I personally think of design as a story that is being told. There’s a beginning, middle, and an ending to everything that you make or do. There are also times when things can get unexpectedly tough or when something breaks and everything goes wrong, and you have to course correct to save the day. Whatever happens with your projects, it’s important that you keep moving forward.
On the more technical side of things, I think of design as a cross combination of six different branches of study listed to the right—
I find myself using different processes from these branches daily. If I’m working on a toy, I need to think about how it’s physically used by a person, does it fit well in their hands? Does it look aesthetically pleasing? If I’m designing a patio or a building, I need to make sure that it’s structurally sound while also still being useful and purpose-driven. Regardless of where it takes you, the design world is a journey unto itself.
MY Process
Make it Your Own
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It all begins with a blue sky idea. This is why when you sit down with a blank piece of paper, it’s really not all that blank. You gather around a piece of inspiration, a story, a dream, that you want to bring to life. Whether you want to imagine something new or push the boundaries of something that already exists, you need to start by doing your research, This can be in a library, laboratory, studio, theater, or even just talking to another person. Once you have that big idea, it moves forward into high-level creative development.
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Design is the heart of a project. It’s where all the details start taking shape, and where plans that combine thousands of different unique pieces come together and form a cohesive whole - Sometimes perfectly, sometimes messily, sometimes barely being held together by hope, but still together. If a project comes together poorly, then you just have to iterate it and try again, refining it until you have it just the way you want it.
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Once all the details are worked out and it’s time to put your literal or figurative hard hat on, you need to build and put all of the finishing details on, tuning things over and over again until they’re just right. This is where the sense of thrill comes in: you get to sweep away the dust of your work and experience your dream firsthand. There’s nothing quite like that feeling of a project being completed, that sense of satisfaction. However, it doesn’t ultimately last, you feel a new itch, and you find yourself looking back at that blue sky again.