The creative process and the editorial process are completely different things. When you are creating things, encourage the editorial part of your brain to take a nap, so you can work fearlessly, with no inhibitions. Then, when it is time to edit what you have done, make amendments, and focus on the detail, wake the editorial part of your brain back up.
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As tutors, I realise we ask you to reflect on your work and your feedback a lot. Thinking back on my own experience, being asked to reflect on my own work was often the last thing I wanted to add to my constantly growing to do list as a student. However, it quickly became apparent that this idea of reflecting on one’s work is actually something I’d need to do for the rest of my career as a designer.
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You’re a distance learner? Great! That means you can study wherever and whenever is convenient for you, right? Yay! But how do you stay motivated, beat distractions, and avoid feeling isolated or anxious? Here are a few tips that students have shared with me over my 14 years tutoring for the OCA.
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While interior designers’ priority is designing spatial environments, so much of our job is also communicating our ideas for these spatial environments. One of the realities of this industry is that a great idea that’s presented poorly will almost always lose to a mediocre idea that’s presented well.
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In any design drawing, both sketches and technical drawings, the unsung hero of the drawing is line weight. Varying the line weight, that is the thickness of the lines, will always add more depth and character to your drawings. Even the simplest of drawings will look more polished and professional with a bit of line weight variety. Let’s look at some examples to see what I mean.
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Some feedback can be seen as daunting, unpredictable, too long, too dominating and a little bit too nice. But it is up to you how you want to direct it; you have ownership and drive it in a way which suits you. What do students want from feedback sessions? Critique, direction, progress, ruthlessness, compliments?
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The important point is our brains are wired in a certain way and we invent and build the world in our heads as much as perceive it as ‘truth’. This is important for anyone attempting to represent three dimensions in two. The world is indeed out there but perhaps capturing it requires more intervention than we might initially think.
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Now a lot of times, when we say the word ergonomics, we might think of funky looking desk chairs or computer equipment belonging to someone who takes their job very seriously. But for an interior designer, ergonomics needs to mean so much more than that.
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When people think of interior design or architecture drawings, usually floor plans come to everyone’s mind first. However, a designer will quickly understand that a section drawing, that is a vertical slice through a building, space, object, etc., is the one that allows you to understand and test the experience of a design more effectively. […]
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I was delighted to attend a Google hangout recently and meet our Rest of World group of students at OCA. Students attended from Canada, Chile, New Zealand, Zambia, USA, Hungary and most impressive of all – Japan (Calling in from Japan impressed me the most, simply because it was 4am there at the time of […]
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