My Design Process

My design process is a little eclectic. I tend to throw all of my ideas down on a page and run, almost like a visual brainstorm. I was an obsessed doodler in middle school. Not surprising to most people now, most of my doodles were of beautiful women wearing beautiful clothes. I drew so much in my 7th grade math class that my teacher actually noted my drawing in a parent teacher conference as proof of my lack of regard for rules. After that I tried really hard not to draw in class, but them my mind would drift and I'd find myself either day dreaming or falling asleep.

At Smith I realized that I couldn't pay attention unless I drew. My notes made better sense if I drew them out than if I wrote them out. In my last semester I drew one picture for every topic of my queer resistances seminar in class. At first I hid my work, afraid that if the professor found out she'd be insulted by my need to draw in her class. Instead she found it rather amusing. Somehow drawing eased my mind, allowed me to actually listen to what the instructor was saying, instead of mechanically copying down the lecture word for word, but not retaining any of it. I drew within the margins and corners of my notebooks, or doodled over doodles while talking to friends at dinner. These drawings allowed me to generate ideas, not only about what was being told to men, but also about how I felt regarding what I was trying to learn.



I still design that way. Every idea I've been storing in my head all day I throw onto paper. If the idea is silly, disorganized, not well thought out, or brilliant, it will show in this process. Later, I take the ideas I like and expand on them, tailor them into something actually workable. I refer back to the doodles when I'm uninspired by what I'm constructing, or when I want to incorporate an original idea. Or, sometimes I scrap them all together.