Trying to explain how to ride a bicycle is notoriously difficult. The same distance lies between experience and theory in describing the design process. To my mind defining design as problem solving smacks more of routine work than creative thinking. The fact is designers enjoy playing with problems. They treat them as a personal challenge and so if someone else asks how they came up with an idea you’ll probably hear what the designer thinks you expect to hear. Anything from it just popped up in the head, the result of a mystical experience like a Llama levitating by reversing his polarities or something magical like making a leopard change its spots. For myself I try to sum up the situation, back in edgeways and cast around for ideas on which to hang further ideas. It’s an intuitive process involving search, discovery, recognition and evaluation. Rejection or development. There are no specific rules or recipes. One might slip through a sequence of actions in seconds, sweat through step by step, start backwards and move randomly from one point to another, or do what surfers call “hang ten”–get your toes into the board and ride the crest of the wave. However, there are three essential conditions. The first is the capability for cerebral acrobatics so the mind can juggle the elements while freewheeling around the possibilities. The second is a mind set with the credulity of a child, the dedication of an evangelist, the spadework of a navvy. And the third is sufficient motivation to kiss a lot of frogs before finding a prince. All of which adds up to just one thing. An aim to reach that condensation of sensastions which–Mattise said–’constitutes a picture’.
— Alan Fletcher
