2D Design

1. 2D Design • Problem Solving Process • the Design Process • Universal Traveler’s 7 stages + 1

3. Last time: Design Basics/Chapter 1 Concept drives form… • Content Concept • Impact Concept • Graphic Concept • Form vs. Content • Form follows Function (functionalism)

4. Concept 4 aspects of concept to consider. Content Concept: message Response Concept: viewer’s experience Impact Concept: strategy for engaging viewer’s attention Graphic Concept: the look or the form of the designed object. Fig: Pg: Artist/Designer: Title: Medium: Design Basics

5. Content Concept Expression, the Message, Information. The message the viewer must comprehend. What do I want the viewer to become aware of? What information do I want to communicate? [note that the “Response Concept” has been separated from the Content concept.] Fig: Pg: Artist/Designer: Title: Medium: Design Basics

6. Response Concept (formerly Content pt 2) What do I want the viewer to experience or feel? What emotions do I want to evoke?What action do I want to initiate? What is the internal experience that I would like to facilitate? (…and, sometimes: What would I like to motivate the viewer to do?) Note that the viewer’s response IS what you design. Everything else leads to this end. The “object” or “thing” that you design and create is only a means to this end--a means to impact another person. Fig: Pg: Artist/Designer: Title: Medium: Design Basics

7. Impact Concept A strategy for achieving viewer impact. How do I get the viewer’s attention? How might the viewer's defenses and assumptions be penetrated or disarmed? A new, effective, evocative ordering of available resources that introduces (makes apparent) an unexpected, but comprehensible and plausible, relationship. How might I combine the familiar in an unexpected way? Fig: Pg: Artist/Designer: Title: Medium: Design Basics

8. Graphic Concept A plan for a selection and arrangement of media, imagery, and visual elements used to establish the Content. What are the actual visual pieces that will be combined? How will these visual elements be adjusted/edited and arranged? In graphic communication, graphic concepts often involve combinations of text and imagery, juxtaposing familiar content in an unfamiliar context or combination. In interiors, lighting, color, fabric/texture, space, mass, etc. evoke mood. Fig: Pg: Artist/Designer: Title: Medium: Design Basics

9. Your Process?? • How did you arrive at your sketches? • What was the first thinking you did? • Where did you get your ideas?

10. Stages in the Design Process • Accept • Analyze • Define • Ideate • Select • Implement • Evaluate

11. From • The Universal Traveler a Soft-Systems guide to: creativity, problem-solving, and the process of reaching goals. • ON RESERVE in library, for this course (Art 200)

13. Why problem-solving stages?At each stage, different questions are posed. • If you want good information, ask the right question. • Questions focus your attention. • If you want the benefit of someone else’s insight, ask open-ended questions. (don’t assume that you know what they can tell you.) • Become conscious of your own assumptions -- what motes and beams are keeping you from noticing what is?

14. Text: “convergent thinking”p. 5-6ff • --- • 1) Define the problem (current situation) • 2) Research (analyze) • 3) Determine objective (define goal) • 4) Devise strategy • --- • 5) Execute the strategy • 6) Evaluate results

15. Accept the Situation/Problem • Accept that you are a part of the solution. • Recognize/Decide that you are the means to the solution……you’re gonna do it! • (note: night-before-the-due-date designers beware — procrastination is a symptom of failure to accept the problem.)

16. Accept the Situation/Problem • Accept that you are a part of the solution; you are the means to the solution, • …that a solution is possible and • …that you can and will find it. • {this is both faith & commitment on a practical level}

17. Analyze • Get to know the facts and feelings associated with the situation. • Discover the problem space. • What is needed? • What is available? • What has been done before?

18. Define • Determine the essential goals. • Decide what the main issues are as far as you are concerned. • Conceptualize and clarify your major goals related to the problem. • What do YOU want to accomplish with THIS design? Know where you want to go.

19. A well-defined problem points to a its own solution. • explore the problem by any and every means possible. • Explore solutions to similar problems Write out • …requirements: what MUST be done • …goals: What would you LIKE to achieve • …limitations: what CANNOT be done and • …resources: what is AVAILABLE (materials, tools, experience,…) • … resource limitations: what is NOT AVAILABLE (time, materials, skills, etc.)

20. Write your problem definition — what are YOU aiming to do? • Every designer perceives a problem in their own way…your values and temperament influence how you approach design problems. • It is important to know clearly what you particularly want to accomplish through your solution. Writing your own problem-statement (“Defining the problem”) is a good way to force yourself to be more explicit. • How is YOUR nameplate to be yours?

21. Write your own definition of the current assignment • It needs to be specific enough to be yours and yours alone. • It needs to be complete enough to guide the whole project — to aid decisions and refinements. • What are YOU aiming for?

22. Write your problem definition — what are YOU aiming to do? • …requirements: what MUST be done • …goals: What would you LIKE to achieve • …limitations: what CANNOT be done and • …resources: what is AVAILABLE (materials, tools, experience,…) • … resource limitations: what is NOT AVAILABLE (time, materials, skills, etc.) • …personal preferences, personal expressions.

23. Ideate: • Generate options for achieving the essential goal(s) • Search out ways of getting to the goals. • Explore and pose alternatives. • Conceive the logos, the concept, unique idea(s), possibilities. • Brainstorm!

24. Ideate • Generate ideas. Brainstorm. • Lots of ideas. More ideas. From anywhere. • Any ideas. Crazy ideas. Quantity is more important than Quality. More is better. Make notes and sketches of every idea that comes…no matter how useless or impractical it looks. Crazy ideas often join other ideas to become good ideas…and crazy ideas are often not nearly so crazy as they are unfamiliar.

25. a sticky problem "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." Spencer Silver The guy who invented Post-It Notes, and their never-before-seen adhesives.

26. Ideate Don’t Judge. • Don’t condemn ideas before you have opportunity to discover their potential. • Ideas stimulate more ideas—so don’t discard an idea just because you don’t see where its going. • Write and sketch snippets of ideas -- record them when you get them. • Judge not that you be not judged. Nothing confines people and insight more than judging. But we keep on justifying our judgments.

27. Ideation — Lateral Thinking Edward de Bono distinguishes between Vertical Thinking and Lateral Thinking. “Lateral thinking is concerned with the generation of new ideas…with breaking out of the concept prisons of old ideas.” “Lateral thinking is generative. Vertical thinking is selective.” “Vertical thinking is concerned with providing or developing concept patterns. Lateral thinking is concerned with restructuring such patterns (insight) and provoking new ones (creativity). Lateral and vertical thinking are complementary. Skill in both is necessary.” Edward de Bono Lateral Thinking: creativity step by step/1970.

28. 9/11 Report conclusion. …a failure of imagination. Summer, 2004

29. Select: • Choose from the options. • Decide. • Exclude what you won’t do. • Determine the best way to go…or, at least, the way you will go. (it is better to forge ahead with a good idea, than to wait forever for a perfect idea) • Pefectionism is not an excuse…it’s a symptom. Allow yourself to be as God made you…human. Pick your best alternative, and move forward.

30. Implement: It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged. The only difficulty was, she had not the smallest idea how to set about it. Lewis Carrolof Alice in Alice in Wonderland

31. Implement: before you can make it real, the plan has to be specific…what materials, what sequence, what resources, what techniques/processes,what tools or software…? The only difficulty was, she had not the smallest idea how to set about it. Lewis Carrolof Alice in Alice in Wonderland

32. Implement: • Take action. (or create the plan for action) • To give action or physical form to our selected “best ways.” • Manifest the logos – incarnate the idea – make tangible the concept. Go from imaginary, to “real”.

33. Evaluate: • Review and plan again. • Determine the effects or ramifications as well as the degree of progress of our design activity. • Assess. • Critically look at what’s working, … • …what’s not working, • …what can be improved, • …what must be improved, • … what’s distracting, • …what is inconsistent with the concept.

34. Stages in the Design Process • Accept • Analyze • Define • Ideate • Select • Implement • Evaluate

35. Ordering the Stages • There is no one right order…… or one right path through a creative process.

36. Order of the stages • Move forward from one stage to the next. • Very orderly. Very planned. Very disciplined.

37. Iterate to refine and improve quality. Repeat and refine.

38. Let the discoveries at any stage lead to revisions at an earlier stage. Allow yourself to learn as you go.

39. Move freely from any one stage to any other… • …but be careful not to skip any stage. Each stage focuses your attention on some particular issue.

40. Personal Style • There is no one right order or one right path through a creative process. • Your work habits, priorities, interests and gifts all influence your way through. You won’t do it the same way as your neighbor. • Each project will involve its own “loops” or “branching” — let it be.

41. Personal Style Focus on the distinct priorities at each stage. • Be sure you give attention to each stage. • Be flexible, be persistent, be patient…move past road blocks. (etc. etc…..) • Know thyself. Observe your own patterns, strengths and weaknesses. Where do you get blocked and where do you take detours? • Learn enough about yourself that you can create practices that anticipate and compensate for your own limitations……then create!

42. A final Stage: Let Go • At some point, you’ve got to declare yourself done. • Every designer and every artist has to set his/her own criteria for completion. • When is it done? The basic question is very personal -- how good is good enough? • If you aim for “perfect”, you may never be done…so how much can I accomplish within existing limitations?…including time! Let Go! Let Go!

43. Let Go: • We aim for the best solution within the real-world constraints — we have only so much time, only so many materials, only so many skills, only so much knowledge. • Let go. • Live with it. • Evaluate honestly. Both praise your work and forgive yourself. • Aim higher next time. (and plan your time better…) • Each day has enough worry of its own — so don’t obsess.

44. Stages in the Design Process • Accept • Analyze • Define • Ideate* • Select • Implement • Evaluate • Let Go

45. remember… A good concept completed, is better than a perfect concept that is never done. Respect your real-world limitations of time, skill, money, etc. Dream big. But stay real. Effective design involves balancing the two.So does effective living.