Take a good idea and make it your own.

According to RescueTime I was pretty busy, but I can say with a high degree of certainty that I was NOT climbing El Capitan in record time. Yikes.

We did a small amount of work for evri a few months ago and it’s been hard to keep a lid on how awesome the product is. Some really great thinking going into it. Search Less, Understand More: evri Demo | D6 Highlights | AllThingsD

Over the many years I have worked as a designers I have had the fortune to come into contact with a lot of other designers’ processes. The thing about design and process is that, no matter how hard you try and streamline it, patten it, and make it efficient, it still boils down to what works for an individual person.

While we are a small studio at Design Commission, I’m constantly intrigued by how each designer in the studio has a very independent way of getting at the answer. I’ve noticed that some of the less-experienced designers are much more reliant on a process that comes as a result of formal education. It’s a lot more structured, which totally makes sense. It’s something that can be incorporated into a syllabus and replicated across a lot of students.

As designers begin to age and gain real-world experience, their approach seems to become more organic. Their tool sets shift to ones that work best for them. My business partner, Jay, can sit down in front of a blank Photoshop document and, in a matter of an hour or two, assemble what ultimately becomes a finished design–all without a potty break. That is what a good design process is capable of.

I find that I tend to float around a lot more from application to application to pen-and-paper and back to application. I’m a lot more interested in looking at other work samples or resources while, Jay, for comparison’s sake, seems to accumulate those points within his mind over time and pulls them out when needed.

The point of this all is to say that, as a design manager of sorts, there’s a great deal of importance on the balance between managing for efficiency and allowing each individual designer the time and space they need to apply their own process. This knowledge must come from time and experience with a group of people. It is just impossible for a designer to sit down at the start of a project and describe, in detail, the steps they will take to achieve success. Managers of the design process need to be aware of this and sensitive to its impact.

This awareness translates to a number of things but, ultimately, it’s about building room into the flow of a project, as well as the environment of the studio, so that each designer can work to their greatest potential. It is not the role of management to dictate these tools or the process by which they are used, but rather to establish a clear need and a desired outcome and then provide for the team as they need.

I decided it’s time to give something new a try and, as I’ve always been keen on recurring income, a product seemed like a good bet. Enter PlyBird. These birdhouses are based on the design that I used for the Modern Bird show. I’ll be producing them as one-offs for the time-being, with the hope that I can find a better (read “faster”) way to produce them in the future. I suppose it’s more of a hobby outlet than anything else but if I play my cards right it could be some beer money.

We held a gallery opening at the studio last night – “A Chance of Showers.” The turnout was great, especially considering it was a December event and we raised nearly $1,000 for  826 Seattle. It’s so great to be able to do things like that. It sort of off-sets our commercial work as a studio as well as giving the people in the studio something inspirational to work on.