Struggle and process
The way I’ve seen great work made isn’t using any sort of design process. It’s skipping steps when we deem them unnecessary. It’s doing them out of order just for the heck of it. It’s backtracking when we’re unsatisfied. It’s changing things after we’ve handed off the design. It’s starting from the solution first. It’s operating on vibes and intuition. It’s making something just for the sake of making people smile. It’s a feeling that we nailed it.
It’s knowing how to bend the process in your favor. It’s the sense to know how to keep making your work better. And it’s a clear, unwavering ideal of what good looks like.
It’s messy and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
(Good design is improv!)
I remember this chap at design school who got full marks every time. Full scores all the way through. But whenever I looked at this chap’s work I was shocked at how dry and boring it was, how average it felt. The work was okay! It did the job! It was better than mine!
But the work didn’t sing, ya know?
It feels like a lot of design process stuff is the same kinda thing. It’s trying to go for full marks for showing the thinking, showing the process — pretending to be a science when this whole thing is way, way more art than we’d like to admit. But the way to get to a great anything is messy and stupid and wrong right up until the point when it ain’t.
I reckon the only sure-fire process for creating a really good thing is struggling for a very long time.