The Way A Designer Thinks And Sees
Much has been written about the left and right side of the brain. From a designer point of view the left side is technical, analytical, verbal, logical, and time oriented and the right side is aesthetic, visual, artistic, creative, and imaginative.
We use both sides of our brain, but usually we favor one side or the other more. Are you more technical and analytical or are you more spontaneous and artistic? As a designer you need to learn to use both sides and try to bring a balance between the two.
You must always communicate with your client and make sure you both understand what the other is saying always repeat back to your client and make sure you are both on the same page.
You will need the technical side to size up any situation and the right side to envision the design and how it will look when your done. You will be able to customize any creation for your client with the skills you are learning.
What is Qualitative and Quantitative
- Qualitative Analysis: Is a complete, detailed description of the parts of an object, like a vase of flowers, you would view the vase, flowers, stems, and leaves.
- Quantitative Analysis: You will determine the amount of each part which is related to size, proportion and dimension and count them and break them down. You could see 4 blue flowers 2 yellow flowers and 2 white and that would be 3/4 colored and 1/4 white.
There are 3 levels of observation
- Basic: You are viewing the whole design or form and not analysing it.
- Detail: Now you can pick out the different properties of the design. Like the dimensions and the texture and color.
- Abstract: This is when you know exactly what makes up the design as in the quantitative analysis.
You will learn the basics of form which is line, direction, and shape.(length, width, and depth). There are 6 basic form lines 4 straight: vertical, horizontal, diagonal left and diagonal right and then 2 curved : convex which is shaped like the bottom of the letter U and concave which is open just flip the U in the opposite direction. a curved line can be represented by any of the 4 basic straight lines. You will learn how to use the Celestial Axis to identify angles and directions and straight and curved lines.
I really enjoyed learning all of this because I love knowing what makes up a design and how it’s so easy to recreate that hairstyle just by looking at it. That is where the qualitative and quantitative comes in. I love angles and form and it didn’t matter how much someone thought they were messing up their hair by chopping it here and there, it was always fixable unless you really took a big chunk out of your head with clippers then it would take a lot to blend that.
