Everyday we see things and they make an impact on us, and whether we realize it or not, it happens. I've been in a design class for only three weeks and I've already learned a few pretty amazing things. The world is full of amazing things and everyone of them is an element of design.
1. We overlook things everyday.
When we are children we are taught the right way of various things. Before that, we have to figure out everything on our own. Imagine a world where each individual person taught themselves how to do things in life. We would end up with so many variations of processes to get to the same end result. This is what happens in this picture. You look at it and automatically (in your head) say Good Drive. My professor's father looked at this and said "Wow, I wonder if they did that on purpose?". This road is the location of a hospital. Good Drive abbreviated to Good Dr. could very well be perceived as Good Doctor. We are taught to overlook these things in our daily life. In design, you need to clear your mind of these lessons and start fresh.
2. Creative people are moderate procrastinators.
In a TED talk I recently watched, Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, explains a recent study done by himself and one of his students. They find out that there is a direct correlation from moderate procrastination and creativity or innovative ideas. The student went in to businesses and had employees fill out surveys about how often they procrastinate. They then asked the bosses which employees tend to be more creative and innovative. And sure enough the employees who procrastinate moderately are the ones that ranked higher on the bosses list of creativity. I will never again rethink my slight habit of procrastination.
3.It's not about the look, it's about the feeling.
This is why you can go through you're entire closet and not find anything to wear. None of the clothing that you own is matching up with the way you feel that day. When you create something the first question you must ask is how do I want people to feel when they look at it. For example, when creating a logo you must act as if your logo is a person. If you were to meet this 'person' would you want them to be happy?, approachable?, feminine?. All these adjectives factor into the colors, fonts, and graphic design of your logo or product.
4. Ideas of design happen in seconds.
The world of design is fast paced. There are new, innovated ideas every minute. When you're creating a design for a logo, for example, you can't spend four hour thinking of the basic design. There needs to be short, fast, paced sketches that feed off of a basic idea that only took around two minutes to create. An entire brand identity came from these rough sketches.
