The designer’s mind is their most powerful tool.
In this blog, we assume that minds are fascinating, minds are fun, and all minds are delicately, deliciously flawed. Despite the flaws, people get up to some pretty awesome stuff with their minds, and I would argue that design orientated problem-solving is the most casually gruelling mental task you can embark on.
We all have different techniques for entering the design/flow zone. I myself have to write, and write and write some more in order to design. Conversely, I also find drawing to be an excellent technique – a diversion for the subconscious mind – for honing a piece of writing, particularly a complex one.
The moments that fascinate me are the micro-steps taken in the design process, as we transition from soaking up information and inputs into subconscious or unconscious gestation, and then back again into action in a cycle that would repeat endlessly if we did not artificially terminate it with a deadline. We all do this differently, working our flawed minds into a lather to find and follow a path, hunting down ideas and solutions. In this process the mistakes – the forks in the path that do not answer the brief, and that lead us into what feel like dead ends – can be the most illuminating.
At The Flawed Mind we will examine and describe such processes, sharing them as we encounter them in our design practice. I suspect that the flaws in our minds – the idiosyncracies and inefficiencies – are the source of our most profound creativity.
