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What do you think is our biggest project?

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Our life!

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Our life is our biggest project.

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Life is just like a design project.

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It's full of constraints: money,
age, location, circumstances…

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If you want more,

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you need to make what you want
and what you need coexist.

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But they oppose each other.

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Look: I want to be on vacation,
but I need to work.

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Now if I can find a gig to work
while I'm on vacation,

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which is kind of what I'm doing
right now in Cannes,

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that is making what you want
and what you need coexist,

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that's creating value, that's creativity,
that's designing your life.

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But if you have a perfect life,

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don't design it.

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In fact, you could leave now.

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Anybody want to leave?

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Because I'm going to show you
how to design your life.

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See, I had a perfect life:

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in 2001, Renault, the French
automobile manufacturer,

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asked me to design a concept interior.

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I knew very little about cars

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so I asked them for a mentor
from their side and they said:

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"We'll send you Bibi Seck
and you're going to love him."

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Apparently they told Bibi the same thing:

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"You're going to love her".

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So can you guess what happened?

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You can, right, we fell in love.

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(Laughter)

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I mean we did as we were told.

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So things started happening really fast.

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Bibi moved from Paris
to New York with his son,

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we started our company,
Birsel + Seck together,

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we had two daughters…

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We were parenting full-time,
working like crazy,

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my life was designing itself.

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And I was really happy.

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Then the economy crashed in 2008.

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And I was really sad
because I hadn't seen this coming.

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Suddenly it felt like overnight,
our clients took their work in-house.

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And I felt very responsible
because I had uprooted Bibi

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from a great life in Paris,

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and now we had a family to take care of.

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And I thought: "I should
have become a lawyer!"

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Because I come from a family of lawyers,

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but all I wanted to do
was to design products,

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and it started with a teacup.

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A family friend came to tea
and told me about industrial design

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and he said: "You see how the edges
are curved? It fits our lips better.

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And the handle is there so that
we can hold hot liquid in our hands

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without burning ourselves;

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and the saucer is there
so that if you spill your tea,

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you won't ruin your mother's
beautiful tablecloth."

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And at that moment, I fell in love
with the human scale of industrial design.

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And I've been designing
products ever since,

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from office systems
to potato peelers to toilets.

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I mean I was known as the queen
of toilets, that was a compliment!

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And I just wanted to continue to design,

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except we needed clients.

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And I had all this time in my hands
and I felt very frustrated.

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It made me anxious not to work.

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It was Leia Kaplan, one of my dearest
friends and collaborators,

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who saw the opportunity
in the constraint and she said:

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"You know, Ayse, you have
all this time in your hands,

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but why don't you use this time
to think about how you think?

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Because you think differently."

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I think differently
because I think like a designer.

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We think that no matter
how hard the problem,

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we're going to come up
with a better solution.

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We put ourselves in other people's shoes.

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We see the big picture, the emotion,
the physical, the intellect,

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the spirit of things.

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We like to work together
and ask what-if questions.

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What-if questions,
all about having an open mind.

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So I asked myself,

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"What if I can create without products?

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What if I can design my life,

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applying design process
and tools to my life?"

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And from that,

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Design the Life You Love was born.

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And I became my first student
out of necessity.

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My life was made up of Bibi,

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our three kids, our work together
and our life in New York.

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But the irony is the economic crisis
had already deconstructed my life,

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had taken it apart,

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and it's kind of like
having this compact black camera:

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when you open it up,

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you realize there are
hundreds of pieces in it.

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Now, can you put this camera
back together again?

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Thank you. No, not really.

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And that's the beauty of deconstruction,

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that when you deconstruct something,

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you break the links
that hold them together

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and now you're free to think about

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which parts to keep,
which parts to change,

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and which parts to get rid of.

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This brings us to our
second step: point of view,

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seeing the same parts differently.

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How do you go from what you know
and what you're used to,

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something that's different in you?

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The only way I know how to do it
is to do it playfully.

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Because when we're playing, 
we're like kids,

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we're not afraid of making mistakes,

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there is no right or wrong
when you're playing.

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You just try things and you create
and you learn by doing.

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So I decided, playfully like a kid,
that I needed superpowers.

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I looked to my heroes for inspiration.

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Our heroes are people 
we know, like my mom,

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or people we know of,
like Michelle Obama.

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But they have something,
they have something that interests us,

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that we notice, that we admire,
that maybe we want to emulate.

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And so I thought of my hero,
Rowena Reed Kostellow.

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I met her when I went to Pratt Institute
to do my master's and I was 20 years old,

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she was 80 years old
and we became friends.

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And she taught me how to design
in three-dimensional space.

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She had a unique methodology to teach it.

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She also taught me
how to live in New York,

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how to shop for food at Dean & Deluca,

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the beauty of living in a loft,

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she also suggested that I should get
a personal shopper.

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That's probably the only advice
I didn't listen to.

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But Rowena reminded me of my values.

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Our heroes connect us with our values.

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And our values are things
like constant evolution

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and having your own voice.

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Longevity, generosity,

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curiosity, fearlessly pursuing your dreams

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and being the best at what you love.

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Our values are the foundation of our life,

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which brings us to our third step:

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reconstruction,

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which is the other side of deconstruction,
putting it back together again,

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based on our values,
on things that matter to us.

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So I put my life back together
again as a tree.

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My foundation, my roots were in Turkey,
that's where I grew up.

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And then my trunk, where I became visible,

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that's New York, that's where I had
my products, my process,

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and it made me realize
that my future is the world,

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that if I'm a tree I should bear fruit
and I should have seeds,

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and suddenly this idea
of teaching other people

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to think about their life with creativity,
with a creative process,

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started to make sense to me.

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Which brings us to thinking differently.

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What I was doing was thinking differently
about the same things

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and realizing for the first time
that design can transform lives,

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even without the intermediary of products,

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and that this is for everyone,

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we can all be designers of our life.

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Expression, our fourth step,
is giving form to our idea.

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If I'm designing a chair, I'll sketch it,

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I'll make a model, I'll write about it,
I'll visualize it to make it happen.

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Same thing with our lives: if we can
visualize the life we want to live,

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we can make it happen.

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And Stef Stefan from Amsterdam
expresses her life as the big bird;

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she stands tall,
she's gentle, she's strong,

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and this director of leadership
development sees himself

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as the Zen master of his garden,
working around stones, hard stones,

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that he cannot move.

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And this young father
who's a strategist in New York

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is the center of his life tree,

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with projects dotting every ring
from here to 2050

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on a life based on his values.

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And my graduate student
at SVA, he's Tintin.

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He is pioneering, loyal
and steadfast and brave.

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And I,

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I am Katy Perry
of Design the Life You Love.

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Why Katy Perry?

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You have to remember I have two girls.

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When they were younger, we watched
Katy Perry's documentary together.

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And I fell in love with how Katy Perry
connects with young people

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and their parents through
the beauty of her music and I thought,

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"That's what I want to do,
I want to connect with young people

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who have their whole life
in front of them

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and show them you can design your life."

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And I want to connect
with their parents, with you,

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and show you you can redesign your life.

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And here we are, I'm on tour,
at Palais des Congrès,

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with an amazing audience, you.

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This is my Katy Perry moment.

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(Applause)

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Thank you!

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Now more than ever before, we need
to think about our life differently.

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I grew up in Turkey
and Bibi grew up in Senegal.

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We grew up in very different places,

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but our parents gave us
a very similar roadmap.

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They said: "Go to school, work hard,
find a job, get married, have children."

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That was the definition of a good life.

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But today, I don't have that roadmap
to give to my children.

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Things are changing so fast
and so dramatically,

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our kids live in a different world.

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There are no road maps
and that's an incredible challenge.

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But every challenge is an opportunity
when you think creatively.

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There are no roadmaps,
so create your own roadmap.

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Imagine your life with creativity,
playfully, with optimism.

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I cannot give my children a roadmap,

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but I can share with them
how to apply a creative process

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to their lives to approach problems

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with creativity and courage.

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And I can share that with you as well.

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So I have found my voice.

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Design your life, design an original life,
a life that looks like you,

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that feels like you,
that even smells like you,

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an original life that is coherent
with your values.

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Design your life and then go live it.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)