reflections

Something I want to improve on is my personal discipline when creating. I find myself often giving up when things get backed into a corner, and I thought it was just my personality. I realise that resilience and grit is a learnt process, people aren't born with it. As a designer, I want to be able to actively understand when I need to take a break, but also when to come back to a design and give it another shot.

I found one of my biggest problems when working on design projects is working through the standstill moments, the ones where nothing seems to be working. I am someone who is used to getting things right on the first try, and this is a big problem when I sometimes let this expectation of myself leak into design work. I think I need to work on prototyping more, spending more time on really imagining all the different ideas thoroughly, instead of jumping to a conclusion too fast. Something I really want to learn is how to have self discipline in this, and to actively be in the mindset of realising that it is going to take time for a good idea to surface.

I would like to get better at physical prototyping, and CAD in the future. Both of these things I have tended to avoid at any chance possible, as I just replace them with drawing and sketches. I find that this impacts the quality of my designs often, as I am left with some problems or mistakes that I could have eliminated earlier with prototyping. CAD is something I want to get used to navigating. Over the past couple of weeks I have been playing around further with illustrator and photoshop, just exploring and completing the tutorials they have. This is already opening me up to a world which is very new to me, but I feel inspired to keep on working and learning these tools.

I want to be a designer who can use a variety of tools effectively. I limit myself often, and tend to stay in my comfort zone with the things that I make. Drawing, and fabric are things that I am most comfortable with. I have some interesting in laser cutting, which I hope to explore further when the opportunity arises.

#process #des100