Architects, designers and pretty much every person can get stuck in the creative process. After reading this you won’t be able to ever get stuck creating, and the reasons to stop creating like “there’s too many options so I can’t pick the right one” or “I’m not inspired” will be in your past.
Just like any other trade in the world, design has rules and data that need to be addressed correctly in order to bring about an amazing creation.
I have been working in design since I was a couple of years old. My toys were hammers, nails and pieces of wood that I found in my father’s workshop. At 4 years old I knew that I wanted to become an Architect and I drew my way to my career and then to practicing Architecture and Design for the last 12 years of my life.
I always found space fascinating but living so close to art I always wondered why the creative process could get stuck and why artists sometimes didn’t seem to finish a product with their initial vision.
By working hard and pushing my limits in space design I came across a rule of thumb that changed my life forever: when stuck in design, there’s a variable piece of information that is being taken as a non-variable (or stable). Now, this might sound very simple but it is a very workable piece of information. Finding these variable and stable items will spot the barriers and release the options to be evaluated against the stable ones. This is what people call “thinking outside the box” and every contest that we’ve won and every successful design that we built had “stable” information that could be made variable.
This knowledge can apply to lighting, layout design, furniture selection and more. And a good designer should be able to detect what information should be stable and what information could be subject to change.
What should be stable? Whatever is vital to the project, such as budget, available land, structure, code, the purpose of the project and the level of aesthetics. What should be variable? Everything else.
To start sorting out the information of your project you need to make a list with 2 columns and write down the stable and variable data. After doing this you’ll find yourself detecting which ones you believed were stable when they could actually change, and you’ll be able to move forward with the decisions by knowing what not to change and what to change. It is just like a puzzle or a Rubik’s Cube, where you start with the most stable pieces and work your way down.
As a client it is very helpful to share this list with your designer because it will lay down what the game is and where the change is needed. For example, if you love kitchen islands and your kitchen renovation revolves around this you should write it down under “stable”, and the rest will be under “variable”. The designer can work around this data and bring options with kitchen islands. On the other hand you might think that “every nice kitchen should have an island” and that’s why you want one. This isn’t really stable, is it?
Make your list and read it from top to bottom finding where each item falls into and if you’re having trouble with ANY decision during the design process look for the one that is misplaced.
Hope this is helpful. Have fun and create your vision, maybe we can help you!