Q: What mysteries reside behind the Design Process?

Feedback Sheet / Major Project Proposal
‘A very well-written and constructed proposal. Good design summary of a range of sketchbooks and primary and secondary research. Excellent use of secondary research material. Good aims and objectives, though the methodology appears quite strongly self-reflective without a clear sense of an objective set of rules or guides as a context for comparison and evaluation – it would be good to see a clearer relationship between different ways of working and the kinds of outcomes reached, in the case of both academic and professional work.’ R/T/V/S

_

I’m aware that the methodology is strongly self-reflective, but this is a personal and private boundary to be broken for the public, this is a self-reflective journey that – I hope – will help the audience when it’s exposed in the end. To fully have access to a creative process, I thought, I should use myself to achieve results – my own work and everyday activities that all together will turn out to be what I’ve called design process. I don’t know exactly how to compare and evaluate all the data that I am collecting and producing at the moment, neither how to present it when the time comes to that. I suppose the outcome will be very visual, full of notations and doodling, perhaps a collection of books that combine secondary research (as the back-up to strengthen my arguments) with my primary one.

The major idea that I am trying to prove (my argument) is that the process, the journey to an end, the path to get somewhere creatively is more important, interesting and more useful to others (as an educative and inspirational tool) than the outcome itself (the final object that becomes alive).

Although, I am using sketchbooks to capture this, to document it, my intentions go far beyond the sketch itself – this is not an illustrator’s sketchbook with mostly drawings – this is what it’s even more difficult to reach out for (I believe), this is a way of working of a designer and a student, simultaneously. This is one possible way to go through our profession, just as it started (the breakthrough, the transformation or the crossing over from one to the other: academic to professional).

I know everything is not ready yet, or clear and concise, but I hope I can get there somehow, as soon as possible…

Thank you for reading,
Joana.

Leave a comment