MANY FIND it difficult to understand the methodology of design. After all, the creative process can appear to be quite abstract to a layman. I’d equate it to this designer’s effort in understanding the jargon of an investment banker. Design has a language of its own and a process that can be incomprehensible to those who exist outside the cabal of the creatives. This “process” is the foundation of a designed product and is neither straightforward nor effortless.
Those who are not in the artistic field think that architects, designers and their lot have all the artistry come naturally, and that churning out a design is as easy as flipping the pages of a book. Well, that is partially true. So-called artists and their kind do have natural inclinations or gifts. Being able to perceive things in a more acute manner and capable of putting together some fancy fabrication for the eyes to feast on, probably comes easier than others would have it.
But putting a design work together is a process, and more so when it is to be delivered as a professional service. Industrial designers, graphic designers, architects, landscape architects, lighting designers and interior designers execute their work in a manner very different from that of a visual artist. As a consulting professional, there is a long interactive process of putting ideals, thoughts and wishes together, and shaping them into a tangible and concrete product that both designer and client can be happy with.
This differentiates the artist from a designer, as the former can execute art without much interference, and with the purity of his artistic intentions, while a designer’s work is more purposeful and is executed to meet certain needs and provide for specific functions. Sometimes, it also has to accommodate preferences in taste. Most of the time, it has to consider the consequences of its own creation: how it affects the user, and how it contributes—whether positively or negatively—to our built environment.
Design drawings or blueprints are sometimes misinterpreted to be the start and the end of the design process. One of the biggest peeve any professional in the design field could have is when their work is taken at face value, when design work is looked upon merely as the setting of lines across a sheet of paper. But what is not seen on paper are the interactions and conflicts inside the mind’s creative nooks and crannies. This “virtual” sorting out of ideas and probabilities, and the sifting and melding of these into more concrete concepts—even before they are set on paper—eventually allow design possibilities to happen. This is one process the designer shares with the artist: the labor within this realm of the intangible, existing but waiting to be made physical so that it can transform into something that can be patronized or enjoyed.
This, in my experience, is the most difficult part of putting any art or design together. It’s tantamount to an exorcism of the imagination. This is where one grapples with giving identity to an emotional expression, or captures a sensation to be expressed. This is where the purging happens. This is the catharsis.
The panel of canvas, or sheet of photo paper, or set of blueprints, is the medium. It is the mode in which the idea is made comprehensible to the world outside the artistic mind. It is what documents that process. But the concept or idea is the intellectual property.
Let’s not give the medium too much credit.
Next time you flip through that blueprint, honor the process that happens in the mind. Design is a much bigger world than just putting lines on paper.