John McClain designs homes to be alluring, functional, and most importantly, happy—and now he teaches the reader how to do it for themselves. The Designer Within pulls back the curtain to reveal the process of interior design from interior designer John McClain. McClain’s candid and humorous look into the entire design process, from conception to completion, will allow anyone to find the designer within themselves, and ultimately create the home of their dreams. This isn’t a book about how to create a look for less, but rather a book with a detailed breakdown of professionally designed rooms. From kitchens to powder rooms, McClain dissects each space with actionable items for the reader to implement in their own home. The reader can apply one or all of his tips to start their own design process. The Designer Within is chock-full of gorgeous images from McClain’s beautiful design projects and is the perfect coffee table book; but it’s also a practical road map for embarking on interior design in your own home.

Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious—even liberating—book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints. The goal: guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time. In this entertaining and insightful analysis, cognitive scientist Don Norman hails excellence of design as the most important key to regaining the competitive edge in influencing consumer behavior. Now fully expanded and updated, with a new introduction by the author, The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how—and why—some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.

The role of design, both expert and nonexpert, in the ongoing wave of social innovation toward sustainability. In a changing world everyone designs: each individual person and each collective subject, from enterprises to institutions, from communities to cities and regions, must define and enhance a life project. Sometimes these projects generate unprecedented solutions; sometimes they converge on common goals and realize larger transformations. As Ezio Manzini describes in this book, we are witnessing a wave of social innovations as these changes unfold—an expansive open co-design process in which new solutions are suggested and new meanings are created. Manzini distinguishes between diffuse design (performed by everybody) and expert design (performed by those who have been trained as designers) and describes how they interact. He maps what design experts can do to trigger and support meaningful social changes, focusing on emerging forms of collaboration. These range from community-supported agriculture in China to digital platforms for medical care in Canada; from interactive storytelling in India to collaborative housing in Milan. These cases illustrate how expert designers can support these collaborations—making their existence more probable, their practice easier, their diffusion and their convergence in larger projects more effective. Manzini draws the first comprehensive picture of design for social innovation: the most dynamic field of action for both expert and nonexpert designers in the coming decades.

In Change by Design, Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, the celebrated innovation and design firm, shows how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Change by Design is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

What would it mean if your perfect life was awaiting your discovery? What if you knew the exact steps that would allow you to discover and achieve this perfect life? And what if you had an Invisible Architect-an all-powerful all-knowing best friend at your beckon call to help you discover, design, and achieve your perfect life? And what if your perfect life has already been achieved and is waiting for you to claim it? This is exactly what award-winning musician/author John Novello offers in the pages of his extraordinary new transformational book, the Invisible Architect. You'll learn that there is indeed a Perfect All-Knowing Power, an Invisible Architect, or to put it in more scientific terms, an Invisible Field of Intelligent Energy that permeates everything that exists, including you and me and all life, matter, energy, space, and time, and is available to us for information, advice, comfort, and assistance in designing our perfect Divine lives. The Invisible Architect is a rare look into the inner world of acclaimed jazz musician/composer/author John Novello by the author himself and based on his discovery of an inner power we all possess but rarely knowingly use. This book was written because of a Divine unsolicited conversation he had with the Invisible Architect one day. Here is the conversation... Invisible Architect: "John, you now need to spread the WORD!" John, confused: "What WORD?" Invisible Architect: "That everybody is one with the Invisible Architect and could be employing this miraculous energy to design their perfect lives from within!" John: "But there are already many books on this subject." Invisible Architect: "True, but not from your unique perspective as a jazz musician who has experienced these wonderful miracles!" End of conversation. And therein lies the genesis of this book. I cannot imagine operating without my mystical friend and advisor-the Invisible Architect. And it is now very clear to me that my duty is to spread the WORD to everyone so that they too can design their perfect lives from within, as long as they understand the spiritual mechanics involved-the relationship between the Universal Energy (the Invisible Architect) and its creations and the interactions thereof. But first you must become aware of the Architect, learn how to consciously commune with and employ the Architect, and finally trust the Architect to manifest your desires as only it knows how! The Invisible Architect is a captivating story of the aspirations and cognitions of the life of a now-famous jazz musician. Enlightening, inspirational, tragic, and miraculous, The Invisible Architect is a self-help program for designing your perfect life from within-the exact process of how our inner world creates our outer world. Spread the WORD...!

In Look Both Ways, respected branding consultant and design community leader Debbie Millman has constructed a series of essays that examine the close relationship between design and everyday life. You'll find inspiration on every page as you meander through illuminating observations that are both personal and universal. Each beautifully illustrated essay reveals the magic - and wonder - of the often unseen world around us. Excerpt from "Look Both Ways" It occurred to me, as I stood there, that I could simultaneously, vividly look both ways - backward and forward, in time - at once. I remembered longing to know what was coming, who I would become and how. And I suddenly saw it all over again in front of me. The light was exactly the same, and as the sun fell and the summer shadows slivered against the elegant, lean, concrete towers in the distance, I recognized the smell of the warm air, the precise pink and grey of the coming dusk and the mysterious melancholy and joy of both knowing and not-knowing, and the continuity that occurs when both collide.—Debbie Millman

Universal Principles of Interior Design presents 100 concepts and guidelines that are critical to a successful visualization and application of interior design. Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, this comprehensive reference pairs clear explanations of every topic with visual examples of it applied in practice. By considering these concepts and examples, you can learn to make more informed and ultimately better design decisions. The book is organized alphabetically so that principles can be easily and quickly referenced. For those interested in addressing a specific challenge or application problem, the principles are also indexed by questions commonly confronting designers. Each principle is presented in a two-page format: The left-hand page contains a succinct definition, a full description of the principle, and examples of and guidelines for its use. Side notes, which appear to the right of the text, provide elaborations and references. The right-hand page contains visual examples and related graphics to support a deeper understanding of the principle. This landmark reference is the standard for interior design students, practitioners, and educators, and others who seek to broaden and improve their understanding of and expertise in interior design. The titles in the Rockport Universal series offer comprehensive and authoritative information and edifying and inspiring visual examples on multidisciplinary subjects for designers, architects, engineers, students, and anyone who is interested in expanding and enriching their design knowledge.