121 - The Process

No matter what you're designing, designers have a special code we all follow. It's called The Process. Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED Music and links from this episode Gorgon by Jesse Spillane No sudden movements by rui Interstate 70 Rain Chants by Fields Ohio Line-by-line notes Buildings Bridges Roads Websites Restaurant menus They’ll all made by following a set process This process, whilst usually similar for every designer Allows designers all over the world to make very special things This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess MUSIC A problem Every design process Whether you’re designing a city or designing a business card Begins with a problem Design only really has one purpose: to solve problems And if there’s no problem to solve, there’s no point designing anything These problems range from simple stuff like a problem of a business not looking professional enough To complicated problems like too many traffic jams on a particular road You can’t find a solution, until you’ve identified the problem And the design process is the only one that can solve such a problem After that, designers start to collect information to understand the problem This step is a mix of research and finding inspiration By seeing what others have done before, you can analyse what went wrong And of course, what went right and what you may want to emulate I’ve been pretty vocal in some past episodes about the inspiration gathering step And being very careful not to cross the line of inspiration to downright copying other’s work Now comes the fun part, ideas generation This is my favourite part of any design project Being alone with a sketchbook and working on ideas Younger designers too often skip this step, or go about it in the wrong way The point of the ideas step is to indiscriminately create ideas That is, to create ideas without thinking they’re good, bad, or anything else At this step, it doesn’t matter if your idea is bad Or if you think you’ve found a solution to the design problem That is not the point here, it’s just to let your brain be free And make ideas And then take those ideas, and turn them into solutions This is a really difficult step, because now you’ve got so many ideas You need to analyse them, and work out which ones are good Or appropriate solutions Lots of designers...