Whether I'm working physically or digitally is a large factor in the fabrication, but in either case, the design portion of my process is more or less the same. Everything (and I mean everything) begins with research. Literary, visual, tactile, and procedural research are just the beginning phase. There is no such thing as having too much information, or being too prepared, so I do as much as I can in pre-production. Research is tantamount to inspiration.
After research comes ideation - the process of visually roughing out what you want things to look like. This includes color palettes, basic forms, patterns, gradients, motifs, and other structural elements that give me a solid foundation to build from. Ideation begins with simple rough sketches and grows into thumbnail drawings.
Thumbnail sketches are a key part of the process because they give a quick outline of the direction the project will go. Fast and small drawings make it easy to pick out the good and bad parts to continue the design process. I usually create dozens or scores of thumbnail sketches before any sort of rendering begins.
From thumbnails comes rough rendering. These are still rough drawings but are often more detailed and will focus on either the project as a whole or specific elements. These then get more and more refined until the final renderings are complete and the project is realized.
At that point, the design process is complete, and the concepts are transposed over to technical designs and fabrication methods.
After research comes ideation - the process of visually roughing out what you want things to look like. This includes color palettes, basic forms, patterns, gradients, motifs, and other structural elements that give me a solid foundation to build from. Ideation begins with simple rough sketches and grows into thumbnail drawings.
Thumbnail sketches are a key part of the process because they give a quick outline of the direction the project will go. Fast and small drawings make it easy to pick out the good and bad parts to continue the design process. I usually create dozens or scores of thumbnail sketches before any sort of rendering begins.
From thumbnails comes rough rendering. These are still rough drawings but are often more detailed and will focus on either the project as a whole or specific elements. These then get more and more refined until the final renderings are complete and the project is realized.
At that point, the design process is complete, and the concepts are transposed over to technical designs and fabrication methods.
© 2018 Parker James Bradford