Want to think like a designer? Try these 4 simple exercises | Web Designing

Even simple drawing exercises can get your creative juices flowing.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “design”? A modernist chair or lamp? Minimalist Japanese fashion? An Apple device? Most often we think of manufactured or built objects–functional things we need and stylish things we want, small handheld or wearable items, structures we can sit at or sit on, and containers for our stuff. Large or small, we tend to think of designed things as the finished product. This can make it hard to imagine what it’s like to design them. But in pursuit of their vision of these finished products, designers are preoccupied by innumerable small decisions. How to join this part to that; how to establish a pattern or continue a series; how to say something without words; how best to terminate a shape or to group or classify elements and illuminate their significance; how to determine what fits or follows the rule, and what doesn’t. In my new activity guide A Few Minutes of Design, I attempt to evoke what it’s like to be a designer through a series of concise exercises. Although the lessons in these exercises may at first seem minor in comparison to the grand vision–the killer concept, the solved problem–small moves and decisions such as these can have a powerful influence on the success of a creative endeavor. Here are four to get you started.

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