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box = page['Introduction']What are the dreams and dragons in your design process? How do you change a plan into a planning and mistakes into treasures? Where can you find the design space to develop?
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box = page['Featured']['Side']What makes a design process fundamentally different from a production process, is that repetition improves the result. Starting with quick sketches, ignoring most details, next steps take more time. It’s not a linear process, it’s an iterative process, which means repeating the previous step in more detail.
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box = page['Main']['Content']Design Design Space is an online coaching environment to develop your design skills. Query your questions and improve your sketching. Acquire new techniques and research your way of presentating. In short, a space where you can design your design process.
What kind of challenges do you experience in your daily work as a designer?
Working closely together online with experienced designers and a group of other students, there is space to define your own study topics and challenges. In fact, such a selection and planning process is an integral part of the study itself. You tell us what you want, and together we’ll find a way to get there.
By definition designers are bad planners. It seems to be fundamental to design. Too optimistic in the beginning – “There is still plenty of time”, a design is never finished – “The next one will always be better”.
However, the fact that most designs are supposed to meet external requirements, the final deadline may have a much larger impact on the quality of the result, than the personal opinion of the designer.
How do you make this apparent conflict work to your advantage?
The core idea behind designing the design process, is that it doesn’t make a difference for how long you do it. A project of 1 hour, basically goes through the same stages (research – design – presentation) as a project of 1 year.
Of course, it does matters how long you study something, for the level of details that can be addressed. But if you only have a day or a week for an assignment, then that is part of the requirements. The result can still be better than anything your customer would have done.
How would you design such a design process better next time?
Study lengths range from 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 season and possibly 1 year, whatever fits best to your plans, your practical possibilities and your financial situation.
- 1 day $150 (Design Game, group of minimal 12)
- 1 week $900 (7 days, group of 4 or more)
- 1 month $1,900 (calendar month, individual or group)
- 1 season $3,900 (3 calendar months, individual or group)
- 1 year $7,900 (individual or group)
Prices are per person. Discount or split payment for the month, season and year trainings can be discussed, depending on your personal situation.
For corporate trainings, groups or customized requests, please contact us.
Students who whish to extend one training level into another, a 50% reduction is applied on previous payed tuition. E.g 1 day followed by 1 week: 1/2 $150 + $900 = $975. Or 1 week followed by 1 month: 1/2 $900 + $1,900 = $2,350. Or 1 week followed by 1 season: 1/2 $900 + $3,900 = $4,350
Every 6 months, in March and September, a new day-week-month-season-year sequence starts, most likely if there is enough participating students.
Day-week sequences or single day Design Games can take place on other dates during the year, if the amount of participants makes it possible.
Since working as a team of students a minimum amount of three is required, and also a mininum level of quality, motivation and experience.
Season and year-students are admitted after showing their portfolios and the result of a given assignment. Also they are asked to write a motivation and development plan.
Students that finish a training adequately, automatically get accepted for a next.
Design Design Space taps into 35 years of studio projects and over 50 years of combined experience of design education. Projects ranging from corporate identities, type design, typographic software, interiors, environmental design and running Design Games.
Design Game on location at OTIS College of Art and Design. Although the online training obviously doesn’t include this direct way of working together, it is the aim to offer the best possible online design space, using the latest technology.
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What does your design profession look like 5 years from now? Or 20? Will your current skill set still be sufficient? How to make yourself independent from the changes in design that are likely to happen? Or better, how can you use them to our advantage? Read what Design Design Space has to offer.
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box = page['Introduction']If your design is finished, and you are satisfied with the result, what is it that you are satisfied with?
box = page['Main']['Content']Design students meet online with each other and the coaches in regular intervals.
For interaction and exchanging documents a range of techniques are available, e.g. Skype, Google Hangout, Google Docs, offline video, Dropbox, Github, FaceTime and Second Life, to name a few. Selection and usage can be the topic of one of the assignments.
Students get assignments for imaginary design projects, with time frames ranging from several hours to several months. The assignments are challenges, where the specific topics can be filled by the individual students.
Questions how to approach these challenges, research on what skills need to be developed, what knowledge needs to be acquired, what techniques and materials need to be developed and how the project planning should be designed, are all part of assignments.
With regular intervals – ranging from hours to days to once per week – the various levels of intermediate results are presented to the group of students and coaches. The aim of the coaches is to create a safe environment, in which anything can be said about any aspect of the work and the process.
The process of creating such a safe environment – and the finding of methods for feedback – are part of the assignments, and therefor subject to sketching and modification too.
During the presentations feedback is given on the presented work, but also on the presentation itself and on the process and proceedings between the presentations.
Various models are offered to students, showing what their design process could be like. And they are encouraged to created their own, and apply them to their designs.
In the past a magnitude of design methods have been developed, but unfortunately most of them focus on production techniques and deadlines. You may recognize that in your current design practice.
What most design methods don’t do is create space for designers to develop themselves. To allow unintended mistakes. Cuddle solutions that don’t seem to be profitable right away. To spend time on acquiring skills without predefined purpose.
Yet, for the development of skills, such an approach is essential.
Design Design Space offers that environment. To study a specific topic for a defined period of time. Formulating challenges, feed back techniques and design methods that are customized for your development.
Tuition needs to be payed before the training starts. No refund is possible, but participants have the right to build in breaks for some period of time, if that is discussed before hand.
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Imagine to ask a client which of the visule design parameters will be used for coherency or diversity. E.g. color cannot be the main recognition (“red”) and differentiate at the same time.
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Nine out of ten clients will confirm that their ideal identity is best defined by a single logo, with consistent use of color, name and typeface.
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This means that all other parameters don’t have to be defined. Layout, texture, typography and language are not supposed to contribute to recognition of a brand.
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Or going one step further: if most of the other parameters are consistently used, they may allow a variation of different logo’s.
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Developing sketching techniques should be an important part of any design study.
Arranging a collections of objects in arbitrary order, the layout is hard to remember and to reproduce.
If objects are ordered by height, it needs some time to recognize the rule. But after that, it can be applied to any set of objects.
Ordered by color, the rule is instantly clear, without the to mention to the viewer. This can easily be reproduced.
box = page['OtherMain']['Content']- A personal environment to develop design skills, by accepting design challenges, meeting with coaches and colleage students in online feedback sessions and presentations.
- The design of personal space (time, topic and skills) profession preparation for the rest of your life.
- A part-time sabbatical or a virtual internship
- A place to train design skills and tools.
- Graduated designers;
- Designers with experience, working in practice;
- Designers interested in improving their process or specializing in specific topics;
- Designers interested to develop skills that make them independent from future developments.
- Designers who would like to do a follow-up refresh study, but are lacking time, finance or geographic location to make that work.
- Professionals from other disciplines (such as programmers), to practice the basics of design in a series of exercises. Find the design component in their own daily practice and develop it further.
In general the aim is to bring graduate students as well as experienced designers forward to a space of “WOW!”.
Focus is on design students and their individual goals. Not on predefined course content.
As designer, doing the Design Design Space study, you are open minded and willing to get valuable feedback on your work.
You are interested to improve and change and to participate in the work of colleague students.
You are disciplined to work hard between online sessions, and more interested in the development of skills and challenging assignments than in assessed diploma’s.
- It is not an (online) course;
- It is not an (academic) study, leading to Master or PhD;
- It is not a school;
- It is not a “How to InDesign-HTML-CSS-JS-otherDesignTool” training;
- It is not a series of slides or a plain stack of books (although these may be very well be referred to).
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Many of the assignments need collaborating with other online students, who – throughout the process – can have different roles, ranging from colleague to client to user.
Design Game on location at OTIS College of Art and Design. Besides the development of sketching techniques, the design of feedback methods is an important and integral part of every Design Design Space study.
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Design Game on location at Cooper Union. Besides the development of presentation techniques, the design of feedback methods is an important and integral part of every Design Design Space study.
box = page['Main']['Content']For those who ever did a Design Game on location, you’ll recognize the idea behind it. Doing one online, however, will be a new experience.
For those who never did a Design Game, this is a good way to start thinking about your design profession in a totally different way.
The time frame of an online Design Game, depends on the time zones of the participants. We’ll try to make it as convenient as possible, yet it could be that yours starts at early dawn or late evening. Isn’t that just like working for international customers, expecting you to work on flexible parts of the day?
Virtual studios are formed from three or more designers. Since you are likely not in the same physical place or time zone, it is part of the game to find a way of working together. Improvisation is a form of design. As studio you may want to consider dividing tasks depending on experience and interests.
Design Design Space is a transparant learning environment, where the online Design Game is the most condensed example.
There will be several studios working in a pitch for the same assignment for the same customer. At the end of each round the design get approval points.
The aim is that the best performing studio after 4 rounds wins the game.
In each round a new assignment is given, where the formation of the studios stays the same. This way experience on what went right or wrong in the previous rounds can be used to improve the next result.
The first round takes 2 hours to design and present a corporate identity. Details and requirements are given at the start of each round.
Studios have the possibility to present to their customer through digital media, e.g. by e-mail and hangout, asking questions, showing intermediate sketches.
At the end of each round, the final design of every studio is presented to their customers and the other studios. The customers will judge the process and the result and give feedback.
Scores of each round are visible to the group in an online document.
The second round is similar to the first round – a new corporate identity, different requirements for another customer – but in shorter amount of time.
Design and present different types of pages of a magazine. The challenge with working in an virtual environment, is to divide the work between the designers of the studio. What visual parameters define the difference between the types of pages and which parameters make the visual coherence?
Design and present an exhibition space, that fits the given requirements. With photos and video a physical scale model is presented to the customer and the other studios.
In this round all studios will judge and comment the result of all other studios. That feedback is used as part of the final score.
In a presentation where are designs can be compared, a winner is selected.
Concluding the 1 day of Design Design Space, feedback is given to the studios and individual designers. What went well? What were challenges?
During the Design Game, several design skills are addressed.
- Organizing, time management, asking interventions
- Management of detail levels
- Development of sketching techniques
- Communication between designers in a virtual studio
- Asking the right questions to the customer
- Selection of presentation media
- Judging and formulating feedback to other studios
Participating in the Design Game is mandatory for the extending studies at Design Design Space. From here students can choose to apply for one of the 1 week, 1 month, 1 season or 1 year extended programs.
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Sketching is the process of eliminating unwanted options from the tree of all possibilities, without visualizing every single one of them.
Sketching is the process of managing the level of details, throughout the process. One method is reduce the scale of drawings, as the resolution of tools (pencil or screen) automatically will hide irrelevant details.
box = page['Main']['Content']One or more of the example topics below. How much can you fit in a week?
- Sketch the basics of a corporate identity. Translate some of the parameters into PageBot code;
- Design a model exhibition space;
- Design a gridded page or a scripted infographic
- Draw a couple of TypeCooker words with feedback;
- Write code for a DrawBot animation;
- Examining how to select one of them can be a design project in itself.
A selection of the example topics below. Or one of your own?
- Study typographic parameters;
- Research, write, design and present a mini-thesis about a topic of your choice;
- Design a simple corporate identity;
- Or program the manual in PageBot;
- Simulate a graphic design studio;
- Design a Design Game and run it;
- Fill a Moleskine with 100 sketch pages. Then select and present the best.
A selection of the example topics below. Or what else would you like to do?
- Develop a PageBot publication;
- Improve your sketching skills;
- Make some RoboFont tools;
- Design design education tools, such as games and feedback models;
- Do almost any design project that can be done in a month.
A selection of the example topics below. Or maybe all of them?
- Become an independent typographer with noticable experience;
- Improve your experience as type designer. Or as design educator;
- Design Variable Font design spaces;
- Become a designer, who knows how to write code;
- Or how to communicatie with professional programmers in their own language;
- You can ask a lot of relevant questions to yourself. Accepting that the answers take a lot more time to formulate;
- Design deep spaces.
In all of the five time frames (1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 season or 1 year) students can select a combination of specializations (where this selection process itself also is part of the design skills to be developed).
Essentially each time frame is a recursive copy of one of the others.
The difference between is the number of topics that can be addressed and the level of details possible.
A combination of two or more topics from the list below, in combination with process and context selection, gives students a unique personal research environment for development.
- Typography
- Type design
- Design for fashion
- Design of information visualization
- Interior and exhibition design
- Design for multiple media from single source
- Parametric design, programming and coding
- Corporate identity design
- Design of research methods
- Sketching techniques
- Design the design process
- Presentation techniques
- Design of feedback and evaluation techniques
- Design of testing methods
- Design education
- Working in teams, running a studio
- Dealing with customers
- Design for users
Each of these items contains a world of detailed knowledge and design parameters that can be developed with other students who select such a topic. As example, for typography (and with reference to adjacent topics) this next level could contain a selection of:
- Typographic parameters Categories, bandwidth of possible values, presentation examples, …
- Typographic layout Principles, adapting classic examples to contemporary applications, whitespace, aesthetics, …
- Typographic tools Grid, type, size, leading, spacing, kerning, width, hyphenation, orientation, contrast, color, pattern, proportion, ratio, interaction, position, meaning, language, any combination and addition to the parameters of Bertin, …
- Design the process Constraints, testing, planning, cooperation with other disciplines, research, marketing, promotion, difference between single solution and generative rules, selection and design of research methods, …
- Mathematics for designers Trigonometry, position, rotation, transformation matrices, column calculation, statistics, logarithmic, ranges, light game theory, principles of AI, neural networks and machine learning, …
- Type design Variation axes, parameters, selection criteria, process, tools, testing, publoshing, …
- Images as typographic elements Illustration, photography, infographics, graphs, icons, ...
- Subject matter Culture, fashion, politics, international relation, trade, education, …
- Typographic education Educating undergraduate students, customers, users, yourself inside design cycles, presenting, writing about …
- Programming Structure, hierarchy, design of algorithms, …
- Coding Starters and experienced coding designers. All relevant languages related to typography: deepest relevant of Python, Processing, CSS, HTML, XML, JS, PHP, Objective-C, …
- Tools PageBot publications, writing scripts for RoboFont, deepest of Adobe applications, AI related to design, scripting, OSX-terminal tools, design of information conversion flows, research on raw data, …
- Device Measurements resolution, distortion, proportion, memory usage, …
- Storage techniques File, database, formats, git, JSON, plist, XML, UFO, TTF, OTF, …
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Artifical Intelligence (AI) probably has much influence on any profession in the coming years. How will it influence your design practice? Many models that apply to AI, also work in design. Those parallels can be subject of your study at Design Design Space.
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Here a comparing set is show of two opposite values. E.g. if a system is “Episodic”, it is possible to reject and correct earlier decisions (as in a design process). If the system is “Sequential”, then the order is fixed (as in a game of chess).
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PageBot is a library of Python classes, that can be used for the automated production of publications. Learning to use PageBot is an optional topic of the Design Design Space study.
Constructing an environment where all disciplines can work together in a non-linear way, is one of the topics of the Design Design Space study.
box = page['OtherMain']['Content']Below some example assignments.
3 posters, similar and different in one series, for a topic of your choice. Assignemnt is how to judge the result and how to select from various judging methods. *How to develop criteria
Painting of color/gray ranges. Sketching with materials, proportions, ratio and contrast.
Although much of your work may have digital outcome, actually making stuff with real materials opens up new directions, other points of view.
One week to fill a 100 page Moleskine sketchbook, design for a specific subject, context or design challenge. The presentation is showing 5 best pages in combination with validation criteria used.
This is the integral assignment for TypeMedia 2017 students at the end of their Master year. They have limited time of 2 weeks to write and design 3 mini-thesis document of one page each. Illustrated and documented.
What is a relevant set of parameters for a poster? And how does interaction play a role in that? What is the design process? How do you test the intermediate result? What needs to happen to guearantee success?
Research models where publications within a corporate identity can have different usage, technique and message, and still visually belong to the same brand. What are parameters and what freedom do designers have later in the process? Which of these parameters need to be documented? And which can be automated?
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box = page['Main']['Content']Petr van Blokland (1956, Netherlands) graduated cum laude from the graphic arts program at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KABK) in The Hague in 1980.
With his partner Claudia Mens, Van Blokland worked for over thirty-five years as a designer in the studio they cofounded. His output ranged from sketching and model-making to programming in various languages. He specialized in systematic design: corporate identities, form systems, online publications, and tools for type design.
Van Blokland has taught graphic design, typography, and type design for many years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KABK) in The Hague and at the Academy of Fine Arts, Arnhem. His first typeface was Proforma, a large series commissioned by Purup, a Danish manufacturer of form-preparation systems. Proforma has now been released for general use through Type Network. In 1988, Van Blokland’s work brought him ATypI’s coveted Charles Peignot Prize.
As cofounder and partner of Type Network, Van Blokland is a dedicated contributor and developer of new type and tools for type design. He currently teaches in the Master’s program in Graphic Design at AKV|St.Joost in Breda and at Type and Media, the Master type design program at KABK in The Hague. Read more about his thoughts on design and education in this interview and in his Lubalin lecture at Cooper Union in 2015: Words
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box = page['OtherMain']['Content']Claudia Mens (1957, Netherlands) graduated from the Interior Design program at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KABK) in The Hague in 1985. Then she studied at the Master Environmental Design and graduated in 1989 at the KABK as well.
With her partner Petr van Blokland, she worked and ran the studio van Blokland + Mens for over twenty five years as designer.
Before she became a designer, she worked as a school and career counselor for a couple of years. In the recent years she has developed as a trainer coach.
Besides her studio work, she has taught at the KABK for over twenty years at the Graphic Design department.
In 2016 she initiated Pepper+Tom, a self initiated project. P+T is “a playing ground” where she presents her series of designed and produced skirts and scarfs.
Both products are “people’s projects”: working together with a group of professionals under sustainable circumstances, with eco friendly fabrics, under the conditions of “slow fashion”.
Depending on necessary domain knowlegdge, other designers and professionals can be added to the team. Former students, collegue designers, lectureres and relations of the studio are available if that fits the topics at hand.
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