Yes/No Design: Discovering Your Decorating Style with Taste Revealing Exercises and Examples

By Diane Love

Book Overview

Acclaimed designer and artist Diane Love shows you how, in this beautifully photographed volume, to discover and define your personal taste, then demonstrates how to build a decor that is functional, aesthetically pleasing, and truly reflective of your personality. Within the pages of this beautifully photographed book, acclaimed designer and artist Diane Love presents a truly innovative approach to interior design by equipping you with an understanding of your unique taste and the ability to use it to create your personal decorating style. Through easy, fully illustrated, step-by-step exercises and examples, she helps you to discover and define your taste, then demonstrates how you can use this knowledge to create a functional and aesthetic decor that is a true reflection of your personality. PART I: WHAT IS YOUR TASTE? Seven exercises, comprised of simple activities and questions, and free of self-conscious personal evaluation, help you to better define and articulate your taste. The exercises begin by asking you to select from magazines rooms that you love (your YESs) and those you don't (your NOs), then they help you to find words to express your impressions about a room's decoration, to distinguish the common denominators always present in the rooms you choose, and to pinpoint your likes and dislikes through your reactions to elements of a room's design, from architectural elements to furnishings to the color palette. PART II: EXERCISE YOUR TASTE Eleven methods taken in sequence explain the step-by-step process of decorating a room and show you how to incorporate what you have learned about your taste in Part I in order to create a decor that is comfortable andaesthetically pleasing to you. Topics covered include: using space efficiently, evaluating architectural elements, renovating economically, making a furniture plan, achieving visual balance, arranging objects and pictures, choosing lighting, and working with mirrors. QUESTIONNAIRE AND WORKBOOKS A questionnaire specially conceived to assist you in analyzing your decorating style enables you to track your aesthetic attitudes, reactions, and preferences. The two workbooks-one of which is separate from the book and easily portable.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789313286
• ISBN13: 9780789313287
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 3.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 9.6" x 11.5"

Customer Reviews

The journey home.

Not only is this book intelligent, but it calls on the reader to find her own creativity. So often we are told what to like and where to buy it. While these things can be helpful, if what you really want is to express yourself in your surroundings, then Yes/No Design will lead you within to uncover and create. Living in a consumer culture, it is easy to get out of touch with our own expressive sides, and I really like how Ms. Love encourages us to take that journey back to our most original selves. If you are willing to complete the exercises and look at them as a whole, what you can find is nothing short of your self. I think Yes/No Design is a text on how to distill out the essence of design as an act of personal creation. Rather than paying Ms. Love to tell us what to like, we are gaining something far more valuable with the purchase of this book -- a guide to our own creativity which we can then use to decorate our homes and every other area of our lives.

Beauty Comes From Within

Diane Love's "Yes/No Design" is a joy. It's a gift that I gave myself not knowing the profound effect it would have upon me. Having had little or no faith in my aesthetic sense, "Yes/No Design" helped me trust my choices through the simple understanding of my likes and dislikes (for things such as colors, sizes, shapes, space, and patterns). The book is beautiful, thought-provoking, validating and inspiring. I realized I don't have to be an "expert" to create a lovely home. "Yes/No Design" helped me get in touch with who I am, what I enjoy and appreciate, and what makes me comfortable. For me, decorating my home has become a metaphor for changing and improving my life and my attitude. Diane Love has shown me that beauty most definitely comes from within.

Designed by Me

I have a shelf full of books on design but Ms. Love's is the first to take me inside myself. Most books are full of advise on color schemes and furniture styles and such but none that I'm familiar with challenge/help the reader turn often intuitive likes and dislikes into a strategy for creating a style of h/her own. On top of that, the book is fun -- and visually beautiful as well. Hats off to Ms. Love for a beautifully conceived book that combines intelligence with design savvy to help us novices find our own individual styles.

Very Helpful

Before reading Yes/No Design, I never really thought about my personal taste in decorating, nor did I bother to explore my own creativity. When I found myself with the task of decorating my living room, I felt completely overwhelmed. I had read tons of magazines and asked for the opinions of my friends, as well the opinions of their interior designers. Once I read Diane Love's book, I found myself wondering what was it that I liked when it came to color? Furniture? Fabrics? I had no idea. The exercises in Yes/No design truly helped me, for the first time, locate my own imagination and style. I realized that lemon was going to be the color of my living room, and not yellow. I realized that an airy room was what I wanted, instead of a darker, stuffier one. Yes/ No helped me organize my thoughts, and in the end, helped me to decorate my home in only one way, mine!

an education in good taste

Yes/No design was written for the purpose of understanding various elements of design that appeal to each of us. Often we cannot understand why certain colors or styles are comforting and pleasing to the senses. This book acts as an explanation to why we feel the way we do regarding certain environments. I especially enjoyed the workbook section and visual guides. The reference guides are not unlike those found in several european do it yourself guides. This book often has an upmarket almost Ikea-esque feel to it. It encourages readers to use their own surrondings and ideas rather than changing for the sake of another persons style.