Design processes
Hello there my dear fellow design enthusiasts!
The past weeks have been so hectic with the end of the academic year coming up. Yeah, it’s already the time when all of the project submissions start to pile up and you try to balance being a design student with having a social life.
This week I was working mainly on 3 (if not more) of my final project submissions, so that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. My project making process.
I usually for my university projects as well as the more personal ones start with a brief. It can be as short or as long as needed. Usually the longer ones are the ones that require a lot of research, testing and process documentation. And those are as well, usually the ones that are brought to my life through my lecturers, understandably so, they are after all the ones that are supposed to bring us to the standard of working in the big world of design. Which I now realise will be in roughly two years time. Years fly by way faster than we would like to think.
But having a brief is not everything, you might see a brief or identify a need but if you won’t jump into the position and step up to the challenge the brief stays a brief and the problem a problem. A design process is one that involves embracing the small or big direction document, that is set before the project can be properly started. So as essential as the brief is for the notion of setting designs in motion it can’t do nothing without the next steps. A brief is therefore like a key that you can turn to start the vehicle's engine, but you need to step on the gas yourself to actually drive in the race of design. And this step for me is usually thinking and digesting the information I got presented with, either by leaving it for a day, trying to create a relevant moodboard or by writing down or sketching out some ideas that first came to my mind. It’s never the same and it’s never linear. I can sometimes come back to my first step after moving forward and redo my iterations, add to my pinterest board.
Usually however my process involves sketching, especially on paper whether it be in my sketchbook or on a piece of paper from a sketchpad. Ideas need to be put down and thrown out of my brain to make space for new and improved ones. It’s like cleaning your desktop space, you delete the backups by transferring them to an external disc in order to have space to download and create more with your software.
From the initial ideation point onward the process goes so many ways. Depending on the project I’m currently focusing on. For example my product presentation project (which you can explore under the portfolio tab) involved me going into the wild and taking some photos, then editing those and creating the poster iterations in Affinity Publisher. And it was so different to my process from the beginning of the semester on my bag project which after sketching involved more sketching, fabric manipulation studies, pattern creation and then finally sewing. And all of it is called designing. SO many different themes under one umbrella and I’m so glad I get to touch on them all during my studies. It really allows me to look and retrospect on who I am and what projects I actually enjoy working on.
Other than my process this week also involved consultations with my lecturer about my portfolio creation. I still need to work on it, but it was good to hear and see the industry standards and expectations especially since I am aiming at getting into MOME for my Erasmus semester abroad. I find what they offer to be quite different to what I study in regard to design at University of Limerick and I think it would allow me to actually explore my interests in design fields I don’t get to touch on that much in here, especially with hands on work in disciplines like fashion and textile design, as well as designer maker with glass design and business and portfolio design. Don’t get me wrong, I love studying design at UL and the opportunities it provides, but I also want to explore, learn more whenever I can and I know having that exploration possibility won’t be available unless I was to apply for like 4 different design positions at once.
But that’s the life of a designer who aims at self improvement and has high expectations towards themself. That’s the life of Maria K. And that’s also joining into the designer problem of the week: When you have so much projects to work on that your break from one project is working on another project.
With love,
The one and only Maria K.