Yes/No Design : Discover Your Decorating Style With Taste-Revealing Exercises and Examples

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Summary: an education in good taste
Review: 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.

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Summary: Educating the Young to Discover Their Own Style
Review: You must not think that Diane Love's book, YES/NO DESIGN, is simply a beautiful coffee table book of lovely images. The book is actually a helpful guide leading the reader through exercises that enable the reader to discover and specifically identify furnishings and styles that reflect the reader's own taste to enable the reader to create a satisfying physical environment for living. Because the book is a guide to self-discovery regarding one's home and office environment and because creating a satisfying living environment is both an important personal goal, because of the resulting satisfaction, and a social benefit, because of the focus on home improvement, it would be exciting to see the book used as a text for adolescents and young adults to help them to identify what pleases them in their individual surroundings and to strive to create their own space to generate satisfaction and personal peace. Imagine if each school youth graduated with a clear vision of the most satisfying patterns, textures, colors and shapes for that person and an understanding of the importance of these aspects of that person's surroundings to achieving satisfacton! What if this self-discovery was coupled with an understanding that creating this environment need not be expensive or unduly complex, but is a satifying pasttime! Such an education might go far to encourage more people, all kinds of people, to spend time creating satisfying homes. YES/NO DESIGN would be an excellant text to use to achieve this.