A book that reveals how thinking like a designer can help solve the greatest challenges we face in business, society, and our daily lives. What can we learn from the ways great designers think-and how can it improve our world? In this book by journalist Warren Berger, in collaboration with designer Bruce Mau, ten groundbreaking principles of design are shown in action-addressing business, social, and personal challenges and improving the way we think, work, and live.

Glimmer takes readers on a journey through today's fascinating world of design, where the formerly distinct disciplines of graphic, product, and social design are undergoing "smart recombinations." In the cutting-edge studios of Mau and other visionaries, everything is ripe for reinvention-including the ways businesses function, children learn, and communities thrive. Designers are solving problems at an unprecedented pace today by using improved technology and the highly practical design principles described in this book, such as "Ask stupid questions," "Make hope visible," "Work the metaphor," "Embrace constraints," and "Begin anywhere." Glimmer inspires readers to apply these same principles to their own life challenges.

While celebrated designers work on re-creating the world, Berger reveals the growing grassroots "glimmer movement" in which everyday people are emerging as designers and problem solvers. Readers will be fascinated by how "transformation design" is reinventing companies and addressing thorny social problems. Berger shares stories of how burned fingers, wrenched backs, and mixed-up pills all led to ingenious new product designs.

In a time of anxiety and retrenchment, this book illuminates "the glimmer of possibility and potential-that first spark of an innovative idea or a life-changing plan." According to Berger, "This faint light is all around us and also within us, if we can learn to recognize and nurture it." The best designers already know how to transform that glimmer of possibility into the steady glow of creation and innovation-and with the inspiration of Glimmer, we're now all able to do the same.

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Book for sale on Amazon: Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life and Maybe Even the World
by Warren Berger (Penguin Press)

DETAILS.com just posted their newest “60 Seconds” Q&A.  This time they sit down with Gary Hustwit, director of “Objectified.”  The film explores our relationships with manufactured items, everything from cars to a potato peeler, and the designers behind them.  Plus, Hustwit tells us his favorite design items.

Q: Helvetica traced the history of a typeface, and in Objectified you examine industrial design—a category that includes things as disparate as potato peelers and sports cars. Is it tough to make movies with such seemingly uncinematic topics?

A: My films are about asking audiences questions, not about finding answers or teaching. You can do proper documentary films and get people off death row—or you can ask questions. I focused on design, but everything is designed. Part of the reason for making a film about stuff is to make people think about that stuff. It tells a story—where we came from, where we're going, the issues that are facing us as a culture.

Q: How is our relationship to objects changing?

A: It's funny: I just moved, and I spread out all of my stuff beforehand. Most of the things I have are media —books, records, DVDs. I asked myself, "Why am I carrying this stuff around? This could easily fit on a JumpDrive." There's no need to have a physical object for them anymore.

Read More and make sure you check out the trailer for the movie - it’s really beautiful.