Design the Life You Love: A Guide to Thinking About Your Life Playfully and with Optimism: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future - Softcover

Ayse Birsel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607748819 ISBN 13: 9781607748816

Publisher: Ten Speed Press, 2015

Synopsis

A joyful, inspirational guide to building the life you've always dreamed of, using the principles and creative process of an award-winning product designer.

     Life, just like a design problem, is full of constraints--time, money, age, location, and circumstances. You cannot have everything, and if you want more out of it, you have to be creative about how to make what you need and what you want co-exist. This requires design thinking. Design the Life You Love uses a simple but proven creative thinking and design process to give ordinary people new tools to think about life differently, and also includes fascinating examples from the world of art and design that relate to each step of the process, plus guided creative exercises. Turn constraints into opportunities with optimism and holistic thinking using four simple steps: taking the whole apart, forming a new point of view, putting it back together, and giving it form. The striking design and Ayse Birsel's hand-drawn art and type set off her brilliant, life-changing design process, empowering and inspiring readers to create a better life.

About this title

About the Author

AYSE BIRSEL has been designing award-winning products for over twenty years. She is the co-founder of Birsel + Seck, an innovative design studio in New York that partners with leading brands and Fortune 500 companies. She teaches at SVA and has taught at the Pratt Institute. Her work is in the permanent collections of the MOMA and Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. She has received numerous design awards, including the IDEA Gold Award, ID Magazine Excellence Award, and Athena Award for Excellence in Furniture Design from RISD.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Dear reader,

YOU ARE COURAGEOUS!

If you are reading this book, it means that you want to be the designer of your own life; that you are interested in thinking about your life proactively; that you have things to explore and changes you want to make creatively.

This book is for anyone who, like me, thinks that your life is your most important project. It does not require that you have any design or creative experience, just the desire to explore your life from a new point of view and to learn to think like a designer. Welcome to designing the life you love.

ABOUT DESIGN THE LIFE YOU LOVE

Design the Life You Love started as an experiment. I had just finished putting my creative process on paper, as a tool to share with my team at Birsel + Seck, the design studio I lead with my husband, Bibi Seck, in New York, and our clients. But first I needed a test project. What better testing ground than my own life, something I have come to consider my biggest project? I first shared it with my friends, who’ve helped me to fine-tune the steps and given me the confidence to go do it. Then I did my first workshop. And things started to grow from there. Which brings us to this book you’re holding in your hands!

WHAT IS THIS BOOK?
This is a workbook to use interactively, take notes on, paste pictures into, draw on its pages, color in if you feel in the mood . . . then refer back to each time you have a problem you want to solve or just want to refresh yourself on the process of designing your life. This is an evolving process, one that you get better at the more you do it, and that you can adapt to the changes in your life with its ups and downs. But I shouldn’t really call it a workbook. This is actually a PLAYBOOK. A book in which to think playfully!

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
20 Minutes
Do 20 minutes or so and then take a break. Come back later or the next day.

Always Right
There are no wrong answers here, only your answers. 

Draw and Write
You don’t have to draw like Picasso, but just draw.

Playful
Play when you’re designing in this book. Like a child. Don’t forget that this rabbit will be your reminder!

WHY DESIGN?
Design is about identifying and working within given constraints to arrive at new and better solutions. Life, just like a design problem, is full of constraints: time, money, age, location, circumstances, etc. You cannot have everything. If you want more, you have to be creative about how to make what you need and what you want coexist. This requires design thinking.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ten Speed Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1607748819
• ISBN 13: 9781607748816
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256