Golden rules

As a dad, I spend alot of time trying to answer questions such as why time doesn’t just stop, or who invented colours. So a recent email from a student asking if I had any golden rules for working in a design studio made a nice change.

1. Help.

Not a big one on anyone’s to do list, but helping is one of the most important things you can do in a studio on a daily basis. It means making time to go outside your remit; sharing a new technique, or just making sure your colleagues are ok. Thinking of what you do as helping your clients, rather than just providing a service, is also a good start to building solid working relationships, and adding real value to what you do.

2. Work backwards.

Start at the end. Think about this first: what are you actually designing? what/who is it for? when/how is the final work being presented?. Factoring in the budget gives you your available time, letting you build an adaptable framework to fit any deadline you have - and defining the creative space. Most of the time ideas will come as soon as you get a brief, but let them percolate while you get the ‘mechanical stuff’ out of the way; set up your slides, think about your presentation visuals etc. Having a finished framework put together right from the start will help you channel your ideas when you start on the creative, and keep your thinking succinct and focussed.

3. Travel light.

Selecting, editing, and filtering down your output is a fundamental aspect of working as a designer, and you need to get good at it. Be objective and critical with your own ideas. The best thing is to travel light through your process with some trimmed down concepts, and arrive at the end with only the essentials - the worst is dragging a load of creative baggage along with you that will tire you out, and end up in a confused pile at your clients feet.

4. Make choices.

As Jonathan Hoefler said, “ignore the noise, and focus on the signals”. The better you are at making choices, the better you’ll inversely be at offering them. Clients are basically hiring you to come up with solutions to their particular problem, then helping them decide on the most effective. This is different to just deciding for them. The more you’ve reasoned through your work, the more informed - and the better - their choice will be.

5. The solution is in the problem.

This was a bit of advice given to a designer by their tutor at the RCA. It’s a really handy little mantra to run like a Q&A in your head when you’re stuck on something that isn’t working. First, you need to find the problem, then you can fix it. For example: ‘it’s not working’ why? ‘it doesn’t feel right’ why? ‘It’s all off balance’ why? ‘the lines are a mess’ (that’s the problem) solution: Fix the lines.

6. Practice.

Creativity as a profession means coming up with great ideas, then putting them to work to solve problems. You have to do it over and over again, to a timeframe. It’s not easy, and if you want to get good at being a creative thinker (as with anything) you need to practice. Charles Eames said that ‘the role of a designer is that of a good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests’, and this can be taken literally - of all the exercises you can do to sharpen up your design skills ‘off the job’, cooking is one of the best; if you can serve up a perfect roast for 8 people, chances are you can deliver a decent set of brand guidelines. The parallels are endless; you have to plan, think about who it’s for, what ingredients you need, and more importantly you need to commit (and be prepared to think on your feet when your panna cotta flops…)

7. Surf.

If you’re going to be spending most of your time at a screen while grinding away at a specific zone of your brain all day, then getting out and doing something physical is pretty essential. Surfing is used to alleviate depression and anxiety, successfully treat PTSD sufferers and generally untie all kinds of gnarly head-knots, and is one of the best things you can do for your body as well as your mind. A bonus I’ve also found over the years is that you can still benefit from the negative ions and alpha brain waves, while actually being a pretty crap surfer.