The final part of three Field Notes I wanted to write about design.

 

Part I began with the eye.

 

Why I don’t believe designers are simply born with one. Why I think the eye is accumulated through curiosity, repetition, failure, experience and the discipline to keep looking.

 

Part II moved outward.

 

If design is a way of seeing, what exactly should we be trying to see?

 

People.

Desire.

Behaviour.

Concern.

Risk.

Cost.

Communication.

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The forces around the thing before the thing exists.

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And somewhere between those two notes, another thought started becoming clearer.

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Maybe the next stage isn’t learning how to create more ideas.

Maybe it is learning how to recognise the right information when it appears.

Because I’ve noticed something when I’m stuck on a design.

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My first instinct is often to keep designing.

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Another sketch. Another reference. Move this. Stretch that. Change the proportion. Try another form.

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Start again.

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Sometimes that works. Increasingly, I’m learning to do something else.

 

Look around. Because the thing that unlocks the problem isn’t always sitting on the drawing.

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Sometimes it’s something a client said forty minutes earlier.

Something a fabricator tells me cannot be done.

Something my daughter notices.

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The route people have made across an empty field.

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Light coming through a tree.

Something completely unrelated I saw three years ago that suddenly becomes useful today.

The answer wasn’t necessarily missing.

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I just hadn’t recognised the signal yet.

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Observation

There Is Information Everywhere

 

Once a problem is properly inside your head, the world starts behaving differently.

 

You notice more.

 

A sentence catches. A behaviour that would normally mean nothing becomes interesting.

You remember an image you had forgotten. A material behaves unexpectedly.

Someone asks what sounds like a stupid question and suddenly you realise it isn’t stupid at all.

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Its not mystical. Although sometimes it can feel that way.

It may simply be pattern recognition.

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The mind connecting things in the background long before we consciously understand why they belong together.

But I’ve experienced it enough now that I pay attention when something feels oddly relevant.

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A client might say ten things in a meeting. Nine are requirements.

One sentence contains the project.

 

A contractor might spend half an hour explaining a technical problem.

 

Then, almost casually, say: “Actually, if we turned this around…”

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Signal. A child ignores the thing we thought was interesting and goes directly to something we considered secondary.

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Signal. People cut their own route across a landscape instead of using the path somebody designed.

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Signal. The information is there.

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The difficulty is recognising which part matters.

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Framework

Signal vs Noise

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I’ve started thinking about design this way.

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There is signal. And there is noise.

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The problem is that they often arrive together.

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Noise can be obvious. Trends. References.

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The thing everybody else is doing.

The pressure to produce something immediately.

The desire to impress.

The request for more “wow.”

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The first idea we become attached to because it arrived first.

But noise can also sound very sensible.

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A brief can contain noise.

A meeting can contain noise.

My own preferences can become noise.

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Even experience can become noise if it makes me assume I already know the answer.

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The signal is different.

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It is the thing that changes how I understand the problem.

Sometimes it confirms what I already suspected.

Sometimes it completely disrupts it.

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The trained eye isn’t only learning how to make better things.

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It is learning which information deserves more attention.

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That feels like a much harder skill.

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Observation

My Daughter Sees It First

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Children are very useful for this. And sometimes, I just run things by her.

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Not because they are somehow automatically better designers.

Because they haven’t learnt to filter the world in exactly the same way we have.

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My daughter will sometimes notice something I’ve walked past repeatedly.

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A colour. A shadow. Something funny about an object.

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Why one thing looks like another.

Why somebody would want to sit somewhere.

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She isn’t trying to solve my project. She’s just looking.

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And occasionally, that observation changes the way I’m looking too.

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That interests me.

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Because the useful information didn’t come from another designer.

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It didn’t come from a case study.

It didn’t come from the design meeting.

It came from someone standing outside the problem entirely.

 

I’m learning not to dismiss those moments simply because they arrive from the wrong direction.

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Mental Model

The Open Field

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I think once we become serious about a problem, we tend to narrow our attention.

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The project becomes the drawing.

The drawing becomes the solution space.

And then we keep searching inside the same box.

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I’m trying to do the opposite. Widen the field.

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The client is part of the field. The user is part of the field.

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The site. The weather. The budget. The fabricator. The maintenance team.

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The child. The neighbour. A memory. A film. An advertisement.

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The pattern of shade beneath a tree.

A conversation that appears completely unrelated.

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Once the field becomes larger, the number of possible connections becomes larger too.

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That doesn’t mean every observation becomes design.

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Most won’t. The point isn’t to collect everything.

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The point is to remain receptive enough that the useful thing doesn’t disappear because I decided too early where the answer was supposed to come from.

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Observation

Sometimes Behaviour Is the Brief

 

One of the most useful things design has taught me is that people often tell you what they need without saying anything.

 

Behaviour leaves evidence.

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You see it in public spaces all the time. A beautiful seating area sits empty.

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Twenty metres away, people are sitting on a low wall. That is information.

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A formal route has been designed through a landscape. People have worn another path into the grass.

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Information.

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Children are given five pieces of equipment. Every child gravitates toward one object that wasn’t even intended as play.

 

Information.

 

Someone stands in a particular place every evening because that is where the light is best.

 

Information.

 

The behaviour may not give you the answer. But it tells you something about the question.

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I think designers sometimes become so focused on what people should do that we stop observing what they actually do.

The signal is often in the difference.

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Framework

Desire Leaves Evidence

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This connects back to Part II.

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I wrote about people, desire, intent, behaviour and form.

I think desire often leaves traces before anyone has articulated it.

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People move toward shade. They gather where they feel protected.

Children climb things that suggest climbing.

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Someone photographs the same view from the same location again and again.

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People avoid an area that technically works but somehow feels wrong.

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Those traces are useful because they are less edited than what people tell us in a meeting.

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They reveal preference through action.

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Not every behaviour should be followed literally. But it deserves to be noticed.

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Because sometimes the design problem is already being answered by the people living inside it.

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Project Insight

The Constraint Can Be the Signal

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I used to think constraints sat around the idea.

 

Now I often wonder whether the constraint is where the idea is hiding.

 

A material cannot bend the way we expected. That sounds like a problem.

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But maybe the alternative construction method produces the stronger form.

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The budget removes half the elements. Maybe the design becomes clearer.

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The site doesn’t allow the ideal orientation. Maybe that forces a relationship with the landscape we wouldn’t otherwise have considered.

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A structural requirement interrupts the form. Maybe the interruption becomes the language.

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I don’t believe constraints automatically make design better.

Sometimes they simply make things harder.

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But I’ve learnt not to immediately treat resistance as something to overcome.

Sometimes resistance contains information.

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What is this problem trying to tell us? 

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That question has become more useful to me than: How do we force the original idea through?

 

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Reflection

I’ve Been Thinking About Receptivity

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Rick Rubin writes about creativity in The Creative Act less as something we switch on when it is time to produce, and more as a way of being receptive to the world around us.

 

That idea has stayed with me. Not because I think the universe is sending perfectly formed designs and our job is simply to receive them. That would be so convenient. But there is something in the idea of remaining open.

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Call it intuition. Pattern recognition. Accumulated experience. Receptivity.

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Or, if you are inclined to think this way, the universe answering questions you have been carrying around.

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I’m less concerned with what we call it.

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What interests me is how often a problem shifts once I stop trying to produce an answer and become more available to what is already happening around it.

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That sounds slightly contradictory.

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Train harder. Learn more. Study more.

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Then stop forcing.

 

But maybe that is exactly the point.

 

The training gives you enough reference to recognise the signal when it appears.

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Mental Model

The Work Is Learning What to Notice

 

Part I was about accumulation. Everything enters the landscape.

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Part II was about widening what we consider part of design.

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This final part may be about discrimination.

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Not everything matters equally. The job is not simply to notice more.

It is to become better at noticing what matters now.

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That changes from project to project.

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On one project, the signal might be something the client keeps repeating.

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On another, it might be what the client never mentions.

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It might be a number.

A behaviour.

A site condition.

A fabrication limitation.

A commercial constraint.

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The signal is whatever changes the understanding of the problem. And once the understanding changes, the form can change too.

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Observation

Good Ideas Rarely Feel Completely New

 

The more ideas I work through, the less convinced I am by the image of creativity as invention from nothing.

 

Most ideas contain traces. Something seen. Something remembered. Something learnt.

Something misunderstood earlier and understood differently now.

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Two things from completely unrelated parts of life suddenly meet.

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That doesn’t make the idea less original. Perhaps originality is not the absence of influence.

Maybe originality is seeing a connection nobody else around the table noticed.

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The raw material may already exist. The combination does not.

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That feels much closer to my experience of design. The idea rarely arrives empty-handed.

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It brings the landscape with it.

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Project Insight

The Answer Can Arrive From the Wrong Person

 

This is another thing I’ve learnt to pay attention to.

 

Sometimes the most useful comment in the room comes from the person who technically shouldn’t have the design answer.

 

The fabricator. The client’s operations team. Someone from sales.

A child. A contractor. Someone walking past.

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Earlier in my career, I probably filtered information more heavily according to role.

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Designers design. Engineers engineer. Fabricators fabricate. Clients approve.

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Reality is much less organised than that.

People see different parts of the same problem.

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A fabricator may understand material behaviour better than I ever will.

An operator may understand how people misuse a space.

Sales may understand the emotional language the market responds to.

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A client may not know how to draw the answer, but they may understand exactly what feels wrong.

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If I am too attached to where the answer is supposed to come from, I might miss it when it arrives somewhere else.

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Framework

Recognition Before Resolution

 

I’ve started separating these two stages.

 

First: Recognition.

What matters here?

What is the signal?

What changed my understanding?

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Then: Resolution.

What should we do about it?

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That order matters.

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Because sometimes we rush into solution mode before we have recognised the real problem.

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More sketches. More form. More options. More design.

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But if the signal hasn’t been recognised yet, we may simply be producing more polished versions of the wrong answer.

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I’m learning to spend longer in recognition. Not indefinitely.

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Projects still have deadlines. Clients still need answers.

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But long enough to ask: What is this actually telling me?

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Reflection

The Universe Doesn’t Replace the Work

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I want to be careful here. Being open is not the same as waiting around for inspiration.

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The work still matters. Research matters. Sketching matters. Iteration matters.

Technical knowledge matters. Discipline matters.

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Deadlines definitely matter.

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Receptivity doesn’t replace the work. It changes how you enter it.

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You prepare.

You study.

You draw.

You test.

You fail.

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You accumulate.

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And then you remain open enough to recognise when something outside the expected process gives you useful information.

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Maybe the universe doesn’t hand us answers. Maybe the work simply teaches us how to recognise more of what was already there.

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I can live with either interpretation.

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Resolution

Why Train the Eye?

 

Part I began with a question about talent. If designers aren’t simply born, what are we training?

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I thought the answer was judgement.

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Then perhaps taste. Then observation.

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Part II widened it further.

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We’re training ourselves to see relationships.

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People and place. Desire and behaviour. Cost and ambition. Risk and possibility.

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Now I think there is one more layer.

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We train the eye so we can recognise signal.

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So that when something relevant appears in an unexpected place, we notice.

 

So that a random sentence doesn’t remain random.

 

So that behaviour becomes information.

 

So that a constraint can become possibility.

 

So that a mistake can become reference.

 

So that a thing we saw years ago can suddenly answer a problem today.

 

Not every signal becomes a design.

 

But every good design seems to begin with recognising something that matters.

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Closing

The Answer Is Often Already in the Field

 

I started this series saying I don’t believe designers are born.

 

I still don’t.

 

Maybe some people begin more sensitive to the world around them.

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But sensitivity can be expanded. Attention can be trained. Experience can be accumulated. Judgement can be refined.

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And curiosity can keep the field open.

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That may be what I value most now.

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Not simply the ability to produce an idea on demand. The ability to keep noticing.

 

Be curious, not judgemental - Walt Whitman. Or made famous recently by Ted Lasson

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Because sometimes the answer is in the brief.

 

Sometimes it is in the client.

 

Sometimes the site.

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Sometimes the material.

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Sometimes the thing that went wrong.

 

Sometimes something your daughter says to you in the car.

 

Sometimes an empty field.

 

Sometimes light through a tree.

 

Sometimes something completely unrelated that suddenly becomes related.

 

The information is everywhere.

 

The work is learning what belongs to the problem.

 

And perhaps that is what design increasingly feels like to me.

 

Not pulling answers out of nowhere.

 

Recognising the signal when it appears.

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Sculptura Principle

Design is recognising the signal.

Train the eye. Widen the field. Stay open long enough to notice what matters.