Thinking like a designer

Do you think the title of this post sounds pretentious? If so, move on and read something else.

How can one think like a designer? I hope this blog will give you some helpful insights. Are there ways of thinking as a designer? Yes, there are! Is there a specific way of being a designer? The answer for the last question is 'no'. There is no one way of being a designer because every designer is different. 'Well duh!', you say.

Although I never think of myself as a 'designer' with a capital D, I happen to think that this word is laden with unreasonable expectations of a mere mortal. I am talking about fashion designers being looked upon as 'gods' of fashion and creators of cultural phenomena throughout the globe for women everywhere. If it has a designer label, it automatically becomes something desirable, sexy and expensive. This is not envy talking but talking about facts. If one of those designer happen to read this (fat chance!), they will agree with me. Every designer is only as good as the last season. They must continually prove themselves over and over in reinventing the 'wheel' that we call the multi-billion dollar fashion global industry.

Other than to say the obvious so far, I can say this. I can tell you how I think. Take only what you like and forget the rest. Why take on more clutter than you need? There is no easy way but I follow a few simple steps that makes it easier for me to escape a set pattern or if I have noticed that I am stuck on a rut/tired & tried formulaic methods in fulfilling a design brief.

What is a design brief? A design brief is the list of specifications, criteria and overview of outcomes set by the client, which must be followed by the designer to a letter. This list will often help you pinpoint a potential problem or problems not only for the client but also for the designer. Reading a brief will let an experienced designer straight away if it is doable or too time-consuming. It is in the brief that you will find the set of limitations and other factors in coming up with a design that your client/s want/s. By looking and analysing the brief closely, you will be able to put together a return brief, to give back to your clients so, they can have an idea on how you will approach the ways in finding the solution to a problem or brief. After all time is money. If you don't care about money, you must be an artist not a designer. Not that artists don't need a business acumen also. More so, if you don't have an income to support your art.

What is a return brief? It is a piece of document that proves you can do the job and how you are going to do it. Depending on the type of design, often a return brief is required. For competitions and other competitive areas such as construction bidding, a return brief is de rigeur. A return brief should contain a timeline, as your experience grows, your judgement of the duration jobs will be immediate. You will know straight away how long it will take. 'Bread and butter' are simple jobs that will be easy things to assemble, cheap to produce and have a high profit margin per cost/time/materials ratio. Often the concepts underlying these events/objects/services are very complex and very exciting even though how they are put together into a coherent role is astoundingly simple. Putting them together in such a way is your job as a designer. A return brief also need to have a problem identified. A 'design problem' is not the same as the mathematical equation meaning of the word. It means the big picture of the project. Laying them out in an attractive and understandable manner to people who doesn't know anything about you or how you think is not only important but how deeply you thought about them will determine if you get the job or not. Ordinary people on the street should 'get' your idea straight away but visually and verbally. A return brief should also contain the 'conceptual framework' or shortened 'concept'. For example, the concept for Apple computers is incredibly simple no less complex. It is a fruit/vegetable but not ordinary like the tomato. The apple is commonly known the fruit of knowledge in the lost eden. There other things you must include also but this is not the place to look for them, you need to see the client for more information. However, never forget to include a costing of the project.

Now you have a problem and you now know what is exactly required. You can do a rush job by doing a tried and tired formula or if you want something exceptional with x-factor, you will now be putting on your designer caps on, be creative and fullfil the brief at the same time. Neat! I am a mother and I have been thinking that coming with a new and exciting design is rather like pregnancy. It is not comfortable but it is worthwhile. The rewards (no housework for a while, eat what you want, glowing skin, no pressure to look fashionable anymore, no fear of getting pregnant, feeling sexy and like a million dollars) overweigh the bad (morning sickness, not drinking alcohol, feeling fat, bloated veins and sleeping on your side only).

Stages in thinking like a designer:

1. First trimester-research or asking why why why. Why is that something the way it is? Why did your competitors came up with the existing solutions? Why did the design problem happen? At this stage like a new mother-to-be, you are hungry for information about your developing fetus. Most of the time you are constantly thinking or daydreaming about those sexual encounter resulted in conception. A designer is like a sponge and soaks everything at this stage. Think of names, names, names!

2. Second trimester, why is the brief, the way it is? You can find out as much information as possible, at the brainstorming stage no information are so silly or irrelevant not to be included, you should have a fat folio of source material, a colour scrapbook that inspires you by now and understood the things that 'bother' you or something about the project the disturb you somehow. At this stage you should be a pregnancy expert. Pregnant women really start 'showing'. Your scrapbook should be bloated with information. They walk and talk differently. A designer lives, talks and dreams of the project. You are often seen muttering and talking to yourself and inanimate objects. You could barely see the vague parameters of the design, tantalisingly close. This experience is like feeling the baby kick you from the inside.

3. Third and final trimester-Cull, cull, cull! You know you are at this stage because you have culled your resources or better still you have groups of resources put aside just in case you want to revisit them again. Often this is the frustrating stage when you know what you want but things gets in the way so, what you do is doing a process of elimination. You even recreate situations exactly in finding out why you wrote in your diary that something is fantastic and key to the design but you lost it somehow. It looks boring and you wonder why. So, you bought the exact brand of tea that you were drinking then and did exactly what 'it' was at the exact time of day. Memory is often tricky, it needs the right smell, taste and sounds to revisit it exactly.

This final stage depends on the type of person you are but it is rewarding for most because this is when a new design is born.

How do you know you have killer design? You'll know because you are possessive of your new baby or you might be even be proud of your creation and show it to everyone immediately. How do you know the design is finished? You'll know because you have edited out everything that are superfluous and reduced the idea to its very essence. Take more and there will nothing left but a shell and you don't get any goosebumps when you look at it. The finished design should look right, beautiful and above all answer the brief exactly.

Reference:

Sievewright, Simon (2007) Research and Design, Switzerland, AVA Publishing, ISBN 2-940373-41-8 & 978-2-940373-41-3

Thoughts on positive thinking

There is something to be said about positive thinking and visualisation of intended outcomes. It works! I will set out to prove to you that only does it work but it is also a good exercise in regulating your mood and emotional state of mind. Although it may not at first be apparent immediately. Take what I do as an art teacher for instance. I often visualise what my students could get out of the lesson that I am planning. Since the lesson is still in its planning stage, this is a good time to mentally get a grip on possible scenarios that may eventuate as a result of my aims and objectives. The thinking stage and working out how students would react to my lesson will have ironed out awkward wordings, embarassing faux pas and confusing ways of engaging kids through inappropriate examples.

To you it might all be speculations, all airy-fairy and unsubstantiated but there are basis for this thing that you might call merely, 'wishful thinking'. For example, a practical ceramics lesson can be potentially cringe-laden to young people if handled insensitively and inappropriately for the ages for whom the lesson is intended. There are also gender issues (for male & female teachers) that may arise as you do demonstrations that might involve bodily contact (on second thoughts try to limit this to a few occasions or none at all). It is a sad fact that teachers could no longer reassure students in distress, who might actually need it just because such actions might be misconstrued.

To get back to the Ceramics lesson example, if you are using the turn table, remember to wear proper and comfortable clothing (try to do this everyday, the more comfortable you are, the more you are also confident). Please don't make the mistake of displaying a decollatage (bosom) as bend over in controlling the clay. Although an experienced potter make it look effortless, to the beginner it is very difficult to 'center' your clay and keep it in one place. Make sure you do a question and answer session about every aspect of the activity before you let the kids have a go.

Prior to this demonstration, it would be advisable that you have briefed them in the basics and they know the terms, techniques, health & safety issues and problem-solving tricks when things go awry. Like all practical lessons, you would already have trained students into a routine that suits you. Please not to do the cleaning up yourself. Let it all be part of the lesson itself. How and why, I imagined you asked? This is where positive thinking and visualisation comes in. It applies here because it is a mistake to assume that kids will do as adults would in similar circumstances. When you imagine that they will be orderly in handling clay, they won't. If you assumed that they will go on a queue when in using coil-maker, they wont but more likely than not, they will quarrel on whose turn it is, or grab bits and start throwing then at each other.

When I say positive thinking, it doesn't mean picturing kids being orderly and then do nothing or not revising the plan if you can anticipate problems with the plan, and, just hope for the best because you either have done the lesson hundreds of times or is pressed for time. It doesn't work like that. Every lesson and every class is very different. Too many factors impinge on your cohort's behaviour before they even set foot in the classroom. Positive thinking is about anticipating events and precognitive visualisation. If you don't have a plan b, you are seriously making sure kids in your school will hate art. There should be at least several alternative sequences of events that you can take up. Use your plan as point of departure always keep it as your guideline. This is it is called a lesson plan and not a bible.

Positive thinking also does not mean expecting things to go as planned exactly. An art lesson almost never does according to plan. There is always something that is overlooked and unexpected. Being a good art teacher is making sure you can survive the hiccups and turning around an untoward incident into an advantage instead. Also the exciting part of being a practical teacher in art is recovering from embarassing and disastrous situations and learn from them so that they may never reoccur. This is how positive thinking and effective visualisation of scenarios in the planning stage helps you become a better art teacher.