Over the past fifteen years, the word “design” has been bandied about in the popular press, as designer jeans, designer teapots, and designer drugs have captured our imagination—if not our understanding. When we hear the word design, we often think of a sleekly styled product or a great piece of fashion or an attractively decorated room. We might also think of the professional designers who have been trained to create such objects or environments.

DESIGN YOUR LIFE is not about shopping or decorating. Nor is it about a caste of specialists endowed with mysterious talents and impenetrable secrets.

DESIGN YOUR LIFE is about thinking.

DESIGN YOUR LIFE applies ideas from design theory and practice to some of the basic problems of daily living, from organizing a household and thinking creatively in the workplace to achieving a relaxed and satisfying erotic life. Yes, design can be brought to bear on all of these things, from good housekeeping to hard work to great sex.

DESIGN YOUR LIFE doesn’t mean that you have to have your act together and your drawers all sorted, or that your life is free of challenges. Hey—even Martha Stewart has problems! Indeed, it’s precisely when we feel the need for more order, sigificance, and control that design can enter the picture of our lives and help us compose it.

How are people without formal design backgrounds using design in their lives: to make their work days more rewarding, to raise creative children in a consumer world, to enhance the beauty and order of their environments, to communicate with various publics great and small in order to get things done, and to grow old in style? DESIGN-YOUR-LIFE.ORG aims to ask the questions, and start getting the answers, from people like you!

contact:
editors@design-your-life.org

 

© Ellen and Julia Lupton, 2005. All rights reserved.

ORDER
Use principles of design to organize and improve your environment at home, at work, and in the world.

OPPORTUNITY
Use design skills to enhance your expressive, economic, and social horizons.

GO PUBLIC
Use design to communicate with style and substance to publics large and small.

BE YOUR OWN BRAND
Put your own stamp on what you make and do.

PRODUCE MORE, CONSUME LESS
Design it yourself using digital tools and craft skills.

SPEND MORE, BUY LESS
Make fewer, better, and more beautiful consumer choices.

TIME BY DESIGN
Use design to take control of the clock.

LIFE STORIES
Raise creative kids and grow old in style.