Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life, Your Business, and Maybe Even the World - Hardcover

Berger, Warren

4.12

309 ratings by Goodreads

9780307356734: Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life, Your Business, and Maybe Even the World

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307356736 ISBN 13: 9780307356734

Publisher: Random House Canada, 2009

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Can great design transform people's lives? And can we all learn from the way great designers think? For a new generation of designers, such as Bruce Mau and Yves Behar, the answer to both questions is an unequivocal 'Yes'. To them, design is more than just a question of fashion or taste; it's a way of asking fundamental questions in order to solve complex problems. In "Glimmer", award-winning journalist Warren Berger shows how these visionary thinkers are taking design principles out of the studio and applying them to the tough issues of today, from making medicines safer to counteracting the threats of global warming. By approaching seemingly intractable problems with simple thought-processes that often seem counter-intuitive - 'ask stupid questions', 'embrace constraint' - designers are creating 'glimmer moments', when a life-changing ideas crystallise in the mind, and coming up with breathtakingly innovative solutions.

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Product Description

The first book to reveal how thinking like a designer can help solve the greatest challenges we face in business, society, and our daily lives.

What can we learn from the ways great designers think-and how can it improve our world? In this highly original book by journalist Warren Berger, in collaboration with celebrated designer Bruce Mau, ten groundbreaking principles of design are shown in action-addressing business, social, and personal challenges and improving the way we think, work, and live.

Glimmer takes readers on a journey through today's fascinating world of design, where the formerly distinct disciplines of graphic, product, and social design are undergoing "smart recombinations." In the cutting-edge studios of Mau and other visionaries, everything is ripe for reinvention-including the ways businesses function, children learn, and communities thrive. Designers are solving problems at an unprecedented pace today by using improved technology and the highly practical design principles described in this book, such as "Ask stupid questions," "Make hope visible," "Work the metaphor," "Embrace constraints," and "Begin anywhere." Glimmer inspires readers to apply these same principles to their own life challenges.

While celebrated designers work on re-creating the world, Berger reveals the growing grassroots "glimmer movement" in which everyday people are emerging as designers and problem solvers. Readers will be fascinated by how "transformation design" is reinventing companies and addressing thorny social problems. Berger shares stories of how burned fingers, wrenched backs, and mixed-up pills all led to ingenious new product designs.

In a time of anxiety and retrenchment, this hopeful yet hardheaded book illuminates "the glimmer of possibility and potential-that first spark of an innovative idea or a life-changing plan." According to Berger, "This faint light is all around us and also within us, if we can learn to recognize and nurture it." The best designers already know how to transform that glimmer of possibility into the steady glow of creation and innovation-and with the inspiration of Glimmer, we're now all able to do the same.
Amazon Exclusive: What Can We Learn from the World’s Greatest Designers?

The answer to the above question is "a lot." We can learn how to solve problems better. How to look at the world around us with a fresh eye. How to think more creatively, and ultimately, how to open up new possibilities in our lives.

These are the things that great designers do every day. But the premise in my new book Glimmer is: "You don't have to be a designer to think like one." There's a whole way of thinking used by designers, and a step-by-step process they follow, that really can be embraced by anyone—whether you're in business, out there trying to contribute to the world in some way, or if you're just looking to improve your own life.

What I found, in studying some of the world's most innovative designers, is that—in addition to being immensely talented and bright people, of course—they tend to have two big things they rely on. First, they have a certain mindset that enables them to be fearless and optimistic and open to all kinds of new possibilities. And second, they have a framework they use—a proven methodology that helps them to bring their ideas and plans to life, to get things done, and to be successful. I sort of dejargonize this methodology and give lots of examples of how it works in Glimmer.

One of the things designers are known for doing is questioning everything. In fact there's a joke that asks, "How many designers does it take to change a lightbulb?" To which the answer is: "Does it have to be a lightbulb?"

It's a joke, but it's not: Designers all the time really do ask basic things like Does it have to be a lightbulb? The design process often begins with questioning the conventional wisdom about how we currently do things.

Of course, it's one thing to question the world around you-but it's much harder to begin to change it. As I write in Glimmer, if you just question everything without trying to improve it, you may end up being more of a whiner than a designer. Designers actually must take action in order to create new possibilities—that's their job. And so it's not surprising they've developed proven methods to help them do that.

I examine those methods in detail in the book, but they involve, for example:

Teaching oneself to be open to new ideas by "thinking laterally" (which is really about tricking your brain into moving in unexpected directions, instead of the usual straightforward ones).

Developing a better antenna for figuring out what's missing & what's really needed in the world around you—that's how designers find great opportunities.

Learning how to bring ideas to life, and make them real. All of us have ideas in our heads, but designers make their ideas real and tangible-by sketching, by modeling, by scotch-taping things together. It's what designers call prototyping, and it's the way you take a dream and gradually build it into a reality. And this is a technique anyone can use.

Another important thing designers do is, they "fail forward." Most of us are afraid to fail, but designers fail every day. What they understand is that every failure—if you know how to react to it and use it—can be a critical step that brings you closer to the end goal.

These are just a few of the basic tools and principles designers use. And what really surprised me, as I worked on the book, was to see just how accessible these tools are to anyone. And how applicable they are to just about any situation.

In today's world, with all the challenges and problems we have to grapple with—both in our daily lives and in the world at large—we can benefit from having that designer mindset and methodology. Because the truth is, we all need to become better at facing up to tough challenges and finding new solutions.

From the Author:

After years of writing articles about creativity and advertising, I decided to set out to find a good answer to the fundamental question: "What is design?" Design is a fascinating subject in that everybody's interested in it, but very few have a clear understanding of what it is and how it works. I found out there are as many definitions as there are designers. Yet after talking to hundreds of creatives, I also found there are some universal principles for creativity and innovation from which we all can learn. These principles transformed the way I work and approach problem-solving, and will do the same for you.

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