Design is a Journey, Not a Task
A recent blog post got me thinking about the design process and what it involves. Is there not more to it than just a ‘process’? I think so…
How Do You Design?
After I graduated, I attended numerous interviews. In one of those interviews I was asked what design process i followed and how I developed my work towards a final product. Naturally, I began waffling about the same old idea process that every job candidate probably spurts out.
Realising this I paused for a moment (a really good idea if your stuck on a question – thinking is perfectly acceptable and it shows they’ve asked a good question), before responding by saying I thought design was more of a journey, than a task.
Well I think they liked the answer – so did I! I was able to elaborate on my design process by associating it with a journey, resulting in a confident answer, which they as non-designers could relate to. I was reminded of all this last week when i read an article at GoMediaZine: 10 Tips to avoid designer’s block. The article isn’t particularly related to this one, but in it the author states:
“…drawing and designing is not executed in a perfectly straight line. It’s not a math equation. It’s a process”
I completely agree, yet I think that design is much more than a process aswel. ‘Process’ still seems too linear to me – like you know exactly where your going and what’s going to happen. Maybe it’s just my inability to picture how a design is going to pan out down to the exact pixel. Anyone that can do that then please, give me your brain.
Just Point In The Right Direction
When I think of a design I’m about to do, I have a sort of map in my head of what’s going to be where, what colour scheme will be used and what particular style I’ll employ. Then I’ll start off (on paper of course) planning it out and making changes as I go – foreseeing any potential problems as and when they occur. As I go from paper, to the digital graphics and then to coding & layout, I generally come across many problems which mean I have to change the direction of the design. Most design is never as simple as just doing it.
A ‘journey’ is a good analogy for design. You can go left or right – dark or bright. You should stop when your tired and lost – resting might show you a different route. You should have a time scale that budgets for being late. After all you might run into designer’s-block traffic. Nobody likes it but you just can’t help it.
If you carry out design as a task, then it will probably look like a task. I remember designing this website in my student bedroom and spending a lot of time changing and redesigning it. My mates would come in and tell me to stop working on it and just get it done, but if I had taken their advice it would have looked naff. I think it’s better to go with the flow of the design and let it change and develop over the course of the journey. You’ll get there in the end.
Posted on 28 Oct 2008
gwzhpfnk says
on 19 June 2009, 03:04