Ask the Expert: Designer Karim Rashid
Can principles used by professional designers help you live a healthier, more meaningful life?
Karim Rashid, industrial designer and author of “Design Your Self: Rethinking the Way You Live, Love, Work, and Play” (HarperCollins, 2006) says healthy living can be achieved through style.
Flipping through a treasure of brightly colored pages, Rashid’s tome is fat with gurulike life and design truths that make life’s difficulties seem so much easier to handle after reading his wise, amazingly simple advice.
For example, Rashid writes, “Develop your strengths not your weaknesses.”
Or, he says, “Exaggerate your assets.”
It kind of makes you go “hmmm,” doesn’t it?
While Rashid’s “Design Your Self” isn’t an answer for everything (though you could easily be fooled into thinking so), it is an honest, compelling, sexy read full of mother-wit built on the author’s life experiences. It covers self-esteem, healthy habits, love making, wardrobe, skin care, work-life balance and a plethora of relevant topics geared toward helping you be your best self. Rashid, whose artistic self blossomed as a child, has designed everything from an artsy-fartsy handheld Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner and a collection of eyeglasses to dog perfume and a subway station in Naples, Italy.
Here Rashid shares advice on paving the way toward a healthier existence.
On his inspiration to write “Design Your Self”
“No big moment, I have developed these ideas, and theories and thoughts over the last 20 years, and the book took me about three years to write sitting in countless airplanes. It is just concepts and my personal philosophies about living life well that I have always wanted to get into the world and share. As [German philosopher Martin] Heidegger said ‘To be is to build.’ ”
On how a “design” mindset translates into a full, healthy life
“Design is about shaping peoples lives. Through design I have spent 25 years studying human behavior, human experience and human interface, as well as human emotion. Of course I am using my modus operandi only as a platform for inspiration. This book is to question your life, to bring ideas, possibilities, opportunities or even just alternatives to one’s life. With awareness we can then start to resolve our problems, which, at the end of the day, must be beholden by you and no one else. So this book only suggests and hopefully inspires individual control and self-confidence about taking charge of your life and your destiny.”
On what is the most critical life principle
“To not live in the past or be nostalgic, and embrace and engage the now.”
On what makes a fabulous, well-balanced person
“Very positive and happy; very energetic and accomplishing; very beautiful and aesthetic.”
On how design and personal wellness connect
“Everything in life is part of the human experience, and we should not separate or make these aspects of our lives disparate. I think that way about the built environment all the time. And I am superpassionate, hyperdriven, consumed by the need to produce and disseminate beauty, and keep creating in every aspect of daily life. I am a cultural shaper, a creator of our commodity world. My message is to be you and enjoy life. I am so tired of how conservative this world is. And don’t forget humor; we all need intellectual happiness.”
On how to make time to lead a balanced, well-designed life
“When you work, you must focus and work only, then you can work less and accomplish more. When you play, focus to play only, then you will have more fulfilled relations or pleasure.
“When you rest or relax, focus on just that, then you will be rejuvenated always. In other words, if you devote yourself to the experience at hand, your life will be extremely well balanced, accomplished and more fulfilled.”
 |
