Anything designed well doesn’t just appear out of thin air.  Designers usually follow a process to solve problems in order to complete the design task at hand. After reading Douglas Bowman’s “A Design Process Revealed,” I noticed that his process for creating a personal project for CSS Zen Garden is not so dissimilar from any designer. His process:

• Research & Discovery
• Competitive Analysis
• Exploration
• Thumbnail Sketching
• Typography
• Imagery
• Composition
• Execution & Implementation

I won’t go into detail about these points. His article is sufficient for that. It is important to note that this process follows a simple structure to go from initial problem to final solution.  Designers need to be more than creative, they must have the ability to work efficiently  and effectively.  Without a structured form of problem solving each project can become sloppy and more overwhelming than the last.  

—— After analyzing this article and writing about it I see that one of my major problems is that I don’t work very efficiently.  i may follow a similar process, but it seams like I don’t execute it in a time efficient manner.  I suppose that is the point of this blog.  Learning how to learn.