Award-winning product and industrial designer Ayse Birsel is giddy with excitement on the launching of her book, "Design the Life You Love: Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future."
A book launch is slated mid-October at the Museum of Modern Art Design Store in Soho, New York. There are several book signing events, including one that will be held in one of the largest bookstores for visual arts and architecture in California, Hennessey Ingalls reported.
Birsel tweeted the positive initial response and countdown of events to her formal book launch. Social media is abuzz with features about the artist-cum-author; shout-outs of upcoming book signing events can be seen on Facebook and Twitter.
The Turkish born designer co-founded the product design studio Birsel + Seck with her husband. The firm counts among its clients leading brands and Fortune 500 companies.
Birsel teaches the design thinking method at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and conducts workshops for corporate clients.
In her book, "Design the Life You Love: Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future," Birsel imparted that the design principles architects or homemakers use to liven up the décors and overall ambience of their dwelling spaces can be applied to life itself.
Birsel's design thinking strategy may strike many people as familiar, yet is refreshingly different. In a nutshell, it involves positive thinking, putting oneself in other people's shoes to see their perspective, seeing the big picture, and collaborating with people who can teach added insights.
The designer-author who studied industrial design at Middle Eastern Technical University in Turkey realized early on that being an outside observer has benefits. This perspective led her to work with organizations that seek to embrace change.
Birsel said the book project started out as an experiment, using her own life circumstances and feedback from friends. Rebuilding or redesigning one's life is like reinventing soup, Birsel wrote.
Indeed, there is a fun approach to inch closer to one's dream life. Individuals can kickstart their way to a better life by doodling something that will jumpstart the right brain, mulling over the things they love and those they want to avoid.
The next step is to take a good, hard look at one's deconstructed life, assess it, and create a blueprint. The next stage involves thinking about inspiring influences, jotting down their qualities, and then after reviewing these, putting them back together in a form that is highly appealing.
The design thinking focus can help people reconstruct and approach their lives with newfound zest. The end goal, as Birsel puts it, is to enjoy a life that is coherent with or attuned to one's authentic self, an article featured in Life Reimagined cited.