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

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.

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.