How it goes

01 / Starting point

I normally start off with a pen and a sketchbook, just doodle some ideas here and there, it gives me an outline. It gives me a starting point to begin my thinking.

Once ideas start coming, it is mildly inconsistent, doesn't matter if I'm in the shower or shopping at tesco, surprisingly, I do remember most of it. It gets written down, now starts the ideation.

02 / Design decisions

When I used to design fashion/home accesories during my Bachelor's Degree, I had a rather quirky process, the design process took over 3 to 6 months, with the first step being calculating how much of my procrastination will affect my final product. And once all of that is done, the actual thinking begins. Mind you, this begins 3 weeks to the deadline. I must say this actually is not the right way to go with it, but it worked... "Don't try to fix it if it ain't broken" right.

It didn't help me once I stepped into the design industry, where I was required to give updates about the work almost every week, I realized I couldn't keep up with my existing design process. It was time for a change, and change it was, I did some research, spoke to some of the experts, and came to a conclusion that, none of what they said had anything to do with me. It felt like i had to figure out a design process all by myself. And that I did. As a child I was into everything and anything, I was into mythology, literature, science, my mind was everywhere. It carried on to my design career. And with those insights, created my own design process, a process with parts of everything. A process with a strict emphasis on "multiple solutions". And after a few iterations and stupid mistakes, it worked.

The final iteration was during my master's degree, I was introduced to the double diamond design process, it had partsof what i figured out myself with a more stuctured template, and the output was even better. So from then on, this is the process I follow. First comes the Discover phase, with all the boring bits of readi, literature review and surveys, next up is the Define phase comprising the journey mapping, design brief and as the name suggets, this phase defines and decides the direction the project is heading to. Develop phase comes next, this is where the actual visual aspects of design comes into play including but not limited to typography, logo, UI, colour theory etc. And finally the Deliver phase, where the final output is shipped, even though this phase seems like it is more or less just a click of a button, this carries so much weight. This design process is simple and standard, but it works and that's all that matters at the end of the day.

"Design is not art, Design is the science behind art, once you learn the difference, a good design is not far away"

03 / Final thoughts

My journey in creating a standard process in my design work taught me that a good design often takes time, so the goal must be to nail the next iteration.