The most important thing about design is also the thing nobody seems to know how to teach.
You were never taught design process.
And chances are, you never will be.
You can delude yourself all you want. You can be complacent and convince yourself that you already know it. After all, you've spent years studying design. You've completed projects, attended critiques, produced portfolios and perhaps even worked in an architectural practice.
Surely, somewhere along the way, someone taught you how to design?
But think about it.
Were you ever actually taught design process?
Not told to research a site. Not asked to produce diagrams. Not encouraged to explore some concepts before developing a final scheme.
I mean, were you ever shown how the thinking itself works?
How to take an unknown problem, structure it, generate possibilities, make judgments and arrive at something that didn't exist before?
Probably not.
Your classmates don't know it either. And chances are, your bosses don't pay for it.
The business of design isn't the process of design
Ask a professional architect about design process, and they'll probably describe something quite sensible.
Client briefing. Feasibility. Concept design. Design development. Documentation. Tendering. Construction.
That's a process, certainly.
But it's the business process of design.
It's the process of managing a project, delivering services, meeting deadlines and getting buildings built.
It's not the process of actually designing something.
And the distinction is enormous.
What happens between receiving a brief and coming up with an idea?
What happens when you don't have an idea?
How do you know what to explore, what to ignore, what to question, and what to develop?
How do you organise your thinking when there are no obvious answers?
This is the design process I'm talking about.
The kind that generates ideas, rather than simply manages them.
And remarkably, it's almost nonexistent in design education.
Why doesn't anyone teach it?
Because we've made creativity something mysterious.
Creativity is messy, we're told. It's personal. Everyone has their own style. Everyone approaches design differently.
And that's true.
Of course it's true.
But we've become so nice about protecting everyone's individual creative expression that we've stopped explaining what actually makes creative thinking effective.
We don't want to tell someone that their approach isn't working. We don't want to suggest that there might be better ways to think. We don't want to interfere with someone's creative freedom.
And so we say things like, "Just explore." "Trust your instincts." "Keep experimenting."
Wonderful advice.
Until you sit in front of a blank sheet of paper.
And nothing happens.
Because niceness isn't going to design anything.
Design is not just about aesthetics
Design is as much about effectiveness as it is about aesthetics.
And effectiveness doesn't mean simply making a building practical or efficient.
It means being effective in the way you think.
In how you identify problems. How you frame questions. How you recognise opportunities. How you organise possibilities and make decisions.
Design process is the driver.
It's the planner.
And it's structural.
That doesn't mean creativity has to become mechanical or predictable. Quite the opposite.
A good design process gives you a structure within which creativity can become more ambitious, more critical and more effective.
It helps you move beyond waiting for inspiration.
It allows you to understand why you're doing something, what you're trying to achieve, and how to get there.
And yes, you can actually learn this.
Not by copying someone else's style. Not by following a formula that guarantees beautiful buildings.
But by understanding the thinking that makes designing possible.
We teach it. I teach it.
At Spatial Thinking, this is what I teach.
Not just how to make your portfolio look better. Not just how to present your ideas more convincingly.
I teach the process behind the ideas.
How to think creatively, critically and structurally. How to turn ambiguity into possibilities. How to develop your own approach to design without being left entirely to trial and error.
And one of the most common things I hear from my students is that nobody has ever taught them design this way before.
Think about that.
Students can spend three, four, five years at university, sometimes more, and still have never been properly shown how to undertake the very activity they're studying.
You might even graduate believing that struggling to design is simply part of being creative.
It doesn't have to be.
So why wait?
Why wait another year? Another semester? Until graduation? Until your first job?
Why spend thousands of dollars on an education and hope that, eventually, you'll figure out how to design?
And why wait for a profession that may be too busy delivering projects to teach you?
You can learn this now.
You can start understanding how you think, why your design process works or doesn't, and how to become more effective as a designer.
Because design process isn't some mysterious talent you're born with.
It's something you can learn. And it's something you should have been taught years ago.
Learn what you were never taught.
Spatial Thinking offers individual coaching in creative thinking, design process and architectural education.
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