particular uncommon shape can be used as fancy ornament).

Combination Ideas of the Two Objects:

1. A book about bottles
2. A bottle with a book inside, like a kaleidoscope, you can read it from the hole
3. A lamp with a book as base and a bottle as support for the light bulb
4. Light bulb with the shape of a bottle and a book as lampshade
5. Book used as saucer to gather the water that ooze with when the bottle is ice-cold
6. Pages of a book used to wrap a bottle (intsead of normal wrapping paper for gifts) or wrapping paper decorated with bottles for a book to be given as a gift
7. Box shaped as book with a bottle inside (usually wine bottles of value have fancy boxes that reflect the quality of what they contain)
8. Rigid cover of a book used to hid the flask of alcoholics
9. Book with the shape of a bottle (i.e. for a wine guide)
10. Bottle print on the cover of the book
11. Bookcase made of books and bottles: many books glued together form the shelf, glass bottles glued together form the support (I watched a tv show in the US where a man made a coffee table gluing together some of books and a wooden base, then I guess it's possible to build a bookcase in the same way, but in that case I don’t want to be the mover!)
12. Weight for weight-lifting: it can be made gluing together 2 books at the ends of a bottle
13. Books vending machine… instead of bottles!
14. Bottle used as book end on a shelf
15. Bottle caps used as bookmarks
16. Bottle used as lower vase with book at the base
17. Percentage of the water price used to buy books to people in developing countries
18. Book made of plastic bottles
19. Book-bottle necklace
20. Bug Book and Bottle (looking for pictures to insert in this post I discovered that a thing called “Bug Book & Bottle” exists: http://www.overstock.com/Books-Movies-Music-Games/Bug-Book-and-Bottle/2735312/product.html?cid=123620&fp=F&mr:trackingCode=24F98E2D-52C1-DF11-98FF-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA)

Reading this post again it seems that I’m crazy and that most of these products are simply unuseful, but some of them could be viable.

-          A glass bottle used as flower vase can be a fashionable ornament if designed with a particular shape or materials.

-          A lamp with the book as base and a bottle as light bulb support can function as ornament too

-          A book-bottle necklace exists already: http://blujay.com/?page=ad&adid=3358513&cat=20060000

-         A percentage of the price of water bottles used to buy books for the developing countries isn’t exactly a product but maybe can be a good idea too..

If creativity means to combine utility and novelty, well, some of these products could be viable, appropriate and original innovations.