Design Your Life by Vince Frost – the globally recognised designer and head honcho at The Frost* Collective – is no ordinary design book. My shelf at home is bursting at the seams with books from this genre, but this one is different. In fact, it’s not an interiors book at all. With minimal pictures and maximum words, it acts more as an inspirational guide on how to apply design principals to your life, with motivational anecdotes and more uplifting quotes than an hour with Oprah.
Is it a self help book? is it a memoir? The answer is neither, really. What Vince Frost does in this release is take you on a journey through his life and career, with lessons that can help you look at life differently. It’s really quite refreshing for a designer to write something like this.
“This book will not solve your problems,” Vince declares, just pages into the book. “You have to do that yourself. And it will take lots of hard work. But I believe this book is more than words and images. It shows problems as opportunities, proves the impossible possible and hopefully, it will inspire you to work better at living better”.
It’s not all about Vince, either. The book features interviews with the people that have helped shape his life and journey through design. It also shares and explains some approaches to life you’ll definitely get something out of. One of my fave chapters is that on ‘Eat the Frog’, which coincidently, my partner Gavin came home and told me about just days before I got the book.
Eat the Frog is all about jumping into life’s difficult tasks first. As Vince explains, “if you have to eat a live frog, it doesn’t pay to sit around looking at it. Resist the temptation to start with the easier task and do the hardest thing first… and, if you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first”. I’ve started applying this approach to my blogging and styling work and it’s working out a treat so far!
Design Your Life is a very surprising and uplifting read – and not just one for lovers of design. It’s a book that’ll have you looking at the world in new ways and thinking about how you can get the most from your life.
Vince ends the book with this quote and I think I’ll end this post with it too. Drop me a comment below and let me know what you think of this release.
“Designing your life isn’t about certainty. Designing your life isn’t about permanence. It’s about incremental change for the better, even with the odd relapse”.
Design Your Life by Vince Frost is available from October 22.
