Douglas Bowman’s “A Design Process Revealed”
I must say, Bowman’s “design process” is the same process most designers would go about approaching a problem. As Bowman said himself,
“While no one person or group may view a problem from the same perspective, general similarities often appear in their approach.”
The first step in the design process that Bowman mentions is Research. Regardless of the subject matter, research is always the best way to start and can be very beneficial with planning. Do i like it? No. There have been times when i have tried to just skip the whole “research” part of the process, and jump right into the brainstorming, sketching, etc. Tried it, but it DIDN’T work. It DOESN’T work. Research is vital to everything. Bowman couldn’t have put it better–
“Jumping into any design project before examining the problem or task at hand might spin the wheels, but won’t get you very far.”
The next step he mentioned was Competitive Analysis. I personally switch these two steps every now and then by doing my competitive analysis first; sometimes this helps to give me ideas before i begin researching.
“The ability to study what others have designed for the same (or similar) problem lends a size-able advantage, since a great deal can be learned from their successes and failures.”
Not that this analysis takes the place of researching, we already know that DOESN’T WORK, but it can help cover your tail if a minimum amount of research is done. The next step is Exploration. Coming up with words to help with solving a problem… waste of time to me. Unless i am having to design a logo, i usually don’t take the time to do this part of the process. Next would be the Thumbnail Sketching stage. There has always been a debate on whether a certain number of sketches is needed to get a designers ‘best ideas’; Personally i think it varies with the artist. Some designers get their best ideas in the first twenty sketches, others in the late eighties. Depending on the project, i may feel the need to do only a few sketches if my ideas are up to par and creative, sometimes more. It really just varies with the artist. The next part of the process Bowman mentions is Typography. I try not to focus TOO much on the typography at first; i go through fonts like smokers go through cigarettes! Because of my indecisiveness with fonts, i go back and forth editing my design until it is finally DONE. Typography plays a HUGE role in a design so it shouldn’t just be something one slaps on a page and called… a DESIGN. Going through fonts like crazy isn’t a problem; I’ve gotten some of my best work this way. However, i do interchange between the typography step, and the next step in the process: Imagery. Sometimes i retrieve all of my images and place them into my design, and work my text around them. Or i half-way input the text, and move on to the imagery, then go back and finish inputting the information. I change it up all the time. Next is Composition. I love doing comps because things always work out the way we want them to. It’s a way of seeing how the “idea” will look–color, fonts, imagery… all put together. However, the difficult part comes with the last stage of the design process, Execution and Implementation. We can always get things to look the way we want with comps, but it’s the putting it together that can be a challenge. The whole “execution” part of the process takes some playing with to get the desired finish. As Bowman states,
“Some changes {are} sacrifices. Some {are} evolved improvements.”
We as designers all have our own way of dealing with “design problems”, but it is obvious we all share similarities with the approach. Douglas Bowman’s “A Design Process Revealed” has BEEN very helpful and will BE very helpful to millions of designers out there.
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