The last time I wrote about my design process, I explained that design develops through an evolutionary process of incremental change. A single change to an existing design is easy to imagine, and by layering individual changes over successive iterations you can quickly arrive at a design that is radically different from the first.
As I have been writing these posts about my design process, I’ve been sketching ideas for a side table. I came up with 40 iterations pretty quickly, but that’s not the end of the design process. In fact, it’s only just beginning. So, what do you do after you have a few dozen (or more) individual designs? That’s what I’ll discuss today.
My process, distilled to it’s essence, is this. I pick 3-5 iterations that I really like and redraw them more carefully, and larger. I think pick the one I’ll make and and work through iterations of it, changing the pull, the leg thickness, the drawer’s height, or any number of other small details in an attempt to develop the design as completely as I can. I’ll walk through the next stage of the process in greater detail now.