52 Books (#8) Glimmer
Glimmer by Warren Berger
Glimmer: How design can transform your life, and maybe even the world by Warren Berger.
The presentation world has been focused on slide design for years. While slides may have gotten better (the jury is still out) delivery has not. A couple of weeks ago I began searching for non-presentation books for inspiration and ideas. During this search I discovered Glimmer.
Glimmer is about Design: making things effective and useful and orchestrating great experiences. From OXO kitchen tools to the Segway you will learn from the actually creation of well designed products. Reading this book will make you look at everything from a different perspective. It is worth reading the book to live these stories but that wasn’t what effected me the most. That happened in the last part of the book…
“The older you get, the more you begin to think like a designer.” — Warren Berger
As I get older I find that it is easy to take dissimilar ideas and combine them. In the book this is called smart recombinations. It turns out that getting older actually makes you better at this. Getting older also makes you question things like, “If I were to have the perfect life what would that look like?” The last part of the book is all about applying design principles to your own life. It was a nice surprise to find this topic in the book. I plan to reread this part of the book in the very near future.
Back to presentations. There are many things in the book that apply to field of presentations. The most important one — to me — is that design isn’t just about making something look good. It has to function well and be useful. I wish that the people who equate a great presentation with slides would take this to heart.
You should put Glimmer on your reading list! Highly Recommended!
