Cover Image: Think Like A Designer, Don't Act Like One

Think Like A Designer, Don't Act Like One

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Member Reviews

Very interesting look at the view of a designer. I like the photographs used in the book and the explanations and guidance for up and coming designers. I thought it made for a quick and easy read and useful for all those that are interested in design.

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A quick and informative read, with great tips on how to approach creativity and aspects of life. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and the images alongside the text adds to that pleasure. I think this would make a great gift for a friend or someone interested in the arts.

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Just a solid concise overview of what a designer does and how they should handle themselves. Def recommended for all designers.

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This book was not what I expected going in. I was not a fan of the format. Though there was an attempt to categorize the blurbs by focus areas, I still found that it didn’t live up to the potential of its title which to me, a product designer by profession, was a tad confusing. These are short blurbs rather than full on stories about various designers and (design) leaders & thinkers, which if I were to hop over to any networking platform such as twitter or Instagram, I could easily find a plethora of posts containing this info (and some were familiar to me for this exact reason!) I didn’t find anything new or directly actionable as I expected from the title & that was disappointing. That being said, the positive point to this review is that this could be an interesting coffee table read and easily read by any person, not just designers or those involved in any of those industries and could make for good conversation starting topics.

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The examples in this book were very thought-provoking and came from a wide variety of sources. I really enjoyed reading this book!

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I loved this book! The designs chosen were sometimes unexpected and the advice boiled down to two main things: 1) There are rules to design and 2) Break the rules!

This book makes a great addition to the "Think Like" series. The included images make this book great coffee table book material, but it's not just a visual smorgasbord. The prose throughout is entertaining more than enlightening, but there are gems to remember, like this one: "Wrong can be right."

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An interesting concept for a book but it feels somewhat half finished and aimless in it's target market. People in the Design Industry would find many of the entries too opinionated while—when viewed as an introduction to the world of Design—those outside the industry would find many of the example too oblique.

While occasionally providing interest and new information, some of the entries in this book seems a bit under-researched. A mention of a font being designed for a ‘Computer Game’ when a quick investigation would show it was a Program Management tool is just one example noted.

The book certainly provides some good examples of what make the Design Industry so fascinating but in some areas feels slightly unfinished. It acts as a good example of one of its own entries:

#48 IS IT GOOD ENOUGH? “… If the answer isn't “Yes”, then there's more work to be done …”

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I am perhaps more interested in the Think Like series as I live in the Netherlands and these books are written by Dutch authors and a lot of the examples are from here. That being said I enjoyed this short introduction to thinking like a designer and appreciate this quick guide.

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Even if I hadn´t looked at the name of the writer, I could have guessed he was Dutch, the English often read as a rather literal translation.
Although this book presented an interesting concept, it failed in my opinion.
Several of the ideas the writer discussed would have benefitted from a larger portion of text, since fitting them into such a small space made them either vague or difficult to follow. Or the writer was unable to form a decent synopsis of his opinion on a certain aspect of design.

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So good!
Bitesize chunks of wisdom, learning and fun. Backed by huge amounts of research, life lessons and good humour. Very enjoyable, and quite concise! A skill in itself.

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This was an enjoyable quick read. Coming from a marketing background, I found it incredibly useful for understanding design principles and designer's POV. It reminded me a bit of Arden's "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be" in it's setup and concise approach.

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Seventy five short, rather superficial entries, ostensibly about design. Way too short to actually give one any idea of the actual design process.

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It is a different type of book. Short chapters and wonderful pictures.
It is for designers and artists and readers who want to read nonfiction books revealing basic concepts and ideas in an enjoyable way.
It has ideas about how design concepts and circumstances are different now and how artist should change.
I liked all the pictures.
It introduced me to many great facts and stories related to world of arts.
A very interesting and highly readable book. Easily recommend for reading by anyone not only restricted to nonfiction lovers.

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This book is pretty cool - it tells you how everything is a design and things that you can learn from designers.  There are 75 different lessons throughout the book that will give you a new outlook on life and all its designs and where they may be hiding!   Think big - but be aware of long term consequences. I don't consider myself to be much of a designer, unless you count my scrapbook pages - but my latest theme has been purple/pink/blue and now I am being told to avoid purple. Eek.  I guess I'll just continue on, not being a designer ;)  (Even if it did work for Prince)  Although I think my favorite lesson was "Don't Be Different, Be Better" #38.

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

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A set of short, quick hits on design concepts and maxims. Maybe it was a translation issue, but most of the lessons were so short as to seem superficial or way too general to be useful. For example, "Advanced, yet Acceptable" reads in total: "This was the design philosophy of famous American designer Raymond Loewy, best known for his 'streamlined' products in the 1950s - everything from cars to refrigerators. In everyone of his designs he sought to strike just the right balance between the familiar and the unknown, because he was convinced that was what consumers would most appreciate. More than 40 years later, research at Delft University of Technology into public acceptance of new products would prove him right. And so make his personal philosophy a universal design practice." This is interesting, but for this to be useful, you need a LOT more information. What is the right balance? Is that balance always the same at all times and for all products and for all people? What places are the best place to push that balance? Is this only true for products, or does it also work for services? Values? Art? Political ideas? For these design ideas to be at all useful, we need a lot more than what is presented here.

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