Design Process as Evolution

August 17, 2010 - Permalink

It starts with little single-celled ideas in a sketchbook. Hundreds of them. Some die, some go on to live, grow, and mutate a bit.

Next step: computer roughs. Here, the ideas become multi-celled. Layers of texture, scanned imagery, perfectly set type, and Illustrator files with endless ideas scattered about the artboard, everywhere but on the artboard itself. These files go through multiple iterations.

When the process is done, looking over those files seems like eons. It is an absolute case of survival of the fittest. A process book contains the history of a small world, but an important one in and of itself. Thoughts left behind on paper, ideas that grew and just nearly made it, all building up to the finished product.

Artificially finished, of course, due to deadlines.