Assessing design process | Graphically Speaking

Birthday planner for the month of january

Exercise: Birthday List (Graphic Design One, pg113)

Make a birthday list poster to keep on your wall. It is likely to be there for a while so it needs to look good. Start by collecting all the birthdays of your friends and family. You’ll need their name and birth date, to decide whether or not you buy them presents or just send a card, text message or email.

I’m not sure I entirely got the point of this exercise. I think this is partly because I tend not to use these sorts of things, so I had trouble getting past the ‘I’d just use an app’ thought! I started with a few sketches and looking online at other examples. The online research suggests this is seen as predominantly a female or young children market so the designs very much reflect this. Lots of bright colours, cupcakes, dinosaurs and stickers.

: Birthday 1

: Birthday 2

: Birthday 3

After making a few sketches, primarily to think about layout, I decided I would work on a perpetual version that could be downloaded as a PDF. It would have a hole in one corner to put a loop through for hanging, and each one can then be recycled after use. I wouldn’t put the month on but leave a space for the user to fill it in themselves.

I also decided I would use a pastel type palette, with an informal feel for everyday use. In terms of the information to include I decided on:

Date
Name
Card
Phone call
Present
Text
Make a cake

I created a landscape grid and added balloons and bunting.

Birthday list design

In terms of the need to contain certain information I think the design works well and it could easily go on a pinboard, fridge door or hang from a kitchen hook. The design is probably not the most inspiring in the world because of my feelings about the task and the nature of the output. I was definitely more engaged with the infographic, which is useful learning in terms of how I might deal with a design task that doesn’t excite me in future.

Rework

My tutor was right when he suggested this had gone clip art in design, and that was because I didn’t care about it and couldn’t find a way in to the exercise. Having talked it through I revisited it with more of an app approach in mind. I could envisage a series of screens, taking you from the months to the individual birthdays. It would be flexible enough to allow you to add your own categories, but I have included the most obvious. I am much happier with this approach and could imagine it being useful. Moreso than a poster or wall chart!

: Remember homepage

: Birthdays by month

: Drop down screen for individuals

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Design Council Double Diamon model two red diamonds showing product design process

Research Point (Page 44, OCA Graphic Design): Critiquing my work

How do you approach being self-critical? What issues does it raise? Do you have friends, family, colleagues or a group who will critique your work for you?

Thinking about critiquing my own work is not as simple as it might appear. There is obviously a process of decision-making and editing that occurs without which I would never be able to select a final design, but surfacing what at first appears to be an intuitive and not necessarily conscious process is not easy. Inevitably it raises aesthetic concerns about beauty, ugliness, and so on, my first response to the question of how I critique my work is ‘I know it when I see it’ and ‘it’s the version I like’. A response that I accept may be less than helpful and doesn’t necessarily give me, let alone anyone else, an insight into my design process.

Design Council ‘Double Diamond’ model

In researching ways to describe the process I came across the Design Council’s “Double Diamond” four step model:

Discover
Define
Develop
Deliver

Although this seems to apply more to physical product design I thought the iterative process of diverging and converging seemed familiar, indeed it is very like a model I developed for my own research process in terms of my organisational studies. I find this awareness a useful part of my own reflective practice because it helps give me a sense of when I might be opening out (idea generating) and when I need to focus down (problem definition and solving). In getting to understand this process I can start to recognise times when I have moved through the process and narrowed things down too quickly or when I am spending too long idea generating. Sometimes this is when it is useful to bring in external feedback, as I may not always spot for myself how something might be developed further or focused down more.

After a bit of research there seems to be some common areas of advice around how to review your design work:

Make sure you are answering and working to the brief: as a freelance consultant I am very familiar with working to a brief and also recognising that the contracting process can be iterative as a project develops
Consider current trends: this to me needs to balance of what is ‘on trend’ and what is gimmicky or trying too hard. You don’t want a design that looks very dated or out of touch or lacking in ideas. Equally, it seems to me to reflect back to the brief – is the client looking for something timeless, fresh, traditional, contemporary and so on
Try different perspectives: upside down, monochrome, stripped back to outline and so on
Slow down and step back: this is something familiar to me from my work writing, I need to have time to review and edit (although this is not always within my control)
Remember design theory: colour, composition, typography, balance and so on
Make a storyboard: tell the story of the design. I have a preference to lay different ideas out on the floor or put them on the wall so I can physically see and live with them for a while
Emotional attachment: there is another element that doesn’t seem to get mentioned very much, which for me is important and that is about emotional engagement with your ideas. I know there are ideas I become wedded to and all the rational analysis in the world makes it hard to shift from that idea

I think there are some basic questions that I follow that echo the process in the course workbook, they are not necessarily always in awareness and that is something to be developed further:

Have I answered the brief?
Is the design usable (I might add beautiful, funny, happy etc., if it’s appropriate to the brief)?
Do I like the concept at a glance?
Is the design trendy?
What is the message or idea? Does it communicate what I am intending?
Am I emotionally engaged (if so to what degree)?

I like the point made by Design Shack –

“Good design answers questions. It often answers them before users have a chance to even ask them.”

Interestingly, it is often the approach I take in my consultancy work too – my self-reflection stems from asking ‘what question am I trying to answer?’

In terms of wider feedback I have family and friends who are often willing to share their opinions. I also make use of two of the OCA Facebook fora (Photography Level 1 and Visual Communications). I haven’t shared anything through OCA Discuss yet, partly a usability issue because of accessing the site on occasion, and I think partly because of a need to build my confidence in a new field first.

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