Design the Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future

(Paperback)

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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. An interactive journal that serves as 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 can't have everything, so you have to be creative to make what you want and what you need co-exist. Design the Life You Love is a joyful, inspirational guide to building the life you've always wanted, using the principles and creative process of an award-winning product designer. Through four steps that reveal hidden skills and wisdom, anyone can design a life they love!

Reviews

"This graphic workbook . . .encourages a playful approach to designing your own life from the ground up. Whereas most tools ask you to build on where you are, this one asks you to examine if youre in the right place to begin with."
RealSimple.com

"Ayse Birsel's warm, affirming tone convinces readers that a deeply fulfilling life is possible. . .Design the Life You Lovewould be the perfect gift for anyone in a rut, at a crossroads or about to embark on a new career path."
ShelfAwareness

"The book would benefit people wanting or needing to change their lives, from high achievers wondering what's next to people just starting their careers."
The Portland Oregonian

"I am beginning to realize that there is an opportunity to apply the metaphysical to certain design tactics. The designer Ayse Birsel proposes just that in her book. . . .A final extension of human-centric design, this application of design-to-life is analogous to the fusion of art and life."
Philip Wood, California Home + Design

"If youre like me and you really want to change, try her process. It will help you become the person you want to be and design a life you will love!"
Marshall Goldsmith,New York Timesbest selling author ofTriggers

Advance praise for Design the Life You Love:

Ayse Birsel is a designer who knows how to find elegant solutions for complex issues not only with products, but also with everybodys search for serenity, inspiration, and fulfillment in life.
Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture & design, Museum of Modern Art

I know its easy to live a pessimistic life, grinding it out and waiting for someone to give you orders. But just because its easy doesnt mean you should do it that way. Ayse Birsel has a better idea.
Seth Godin, author of What to Do When its Your Turn

Ayse Birsel has a unique gift for making the complex simple and the simplebeautiful. This book will help you to a better life and unleash your hidden creative talent.
Brian Walker, President and CEO of Herman Miller

Ayse Birsel has designed furniture, office systems, cookware and even a toilet seat. Taking what shes learned from product design, she has developed a fun, playful approach to designing a life you love. Who else but a designer could give you the tools you need to examine your life and make it the best it can be
John Edelman, CEO, Design Within Reach

If you want to stoke someones imagination, give them a picture book. If you want to feed their intellect, give them a book of literature. But if you want to fuel their future, give them this book. Design the Life You Love is an invitation to prioritize whats important in your lifeto literally put it down on paper through four simple but ingenious stepsand emerge with a kind of personal mission statement that will give you clarity, power, and purpose.
Allan Chochinov, chair of the MFA Products of Design program at the School of Visual Arts

Ayse Birsel has delivered the ideal self-help workbook for our harried ageone that is playful, smart, pragmatic, and contagiously optimistic. Her fun, simple exercises add up to a remarkably powerful tool for realigning your life with your dreams.
Mason Currey, author of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

Remember when people used to tell each other impatiently to "Get a life!" Well, with this engaging book, Ayse Birsel provides a well-wrought strategy for doing precisely that. In the process, readers gain some precious insights into what design is and what designers do.
Ralph Caplan, author, By Design, and recipient of the National Design Award for design thinking

Nothing is more important than designing the life that you love. One of the worlds best designers can show you how to do it!
Marshall Goldsmith, author ofTriggers, MOJO,andWhat Got You Here Wont Get You There

"A fun, interactive workbook for unleashing creativity and redesigning our daily lives."
Adam Grant, professor at the Wharton School and author of Give and Take

Ayse Birsel's book costs very little money, takes almost no time to go through and may have a gigantic impact on your life. This is good design: a tiny investment featuring enormous possibilities.
Stefan Sagmeister, Designer, Sagmeister & Walsh

Ayse Birsel's talent as a designer and her unique worldview collide perfectlyin Design The Life You Love. For anyone who is looking for an imaginativeyet logical way to think through life's challenges, this is foryou. Learn how to shift your perspectives with design-thinking, and be inspired by herillustrations along the way.
Beth Comstock, CEO, GEO Business Innovations

Author Bio

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.