Designer's-block

Note 023: ... and how to overcome it

Designer’s-block.

Is it real?

A fabrication?

Procrastination with a less-fancy name?

Who knows, but it happens to the best of us.

We have been on-boarding some younger team members lately, so even though you are all super-equipped and faultless designers, here to learn about how to turn that skill into a career, here are my top 10 tips for when (ahem, if ever) you become stuck.

10 Ways to Kickstart your Design Process

1. Start

Don't know how to start?

Just start.

Draw anything.

2. Where?

Anywhere.

On any surface - with any thing.

3. What does it feel like?

Is it diagrammatic?

Could it define relations between parts?

Is it plan-form - an organiser of size and movement?

Is it section form - an organiser of light and air?

is it a perspective - some kind of imagined vista?

Is it an 3D axonometric - some kind of volumetric arrangement?

Is it a memory...?

Is it a fantasy...?

4. I think it's a diagram...

Hmmm. Unpick and redraw it. Lots of times. Tiny.

Is it blob-ish, with arrows - could it become movement? - skip to 5.

Is it sharpish - exciting? - skip to 6.

5. I think it's a plan...

Cool. Keep reworking. Keep blobby. Keep arrow-ey.

Skip to the side of the page - try the section. Just as tiny!

Try a perspective - tinier! Only that tiny space you are incubating!

Loop back...

6. I think it's a section...

Cool. Keep reworking.

Could it be sharper, more dramatic?

Do you dare draw a human to scale? If yes, hang in there - I think you have a section.

If not, all good. This is freedom! Try a mini-axo - maybe it's a material junction you are working with...

7. I think it's a perspective...

Excellent! A romantic I see :)

Sculpt that interior. Stick with 1 vanishing point for now.

Now try from the other side of that newborn wall (remember there is an In-of-In, and Out-of-In, an In-of-Out, an Out-of-Out. These unfold).

Hang on. Somethings Up.... (recheck with 5, 6, 5... return to 4 at any point).

8. I think it's an axo...

OK, an analytical mind - bravo!

Start with the junctions, datums, systems... why not.

Creative process slides back and forth through scale, resolution level and time. If OCD is getting the best of you - breath....

Then return to 7, or 4 (avoid 6)....

9. I think it's a memory...

This is wonderful. The creative practitioners Spatial Intelligence, your personal Mental Space, is a unique thing to behold - your personal final hold out against AI encroachment on all that can and will be automated :)

Nurture it and own it.

Too literal? Then dive back in to 4,5,6,7,8... and keep cycling.

Now you're becoming original and authentic.

10. I think it's a fantasy,...

Perfect. You'll realise with experience that 10, has 9 embedded - it has all along.

You are free to cycle between all these modes, surfaces, and timescales.

The world needs it. Get creative. Embrace your past. Invent the Future.