Reframing Design
I have always been a bit envious, when seeing the studio spaces of other designers. The vast drafting tables. The scattered books with posted notes sticking out between pages. The fabric swatches artfully arranged upon the walls. The materials and instruments scattered with just the right amount of dishevelment. The notebooks, documenting one’s work with almost academic rigour. And of course, the moodboards - those artful collages of inspiration, serving as evidence of the design process, of nursing an abstract idea into a concrete object.
Over the years, I have tried to set up such a space again and again. Each time it would come together rather nicely, only to turn into an abandoned ghost-room a short while later.
No matter how nice the desk, I do not tend to sit at one - preferring mossy outdoor spaces, and cramped corner tables in coffee shops. No matter how many lovely notebooks I have, I end up sketching on envelopes and scraps. And all the moodboards tend to happen in my head. There is no evidence as such of my process. There is no special room that bears witness to my creativity. No inspirational source material establishing context. And I have struggled with this for years, feeling as if I was not designing in the correct way.
It was only recently, that I learned to see my process in a new light, and appreciate it for what it is. My design work does not happen at a drafting table, no matter how much I would like it to. It happens when I ride my bicycle, walk in the woods, plant flowers, swim in the sea. It happens as I rush through the streets and catch a glimpse of things in my peripheral vision. It happens while I prepare meals for my toddler, do the laundry. It happens as I start to wake up in the morning, and half-remember a dream, which reminds me of something that reminds me of something else. Now, how on earth can that lend itself to a moodboard?..
The habit to design is ever present, and so completely integrated into everyday life, that everything becomes a moodboard of sorts. At times, the photos I snap with my rangefinder camera document the many fleeting inspirations I feel through the day. But mostly, the snapshots exist in my mind’s eye.
It is perhaps a field-based model of design, rather than a studio-based one. But even framing it that way imposes unnecessary templates. Design as an act and a process, can be as individual and organic as the human designer behind it.
At its core, Frivolt is a design blog - even though it might not look like one. It is the closest I might ever come to having a notebook, a moodboard, a drafting table, and a truly inhabited studio space. It’s what the process looks like for me.
