Attention should be paid to knowledge management

Every time you talk about design, people naturally associate ideas with ideas. As designers, we should have a variety of ideas in the brain, these ideas are already in the brain? Some people say that creativity comes from imagination, and some gifted superhuman design God-man can create content through meditation, but for the average designer, meditation is just a way to regroup and present the old contents of your mind. So in fact, the content of the creative is not from meditation, but from the accumulation of the usual designers, the more accumulated, know the design knowledge will be richer, creative and ideas will be more. Often hear this: as a designer to improve the level, we must see more thinking more practice. So many people devote their spare time to the endless gallery, trying to improve themselves, but when attracted by all kinds of outstanding design works, it often ignores the more important knowledge management.

Do you often encounter such a situation?

When you do something, remember that it works. But do not remember the specific appearance, want to see but how can not find where, every day to see a lot of works, but scattered without order, and finally feel nothing accumulated down, often some small ideas, but not long forgotten, no longer recall.

If you have one of these, it is worth trying to learn and improve your personal knowledge management.

What is design knowledge?

Broadly speaking, design knowledge includes: Resources, common sense, methods, thinking
Resources and common sense are certain knowledge, generally some design conclusions (completed works) and concluding methods, which are relatively fixed and do not have extensibility. For example: A poster, the golden section theorem, etc. But the method and the thought is the living knowledge, may according to own demand nimble adaptation, the modification, may even produce another kind of new design thinking. For example: Grid design, minimalism, user-centric design.

So how much knowledge can be managed?

I've divided four steps into the management of design knowledge:

1. Browse

Browsing is all the time, eyes open a day passed, if you see the picture does not card, that every second at least 20 frames, 16 hours a day at least 1.152 million pictures ... So many of the pictures will certainly exist some pleasing, such as beautiful dress collocation, subtle window and background of the combination, sunset, beauty ... Wait, these can be recorded by camera or hand-drawn.

The age of knowledge explosion, information on the Internet, they are no longer difficult to obtain, but become difficult to choose, access to effective information has become an important part of today's access to information, my message from these several places:

2. Collect

What do you do with the information? We have to learn to collect and organize information that determines the efficiency of your future search for known information, as I do:

In peacetime browsing, I will use the petals (or Pinterest) favorite pictures, and then use Evernote record articles, if you use Chrome, that's too convenient, plug-ins so that your collection only need one click, and then can be a simple classification.

3. Digestion

The information you want has been set up, and you've seen it, is this information yours? Obviously, you've taken a snapshot of each piece of information before, and you don't have the information to label it, and you can't retrieve it in your mind when you want to use it.

At this time we need to digest the information we have, such as opening the petals, looking at the collection of pictures, from the composition, typesetting, color, lighting several latitude analysis of the picture, and then based on the purpose of the design of the author to think about why to do so, he used what method? Take pictures for example:

After the digest of their own, the information gathered before the clearer, a lot of content can be refined as a design method, in the future when needed can be used at any time.

4. Review, Think, innovate

This is the most important and difficult step, through the 3rd step, you have accumulated a part of the design method, do design time to apply these methods, through a variety of combinations to complete the work, in this process, should pay attention to each method of application environment, applicable themes, expressed feelings, and more exchanges and sharing, oral communication experience, Output ppt, which can be a good review of memory accumulated design methods. When the method accumulated to a certain extent, your various design thinking will slowly form, gradually improve, generate a unique understanding and understanding, to make their own creative design. The formation of design thinking is like the growth of trees, under the nourishing of various nutrients, methods and thinking interdependence, and common growth.

About plagiarism and innovation:

As shown in the four-tier management, if you do a good job on the first floor that you can take other people's work to do the design, if you do a second layer then you can take other people's methods to do the design! If you do the third layer then you can take other people's thinking to do the design! If you can do the fourth floor then you can do the design through meditation.

I do not know you found no, these four layers are called: plagiarism, for reference, micro-innovation, innovation.

Knowledge management can help you build your own design thinking and form a set of effective design problem-handling methods. Design resources can be accumulated to facilitate the search, call, analysis, improve the ability to solve problems and efficiency. Especially in the system and in-depth understanding of knowledge management, you will unknowingly find yourself with the new ideas to solve problems, all kinds of ideas in the mind constantly burst, at this time a variety of design requirements is a wonderful thing, because these requirements for your overflow of ideas to provide a rich carrier.

Finally, the designer is a production of creative, conveying information of the profession, he needs not only composition, color, hand-painted, software use, but also need other knowledge to enrich their horizons, in understanding all kinds of knowledge from all walks of life at the same time to understand their own design thinking, in the clear message, Make better, more meaningful, emotional work.