Thinking Design Creativity:
Taking a step back to look at the bigger Picture.
What, exactly, is design? Over the past years, and even up till now, whenever you talk design, and you observe the response of the people you are talking to, you realize they are thinking of magical user interfaces, cool 3d animations, stunning game art, unreal Photoshop editing, etc. Like, when a client comes around, the one thing they want you to do, is a logo. And it’s true, to a degree, that design is delivered from these, but is that really, design? Do we just push and pull pixels and vectors all over the screen? Are we just Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, Figma and Studio experts? What are our motives for doing what we do? What do we stand for, seriously? Should you be a designer?
Perhaps we have been focusing too much on some aspects of design and their end products, rather than looking at the whole picture. Design is much more broader and deeper than that.
I am not a design pro — yet. I started just 6 years ago. I started this design lab just 4 years ago. But during this time, my entire perspective on design has evolved in ways I never possibly imagined. With so many resources to learn from, I have been able to find a greater purpose in what I do. So I hope to share some of my thoughts and experiences in this career field that is molding a better human out of me.
Before anything, I would like to explain in my understanding, how I think people view design and the creative industry - how they visualize our work.
Someone whose article I recently read made this comment about logo design.
“ Logos are not rocket science! but logo designers try hard to make you believe so! but in reality they mostly get paid for the ceremony they create and the film they produce to hypnotize the client.” — Someone.
Now, I don’t know the guy, but I liked the article (which, by the way, is not related to design), and I believe in a clear expression of one’s perspective on topics. Logos and other forms of design ain’t rocket science, that is certain. But this is an unbalanced statement, yet still — you might have realized this by now if you’re a designer — 8/10 people who hire your services think the same way.
Are they right? Do you deceive your clients into buying your cool and interesting design?[what? Did I hear you think “maybe”?]
Information does not always look the same when you dig deeper into it. One of the things about big-picture in design is that you don’t look at it from your perspective, or bias the result with your personal preferences. So, I decided to approach this as a case study. I realized, there was no problem actually with the sentence, but it’s the construction that could easily mislead readers into having the impression that designers are illusionists. Or just me.
It’s not what it really is, but how we see it, that is the problem.
People have had problems. People have problems. People will always have problems. In every aspect of life, every industry, every activity. Some need to represent their business in one word. Others need to reach 100k subscribers. Others also need to buy food without missing Netflix or leaving their sofa. Where one problem is solved, two more rise in its place. As you are solving the new ones, more raise their hands. Do nothing, and they will grow. Use the same solution all the time, and they will get used to it, eventually rendering it impotent. People need these problems solved, but they cannot solve them all by themselves. Sometimes some problems are evident, yet invisible to people since we are living in a fast-paced environment. So they search far and wide, looking for the most efficient solution that can help them solve these problems in the shortest possible time.
Such a solution is possible to build and develop, but it has to give the people what they all want, as well as address their individual needs because each person has his unique preference. Its foundation should have enough space to scale and improve upon over time, else it will eventually be beaten by the existing problem, like other past solutions.
Different people have defined design in many ways than one, but all are connected:
“Design is not just what it just looks like, but also how it works.” — Steve Jobs
“Trademarks are usually meta-morphs of one kind or another and are, in a certain sense, thinking made visual.” — Saul Bass.
“…A logo doesn’t sell, it identifies…A logo derives it’s meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way round.” — Paul Rand
A designer’s primary role is to be the middleman between people and their needs. When a person comes to a designer to design a business logo, it’s because he has a business identity problem. But, how can the designer see the whole problem, when he doesn’t work at the client’s workplace? So he has to be attentive, collect all the client says about the business, the operations, architecture, etc. then, in his unique and creative way of seeing the world, explain, in shapes and diagrams, how to solve that part of the problem in the best possible way he can.
“From the stores of images we have seen and symbols we have learned to understand, which accumulate through life in our subconscious, we recall and consider shapes and forms, comparing and connecting them with others and overlaying them, so that one image calls up another in an almost dreamlike way. Only the essentials appear tentatively on the sketchpad, at first no more than aide-memoire.”
— Adrian Frutiger
People have always interpreted design to be art. It is art, but it’s also a science, and we tend to forget the latter. That misconception is the reason why most do not value good design or find it a good investment. As an artist and designer, I have been able to draw in a line between the two. Art is self-centered; an expression of one’s emotional or mental state, character, personality or habit, using a medium the artist finds best suited to himself. You don’t necessarily have to explain to your audience why you draw genitalia or carnivore elephants eating vegetarian lions, because it is pretty much self-explanatory (in most cases). It’s how you think, how you felt when you drew it, and, in a way, who you are. When you were drawing it, it was to release out some of that energy in motion (e-motion), inspiring the minds and hearts of others. This is nothing advanced. If a behaviorist can tell your personality by looking at your handwriting, then art tells so much more, don’t you think?
Design, however, is user-centered. Every pixel in there exists because of a reason related to the end consumer. Design is not based on how the designer feels, what he likes and doesn’t, or his favorite trend. As mentioned earlier, he takes information from the user, processes it in a way that is both generally acceptable to other users and specific to that user, and brings out what he believes is the best possible solution, based on the same information.
Design is a combination of art and science, and thus, in a way, designers, scientists, and artists all tap from the same creative source. Most designers started as artists. But the process and the purpose are the real differences between them. Being an artist, you think about how you feel and you let it out. Being a designer, you think about how the audience feels and build on that. Art pleases, design solves. Art is inspirational, while design is functional. The artist is the center of his work; the designer puts the user there instead. As the designer, he is the extension of the user, and he goes deeper to understand the user’s motives and builds a product that satisfies them.
Many Names, One Work.
A designer has been called many names: scientist, artist, visual programmer, storyteller, strategist. These are all true because design is a generalized skill, not a specialized one. Being a designer requires being capable of fusing different mindsets, perspectives, and feedback all into one deliverable. As the one connecting all of them, the designer has to accept useful data and refine it for a good user experience. For example, interface designers design an interface with features and content placed in a way that is more accessible and structured. After designing the solution, he documents it for future analysis and review, explaining why he made this choice of colors, typography, and illustrations.
The true nature of design is that it is inclined towards solving real, actual people’s needs. Everything designers do is bent towards a particular problem and how to effectively [that’s the key word] solve this problem for a longer period without switching to another solution. It is about how to solve the problem using fewer resources and still achieve the biggest impact.
