The Good Design Plan
Good design can touch human’s emotion. Something created with deep design thinking that touching people’s emotion, creating atmosphere, work functionally and commercially, improving people’s lives and making the smallest possible impact on the planet, a sustainable design.
It is a process... Good design is a verb, not just a noun. It is a sequence of steps from understand the client need, market research, creating concept, development, etc and makes them real.
Design is about… Creation and innovation. Creativity generates ideas and Innovation exploits them. Good design connects the two. It links ideas to markets, shaping them to become practical and attractive propositions for customers or users with a delivering value.
Think outside the box. Everything man-made is designed, so design is not limited to be created by professional designers, it is a daily life basis that happens to everyone at anytime. But a good design is most likely to happen when a designer with an open mind absorbing things around, dare to try and accepting things they never see.
Be a Better Designer by… doing more non-design activities.
Maintain a healthy perspective on your work and direction. Remember when you were just starting out with designing? Anything and everything seemed possible. You approached designs with a native, wide-eyed attitude. Take your mind off of your current design work, jolting your brain and giving yourself a fresh surrounding to do something in. You will have that outsider, healthily-naive perspective again when you come back to the design work.
Constantly try fresh and creative ideas. Become more frequently inspired. Go create in another media, visually create in a style that’s different from what you usually do, watch films, do a recreational activity, listen to music, read books and publications, or whatever. Snap your brain out of the normal rules by introducing an activity that’s completely different.
Explore Yourself
Explore your eye by look around, see around, listen around and experience around.
With an open mind accepting something new and never seen.
Digest on what you observe.
Develop on what you digest.
Think deeply on what you developed itself and the surroundings (i.e. the connectivity between)
Do it with no pressure, it’s not a work, it’s not a task, do it anytime and anywhere.
Not only concentrate on your own discipline. It’s part of your daily life experience.
Keep asking questions whenever there is query or hesitation.
Dare to speak out and raise out your thoughts, no matter now crazy your thought is.
Keep drawing no matter how bad your drawing skills is, as drawing and illustration helps you to think.
Do something different. Do something out of your comfort zone.
While Designing
Inspiration and ideas will not come if you only sit in front of your desk.
Do not design in CAD or SketchUp. Do it by hand. Think and draw sketches.
Think 3-dimensional, do not think in 2D, and be careful on the connection between elevations.
Research, designing and brainstorming cannot be done step followed by next. You will back and forth mixing these three steps.
Think the craziest you can think of, and then make it practical.
Think more and deeper than client’s request, proposing anything you think is good to the project.
Always think from client’s perspective, then accommodate with your profession ideas and advises.
Design Approach
We are a storyteller.
Come up with the concept by project nature, location, cultural influence, trend and gimmick, marketing analysis, etc.
Pick the theme with simple and memorable words. Apply the theme through the entire project, linking up every area. Or continued with transforming.
Use simple images, avoid to have complicated images on one page as this will lost focus on the original message we want to deliver.
Always propose the best idea, put the budget issue at side. At least it shows our design ability although it needs to change due to different reasons.
Make your presentation more interesting, drawing audience’s attention by making the layout more inviting and with graphics, use of fonts and colors, etc.; imagine you are making a booklet or magazine, but not a report.
Information should be easy to read.
When doing bilingual, do not direct translate, use the words that can best describe and express.
For physical material board, always put the material order per actual application. That is, flooring material at bottom, wall material in middle, ceiling material on top, curtain at side. Mix with supportive images like furniture, lighting fixtures or accessories.'
Format for competitions may be different to the standard project presentations. Depends on what format or layout suits better.
When Presenting
Always dress appropriate, wear something represents you are a professional designer, not too loud, not too boring.
Look confident; show it on your face even you are in tension. No one will believe in you if you do not believe yourself.
Keep your body straight.
Do not finger point to client, use your hand.
Throw your chewing gum.
Do not shake your legs, stay calm.
Avoid meaningless words and non necessary tone expressions.
Keep the word simple, get into the point directly.
Less technical terms as the client will not understand.
Speak in a neutral tone and average speed.
Most of the clients do not know what they want.
Read the client’s body language while presenting, read their reactions.
Listen what the client say and how the way they response, as sometime the inner meaning is not same as how it reacts.
Digest their preferences by the way they act and speak.
Guide them and educate them what is new and good on both design aspect and functional side. This is not a onetime task, do it through the whole design development process.
While the client strongly have their particular ideas, modify it with our professional input, merge together and accommodate with each other in order to gain the best result.
Upgrade Yourself
Improve design approach and presentation skill per issues above.
Learn or at least get to know the latest software.
Learn more how to set up tender drawing, like defining the areas and space, which elevation and detail need to show, what scale should show, how detail the information should show, etc. This helps you design better through time.
Learn how to arrange specifications, break it into different books by material, furniture, lighting, sanitary, ironmongery, electrical, general specification, etc. Fill sufficient information for consultants and contractors to follow up.
Tutorials will be provided whenever there is a need.
Keep asking supplier questions to have better understanding of the products.
Arrange supplier talks and lunch and learn.
Last, back to the beginning, Explore Yourself again.