Invisible Design
Have you ever thought about how many hours you actually spend working on design? Shouldn’t you be a millionaire by now? If you are like me, most of this design work goes on in your head, and not always during working hours. A good portion never makes it onto paper, let alone into the final product. It does not have a specific start or stop. You can work on a project, deliver it, and then continue to work on it in your mind long after.
Sometimes there are firm deadlines and work simply must get done. But is it always the best approach to sit 10 hours straight and stare at your screen until you are finished? A quick change of scenery or an hour of fresh air for the body and mind might just be worth more than 3 hours of hunching over the screen. Consciously or subconsciously, you’re always working. Creativity is something that can’t be switched off. There can be degrees of creativity, and it is important to feed your creativity to stay original.
Some creative types are very affected by their surroundings. They need a clean desk and a clean house before they can even start their creative process. Others are completely diferent — they slip on their headphones and disappear into their own world. The outside world could be falling down and they wouldn’t notice. Whatever floats your boat, respect your own creative process.
Some designers have a systematic take on their design, and follow a sort of to-do list in order to get work done. Others seem to have a more jump in and make the path as they go along. Either way, there is a system to the madness, and a process behind it.
Maybe to the outsider, this may look a bit weird. Toggling between apps, drawing on scraps of paper, reading something in a book, clicking through websites or getting up from their seat and looking at things from a distance. Jumping from project to project is not an attempt at multitasking, but rather an opportunity for the cross-pollination of ideas and picking up of scraps of inspiration for each project along the way. In a cross-disciplinary team, your coworkers may react to this way of working. Developers can often sit and pound away at the keyboard for 8 hours straight, valuing a concentrated and focused environment. Don’t get me wrong, some creatives do their best work when they buckle down in their own bubble without any interruptions. If that is what they need to do, then do it. Find your flow and inspiration. Sometimes you need to sit and just focus 100% on one particular project. Being able to adapt to each project is key.
Working as a designer for the past 6 years, I have more than a few times been stuck in a creative rut approaching a deadline or delivery. Often all that was needed was to get up and take a detour to the nearest coffee pot. Other times it took a walk around the block. And sometimes I need to change scenery and the task. The mind works on another level. The problem you need to be working on might not cook the best on high heat, but rather needs to stew for a while on the back burner. Drop what you’re doing and move on to another task. It doesn’t need to be too complicated, in fact the mundaner the better.
Heading home at the end of the day I leave the workplace, not the job itself. Many times while doing simple household tasks, a solution comes to me and it is paramount to jot it down on paper, a cellphone or whatever you have closest to you. Many nights just before I close my eyes the solution comes to me, and the next morning it’s gone! Get it down while you think of it and it will be easier to recollect, process, and try it out later. You might not get to work on it again first thing in the morning, maybe after all your other morning routines are done.
Good things don’t come to those who wait at their desk for inspiration, forcing themselves to concentrate. Good things come to those who proactively seek out inspiration, stay curious, and ask why.
If you think that design work is partially invisible work, so is all creative work. Imagination and abstract thought are our most valuable tools as designers, and should be encouraged. At the same time, we as creative professions have a responsibility to provide documentation of this invisible work to our best ability. It is good for ourselves and the people we work with. Our role as designers is to make the invisible visible to our colleagues, clients and end users.
Great ideas don’t always come at the desk, but they usually get documented and realised there. So don’t be afraid to take brakes, take that extra detour to the coffe pot, draw that doodle in your noodle, get it out and on to something others can see.
“The work needs to get out of your head and onto the table, and it needs to be done from the heart.”
— Paula Scher
Roll the credits! First of all, thanks to all my amazing colleagues for raising the bar in design and tech, pushing the limits, and challenging me daily. Special thanks to Jonathan Austigard, for great sparing and conversations about the topic, and of course Sonja Sarah Porter, for her keen systematic eye, and for whipping this post into shape! Go check out their posts, which was what inspired me to write this. Thanks
Originally published at blogg.bekk.no on August 10, 2018.
