What the heck is an Intuitive Graphic Designer?
Is it all crystal balls and tarot cards? How does that even work?
Well…trust me. If I wasn't me, I'd be asking this same question! And honestly, no, my design work involves a lot of real life tangible research and strategy driven design that looks at the world we see in front of us.
But, intuitive? What does that mean? As in using your gut? Feeling things? Well yes, to some extent.
Cambridge dictionary defines intuitive as:
"based on feelings rather than fact or proof"
or
"able to know or understand something because of feelings rather than facts or proof"
I am certainly closer to the later in the sense that I am able to know what choices are best for a project to come alive and that truly is my primary goal when we work together.
There are two forms of intuition happening for me:
The inner sensations of feelings; my body lighting up with tingles at certain ideas, seeing pieces of a brand form in my third eye, color’s or even key words for me to research later. I generally take all of this and jot it down and then get into meditation or work with other intuitive modalities. I often will even dream of a project!
The second kind of intuition comes from the working experience of being a designer. Designers are taught to make things intuitive for user’s. For example: think about where you typically see a search bar on a website? Or the event details on a poster? Think about the first or second place you might scan that poster for the details? Why do we all go there in our minds? Because we’ve been trained to take in information in a certain way. So a lot of this is visual psychology but also the fact that, well…I’m human too so I intuitively understand where a user might go to look for a particular part of the information and I build this into the work.
But how does the Intuitive part work?
Basically every time we meet my intuition is going off in the background. The more we talk and get into the details, the more I receive. When our energies are super aligned, I generally see everything up front, but I’m always skeptical and open to new iterations coming through–which is why I don’t express which piece is the intuitive option until the very end.
So. we meet, I gather as much information as I am guided to take from you. And in collaboration with what you bring to the table, your voice, your thoughts, your heart: your energy; I pair it with my design training. I do the research, I pull on my knowledge of how we read visual language, I access my technical skills and I make it come alive. If a project calls for it, I might even do some user testing or send out a survey to a pool of people.
But what if I’m not interested in this intuitive stuff?
Thats fine! We can chat about this process if you like but otherwise, it’s something going on in the background and because I am so grounded in my research and design training, it really only amplifies the design process and outcome. You’re not loosing anything by working with me and I’m not interested in creating pieces that don’t work for you.
Admittedly, I am continuously surprised and delighted to watch my clients pick the intuitive option amongst the couple I provide. It’s amazing how you, yourself are pulled to that option because it already feels best to you. You can't always put your finger on it exactly, but it's true. And when you share the piece with others, they light up to it too.
That's the golden nugget for me; is those who are outside of our collaboration seeing the work and lighting up.
#nailedit
Want to know more? Have a question (trust me no question is too weird a question), I'd love to hear from you! Don't be shy–this is my life's passion and I love to nerd out about it!
