Random House Books Glimmer: How design can transform your business, your life, and maybe even the world

The whole meaning of 'Design' has changed - it is now about being the catalyst of change rather than the perceived art of form and colour, and about identifying the unarticulated requirements of customers. It is the best kept secret that design driven organisations far out perform those that ignore it. Glimmer sums this up simply and intelligently. Buy this book. Then give copies to all your clients.

Overall, I really liked this book. As a non-designer, I found the presentation of the different aspects of what's meant by design and design thinking extremely useful - and the different examples and stories are very useful and insightful. The different definitions of design presented in the book are also quite helpful. I agree with some of the other reviewers that hopefully this book will start a more general discussion of design and design thinking, and its potential role in solving many of today's problems. Two comments, however, on what I missed as I was reading the book: 1) that there would be more discussion of non-physical design thinking, ie, in scientific and related conceptual areas; and 2) that the last chapter, Begin Anywhere, would be more instructional.By the way, I was reading this book and another book on design, Change by Design by Tim Brown, during the Thanksgiving week, and thus, I finished both of them! On reflection, both are excellent book, but to my way of thinking, both are leaving out a whole area of design thinking that's sorely in need of being addressed by serious design thinking, namely, how to represent scientific data and information?

Expand your thinking about design. UPS saw that route time could be shortened with fewer left-hand turns. Design favoring right-hand turns would save time and gas. Routes were redesigned. Like that? This book is full of twists in conventional thinking that produces extraordinary results. If you can skim read, you'll get through this book faster - it isn't dense, just full of inspiring design considerations. As we trouble-shoot a planet that's really taking a hit from the presence of humans, we need extraordinary thinking.

This book is a nice surprise. It takes this big question -- what is design? -- and answers it in a sweeping book written in a thoroughly entertaining and readable style. Berger pulls the reader into the subject with plenty of fascinating and compelling anecdotes and interviews with a wide-ranging group of design stars. Think Malcolm Gladwell writing about design and its many facets.Glimmer explains designers' innovative approaches to taking on -- and solving -- such disparate problems as making a readable and useable prescription pill bottle, to getting a million teenagers to stop smoking, to accessing clean water to supply a small African village. Berger uses the design philosophy of Bruce Mau (to whom everything, including one's life, is a design project) to put in context the endless possibilities of what design can achieve, and on the way, improve our lives. This book presents a fascinating and hopeful look at design, and shows us how a "glimmer" could just maybe change the world.(OH -- and the illustrations and graphics add a very nice touch.)

Despite my verbalized commitment to live life by design and not default, I never thought to mine the minds of those who mastered the art and science of "Design." Specially, to look to them for insights, practices and secrets by which I might benefit. Thanks to Warren Berger, those design fundamentals were delivered to me in a provocative, interesting and useful framework. Just as with Berger's other book, A More Beautiful Question, in CAD Monkeys, Dinosaur Babies and T-Shaped People, I gained a fresh perspective on living my life that will be part of how I process it moving forward. For those looking to see their lives newly, and create them consciously and by design, I recommend this book.