Cleaning Up the Clutter: Writing and Design

Many stories begin with a jumble of facts and events that seem irrelevant at the time but as these stories progress and the plots thicken the seemingly irrelevant events begin to come together and create something much bigger and more interesting. The design process is much like the progression of a story in how it begins with the materials and a few undeveloped ideas. As the materials are crafted to fit the ideas everything is more defined and the design becomes stronger. Narrowing down and combining ideas help to create a bigger picture and a more developed design.

When coming up with a design or a piece of writing one must take into consideration the many different views that the observers and readers will have. To help with the design and writing processes there are guidelines that can be followed to clean up the clutter of the initial group of ideas to better refine and polish the work.

Commodity, Firmness, Delight
As many designers learn "commodity, firmness, and delight" are key terms that aid in the formation of a design and can also be accommodated for the writing process. Commodity is the utility of the design or writing. This is a design's use as a bus shelter or the moral of a children's story. Firmness is the structure which represents how well a design holds though the elements and how a story flows from scene to scene. And delight is how pleasing the works are to the audience though the eyes and though the mind.

Translation
In design, and especially in writing, the audience must be able to translate the piece of work in such a way that the idea is essentially the same for each viewer but with some small variations. Every person will have different ideas and translations but for the work to be successful the point must be roughly the same though each person's eyes unless otherwise intended. This is important when targeting a specific audience. A design for an interactive children's museum must be designed in such a way that it is appealing to both parents and children in that the structure houses materials that are educational but also entertaining. This is reflected when looking at stories that have morals and are created to teach a lesson much like the Greek and Roman mythologies. Both of these are created to be translated in mainly one way.

Revisions and Good Craft
Design students learn early in their career that creating iterations is the best way to advance a design. With each iteration that is revised the new design becomes a more polished version of the one before. This is exactly like the process of revising drafts that writers must do. The more revisions that are done on a creation influence how condensed and strong the ideas are to get the point across. With all of the iterations and revisions, a creation that is well crafted should follow. Each time a design or a piece of writing is revised it is better than the time before and that can influence the audience better than the first couple of drafts would have.

The idea of cleaning up the clutter is the main process explanation for both design and writing. Most of the time these creations begin with many ideas. Some are dead ends and others can lead to great design but to get to the end one must sort though and see what works. Disposing of the dead ends will give freedom to the well thought out ideas that can be blended and morphed into each other. With each revision of the ideas will lead to an end product that is well crafted and purposeful.