Here’s how designers really examine designs to improve communication
On the French spy drama, The Bureau, a young agent asks Guillaume Debailly, her superior, “Do you believe in intuition?” And Debailly immediately dismisses her with, “No.” Then he pushes her to think about what she calls intuition, “Did something in the file catch your attention, and you told yourself you were probably overreacting? Try to figure it out. That’s intuition. Something you saw and let slip, and it’s stuck in your mind.”
Debailly doesn’t believe in the magic of intuition. He believes in the ability of the mind to see something but not immediately understand why it’s significant. A more experienced spy learns to trust those impulses, not because they are magical, but because they are learned from experience.
Much of graphic design seems intuitive, and yet it is often learned.
We work on layouts for a poster or figure out how to organize the content on the website and make it “look good.” But there’s a lot more to it than that. The experienced designer is thinking about how the content will communicate and how the organization of that content will engage the viewer. “Intuition” seems magical and belies the deeper understanding of how typography and elements can convey information in effective ways.
