How do you all learn to design?

[Tom Rick]

I have been at this long enough that I am well practiced at joinery and the structural aspects of wood working. What challenges me are the questions of design having to do with style or the aesthetics of my work.

I have good design sense and an eye for proportions. I remain challenged however when ever I wander into those parts of a piece which are not simply designed to suit function.
I think of this as the difference between competency and mastery of our craft. I am fully competent but not yet the master craftsman.

How do you all sharpen your design skills?
Deliberate study of past styles? A conscience effort to emulate others?

Just wing it like I do?

[Mike Henderson]

Design is difficult and is what sets the artist apart from the craftsman. Any good craftsman can build a Maloof chair or a Newport chest. But coming up with the original design is extremely difficult.

It's not difficult to design something, but it's extremely difficult to design something that other people will go "WOW" about.

I don't know how to do it either. The field of woodworking design has been plowed very well. Coming up with something new, interesting, and appealing to a large audience is a challenge.

Mike

[Dan Hintz]

I never learned... I may muddle through, but as an artist I'm not much better than a 2nd grader.

What I can do, often enough, is improve slightly upon someone else's design... sometimes it's enough, sometimes not.

[Peter Quinn]

You are not alone in struggling with design. I'm sure not great at it. In fact I suck. We should start a club!

I think its important to remember the editing process is an important part of designing anything. Rarely does anything of any interest or quality get designed whole sale in one sitting or the first time out. You start with a sketch or idea, you flesh it out, you maybe build a scale model or cheap prototype, critique, revise, and so forth. You might have to build the same desk a half dozen times to get it right. As a hobby in a small shop thats hard to absorb. Real artistry or craftsmanship takes years to develop and much practice in those years. I'll let you know how many if I ever get there myself. Keep working at it and I'll bet you get there.

[Bill Whig]

You are not alone in struggling with design. I'm sure not great at it. In fact I suck. We should start a club!

I think its important to remember the editing process is an important part of designing anything. Rarely does anything of any interest or quality get designed whole sale in one sitting or the first time out. You start with a sketch or idea, you flesh it out, you maybe build a scale model or cheap prototype, critique, revise, and so forth. You might have to build the same desk a half dozen times to get it right. As a hobby in a small shop thats hard to absorb. Real artistry or craftsmanship takes years to develop and much practice in those years. I'll let you know how many if I ever get there myself. Keep working at it and I'll bet you get there.

Nice thing about the Google SketchUp program is you can work up to your 4th or 5th version without wasting a single piece of wood. And, by the time you do cut a piece of wood, you are experienced in thinking about the cut several times over. The program encourages more and thus better design since designing is effectively cheaper.

Bill

[Ben Martin]

I haven't ventured from working from plans yet!

PS. That is a really cool picture!

[Chip Lindley]

I have not the desire to create new forms in woodworking. My tastes are pretty conservative. IMO, the majority of consumers have conservative (boring) tastes in things of wood. Nobody will confuse me (or my buddy) as creators of the "Chippendale" style. haha! But, perhaps what I do have an eye for, is to recreate the work of others, and adapt it to my needs. Give me a photo and I'll make ya' one!

As Yogi Berra may have said, "You can observe a lot just by watchin'!" I study examples of styles which may work for me and I "borrow".
~Chip~

[raul segura]

In the fine art world of painting Ive herd it said that its all been done.
I think art feeds on itself as you carry the torch to further the point along the road. My wood rarely crosses into art mode but getting some nice or interesting angles often takes me several cuts to achieve and even then I find I must re-due. (cheep wood doesn't help)
I'm not fantastic with wood but I figure if you have the fundamentals you must first please your self as an artist and if the rest of the world dos not like, whell let them make there own art. Making money is another bird.

PS. I make a lot of patterns from shoe boxes, paper often saving details for the suspense. (LOL)

[John Pratt]

I am sure there are a number of "designers" out there who are equally inadequate (or at least they feel that way) at the strucural aspects of woodworking. I think a lot of it comes down to imagination and then being able to apply it to your medium. I have a couple artist friends who have designed some pretty outlandish things and then asked about applying it to wood. They don't understand why it won't work or can't work, but it is still fun to see how far you can take it. How many times have you built a project and thought of new ways to do it or change it into something completely new, but never followed through with the second, third, or fourth build to get what you are happy with. I would venture to guess that most people don't have the paitence or finances to go that far. How many sketches did Picasso do before he got what he wanted? How many rockers did Maloof build before he came up with a distinctive design. Afterall, he didn't invent the rocker, he just took it to a new/different level. With enough experimentation, a good craftsman could become a Master Craftsman. How long that takes is based on the individual. Some are gifted, some are not. I find myself leaning more towards the latter.

[Chris Tsutsui]

3D design is simplified into basic elements and principles. You try to emphasis all of these and your art piece can be cluttered and confusing so you try to stick to a few and combine different ones until the art "works".

Elements:
Space, Line, Plane, Mass/volume, shape (positive/negative), value, texture, and color.

Principles:
Harmony, Contrast, rhythm, repetition, emphasis, continuity, balance.

To design a work of art you don't have to be gifted... For example, you can be inspired by nature, past/present pieces, function, etc... Then all you have to do is produce massive numbers of thumbnails or sketches of the piece until you stumble upon a good design.

If you were to sketch or design 100 tables. I bet that 3 of them would be decent and from there you could expand on those 3 tables and continue to sort through versions of that table until you find one that works.

Design can be exhausting depending how critical you are... And even if you are a top notch artist you may still have a very difficult time designing something.

There are tips and tricks designers use such as using 1/3 ratios, the golden rule, and 3D design softwares for visual aides. However it still boils down to practice, luck, and sweat.

The same with photograhy... If you are a novice and want to professionally photograph a chair but don't know how. Try taking 500 pictures of the same chair from various perspectives, settings, and angles. Sort through all 500 pictures and 5 of those pictures will be professional.

[Stephen Cherry]

I have not the desire to create new forms in woodworking. My tastes are pretty conservative. IMO, the majority of consumers have conservative (boring) tastes in things of wood. Nobody will confuse me (or my buddy) as creators of the "Chippendale" style. haha! But, perhaps what I do have an eye for, is to recreate the work of others, and adapt it to my needs. Give me a photo and I'll make ya' one!

As Yogi Berra may have said, "You can observe a lot just by watchin'!" I study examples of styles which may work for me and I "borrow".
~Chip~

Chippendale copied most of his work

[Brian Tax]

This is funny, I was just discussing with my wife last night (during the TV show Project Runway, she likes it, no jokes), that there seems to be two distinct personalities. The designer/artist type is very free thinking, creative, impatient, spontaneous, etc. The craftsman/engineer is more deliberate, methodical, patent, more attention to detail, etc. So it seems designer vs. craftsman can often be at odds with one another. I guess the truly great ones can combine both aspects into one person.

As for me, I tend to take other's designs and modify it to suit my needs.

[george wilson]

It is design and taste that separate the true artist from the skilled technician. I have seen so many works that were perfectly and accurately made,but which looked terrible. Especially in knife makers for some reason. Many of them have comic book notions of what looks good. The "fantasy" knife makers are right out the window!! they seem to have some kind of "Dungeons and Dragons" mentality in their heads.

I really do not have a plan to make someone a good designer. I must have trained over 22 people in Williamsburg, and many others before that. Though I could teach them to do good work,I never could teach then to draw well,or to design tastefully. One young man in particular(who considered himself smarter than everyone else) did do good work. Yet,his designs looked like they came out of the movie "Dune." I did manage to make a dent in his viewpoint. Hope the dent grows. He made the statement that "rectangles are ugly!" So much for classical architecture and a million other examples of the use of rectangles.

I actually do think it is a gift that you are born with the seed of. You must develop it from the seed through study and practice. There are tool makers who think they are great designers,and may do accurate,careful work,yet their work looks ridiculous. You can't tell them better,either,or they and their followers get insulted.

[Dan Hintz]

It is design and taste that separate the true artist from the skilled technician.

I think it's the taste of the patron, not the maker, that determines if someone is an artist... and some of those patrons have no taste

[Steve Schoene]

All design builds on the shoulders of those who have gone before. Originality consists of extending and refining to meet new design goals or new materials. It's never out of pure air.

So the first part of learning to design is to STUDY design. Know the history of furniture, the systems of proportion used by the Rococo (Chippendale) designers, know what has happened on the "Art" fringe, both now and in the 30's, and look at the Italian designers, etc. Visit museums and galleries to see the real things not just pictures in a book or worse commercial interpretations in furniture stores. Just like to be a writer you must be a reader (and have a life), to be a designer you must see and examine lots of design.