Showing posts with label design process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design process. Show all posts

Friday, July 22, 2011

Designer's Life - First Drafts

When the audience sees the sleekly finished design - of a set, building, pastry, or sneaker design - they never realize just how horrid the very first version was.  The awful early scribble.

Well, just to give you an idea, here are a couple nasty first drafts of a plan for The Vibrator Play... which will look nothing like this!
My first(ish) idea: well, that didn't work.  See the stair at center stage?  Doesn't fit.  Can't get up or down fast enough to get out of the way of, among other things, actor entrances or an existing building stair and ramp.  Plus lots of other problems.
Second(ish) try... fumbling attempts to move that stair.

The biggest difficulty for me yesterday in getting a working plan was the stage's exit ramp, which obtrudes deep into stage left.  With its necessary landing/entry area, it eats up a chunk of prime space in Kitchen Dog's black box theater.  That big arrow on the left?  The audience entrance - right through the set!  This is a tricky - though exciting - space.  And I think I've now got it licked.  Come to the show to see my sleight-of-hand plan solution!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

A Riff on Creativity and Blogs, Tweets, etc.

Musings by musician John Mayer about the siphon-off-the-talent effect that blogging and tweeting can have.  Cautionary.  And, ya know, I think he's gotta point...
public domain image courtesy of wpclipart, by Tenniel I believe

I'm struggling with momentum on the next book myself - one on creativity and the design process, meant to replace the hoary standard text used in many architecture and other design studios.  Blogging isn't helping!  

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Finding the Design's Clue

Talking with other theater designers lately - looking for a handle on their design problems - and grappling with starting a few problems of my own... made clearer to me this one fact of design -
The seed of a solution is within the problem itself.

A perfect example: one young designer needs to design a prop "machine."  Doesn't much matter what this machine does as long as it looks cool and generates stage "business."  Well!  That's not much to start from in generating ideas.  In talking about the play, however, we realized this show was set pre-electricity.  So flashing colored lights were out.  But...  How about approaching the machine in a steampunk way?  Design it to accomplish some modern goal, but with old fashioned - in this case candlelight - technology.  Sudden excitement!  Ideas!

The seed of a solution.