Essay #4

Cairo Montgomery
English 111
Essay 4

The Process of Design

    Everything is in this world needs a process. True, we can sometimes start things without guidelines and be blessed with a substantial end result. Though, with a proper outline and form of process set prior to a project, you will always have an overall better sense of  progress. If you ever find yourself designing something you should always keep such a process in mind. Every now and then an artist may feel inspired enough to just, go at it head-first and the end result just fall into their lap. Unfortunately, we aren't always that fortune and we aren't always inspired. Following the right process will get you through your design or art peice effectively without leaving your audiance lost to what your point is.

    Before you jump into working you should make sure to have a clear understanding of what it is you are suppose to accomplish with your design. It's important to bring people into your peice and relate to your design. So if you're making a flyer for a football team, it wouldn't hurt to go to a game and get a feel for the sport itself. If you can look at the flyer and tell that its for a football team at first glance then you achieve your goal. This is how you develop your concept.

    Developing your concept is the most important part of the design process. Without a clear sense of concept anyone is liable to define your work from their own imagination, and this is not what you want as an artist unless your peice is abstract. You should be able to understand how without following this particular step your entire design could loose its substance. Artist come up with their own methods of establishing a good concept to maintain their connection with their work and their audiance.

    Before I started the art program at NOVA I was so uses to just jumping in front of the computer, starting a design and finishing it within a matter of hours without taking much into consideration but visual appeal. That worked for me. I felt as though as long as my end result was compelling that was enough. Although there was so much foundation lacking in my work and that I wasn't able to notice it until I learned various theories of art. I was so pissed off when my art instructors would require a process book with our projects. Process books are basically a step by step analysis of how and why you created your final design for a project. Say you were creating a logo. To start off the book you might have a set of ten small black and white thumbnail sized designs. Then out out those ten designs you would choose the best three you would want to use and redesign them on a larger scale, referred to as "comps", and out of the three you would choose the strongest design to go with for your final result. You would then sketch this final design, being mindful to of design elements such as hierarchy and composition. Everything should be well balanced and your center of interest should be obvious. You can no start to take into consideration an effect swatch pallet (assortment of colors) that will compliment your design. It would benefit you gravely to be conscious of color theory and different combinations of color such as primary color, secondary color and tertiary color and different color compliments while doing this. Keeping a good sense of colors helps to no clash colors together. Sometimes color and speak louder than the message of your design and can take away from the integrity of your design.

    Having a colored rough draft isn't always enough to make an effective design. Knowing when you're finished can be difficult sometimes. You might not when enough is enough or if all you have will suffice. Every now and then you might reach the end of a project with the feeling that something is missing. This might be my favorite part of the project. This pretty much means that you forgot your creativity. This is now your opportunity to throw your own style into the design and make it speak for you as an artist. You achieve this simply by playing around with your design until you're satisfied.

    There is no right or wrong way to create art. One might come up with their own process of design totally different from mine but at the end of the day a process is required and the design is nothing without a good concept.