The job of Design
Biggest learning was here, the last three posts fall within this area of learning.
About a month ago I hit a point where I thought I had the design, everything clicked into place, it functioned, it looked beautiful, it all worked and I had my world rocked to the core by the HOD telling me that it was not the end.
I realised that I was holding on to concepts, cute ideas that worked well but overall did not serve the wider world of the production as a whole. I was forced to go back and re-question what the job was but what held me back was the fact that I had already designed the logistics of how it would work and every time I changed an idea it would change the logistics.
It put a strain on my visualisation I had to let go of it all because I didn’t have time in the quick turnaround to produce the things I wanted to produce It put a strain on my collaborators because they had to deal with me being upset at the same time as I began to doubt whether or not they actually believed I could do something
Whats exciting is that as soon as I had gotten over that I directly applied it to my work, and within the next few weeks I had overthrown my own design because it wasn’t doing the job of the production.
Key things to remember from this is to have check in points after big meetings that I can reassess the job that is needed for my role in the production, to continue to question why a decision has been made and to also forget the logistics that need to happen in order to complete something, this is no longer my job if I want to be a designer, logistical thinking is for my own independent work and the kind of preparation I need to do to speak to makers.