Design Practice

I’ve been taking writing courses for years, and one of the most common refrains from  my professors has been to, “Just WRITE.” No one in my English major expects to become a good writer by writing papers for class every few weeks and reading a lot. You’ve got to practice. “Write something everyday.” We take this for granted.

This isn’t so true in my design major. We’re expected to work (all the time...that’s why there are couches in studio ;) ) but we’re not expected to practice per se...probably because it’s not immediately obvious to design students what that would even mean. Undergrad has taught me that the design process can offer solutions to particular problems and projects we’re assigned. Those of us who work professionally on the side experience essentially the same situation: a client calls us with a job, we accept it and begin the design process.

Since the impetus for designing is usually outside myself, it seems odd to even consider what ‘practicing’ design would even mean. Certainly it’s difficult to think of it in the same way I think of writing. In Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott describes waking up every morning at the same time to be at her desk and writing (at least attempting to write) by 9am. Writing practice is a daily ritual...it doesn’t wait for a client or an outsider problem.

I’ve heard other designers talk about working on self-initiated projects, but I get the feeling most of the time the ultimate aim of these projects is self-promotion or skills-polishing for the purpose of getting more paying work. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about building practice into the process that way that writers are taught to do so...in sort of a ritualistic low-stakes sort of way. Some more thoughts by Anne Lamott:

“Writing taught my father to pay attention; my father in turn taught other people to pay attention and then to write down their thoughts and observations.”
“I wrote a lot of other things too. I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship’s rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down.”

I’m still not sure what design practice might look like, although writing itself seems like a great place to start. Writing helps you “pay attention,” which is certainly vital for a good designer...and it also has a tendency to be fluid enough to allow for lateral connections to take place...something that’s difficult to achieve when you’re in the middle of a difficult design problem and you’re first undergraduate instinct is just to dig further and further into the subject at hand. Sometimes it’s helpful to meander away from the problem a bit. Drawing is similarly fluid...perhaps design practice might blend the two in an interesting way?

Either way, I think building practice into the day apart from the typical problem-based design process could do nothing but help...it could keep me in the habit of MAKING and train my mind to get in the habit of thinking creatively outside of client-based work. It’s a nice practice to borrow from the writers.