The design process

1.    First initial thoughts

2.    Research

3.    Experimenting with materials

4.    Finial piece

5.    Evaluating and reflecting

 

When I first get a project brief there are a number of stages I go through to get to my end idea and finial piece. Firstly I start thinking about what the subject/topic makes me think of and what points I could research into coming from that initial first thought. Secondly after I’ve done mind maps with ideas I start doing the actual research weather it is into a certain artist, films, products or important points in history.

After I have been researching for a few days I start doing thumbnail sketches of my first ideas, I find that it is better to get the first ideas out of my head because I find that they are not the strongest ones. If I am designing for a painting or a sculpture I would do small machetes or practise paintings before I did the actual finial piece so that’s what I would do at this stage. If I was doing a design for a game or a poster I would do experiments on Photoshop or illustrator with different fonts and colours. The third stage would be experimental and deciding and figuring out what would work on my finial design but stage depends on what the project is as the experiments and machetes would be different.

 

For the finial stage of actually making my finial piece I would be reflecting and evaluating on what I had already done so far in my sketchbook on things such as thumbnail sketches, note making and the experimental things I had been doing. I would see what didn’t work very well and what I thought worked well. My finial piece would be a summing up of all the work that I had previously done towards that particular project.

With my work the second and third stages are the most important stages because this is what my finial piece is based on. If I go wrong with the research then I would end up lost and my work would have no meaning. With research I don’t just take things off the internet about other artists, I look into things such as films, newspapers and also the news. This then under pins what my experimental work is going to consist of and what materials I am going to use because the materials may link to the subject or issue I am going to be working on.

Another important element of my design process is when I have near enough finished the project when I am reflecting on what I have done because this helps me to identify what I could have done to make the project work better.