Words

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Our job, as designers, is to ask, listen, and suggest solutions. The clients’ job is to articulate needs, preferences, and desires. Together we test schemes and hypothesis to see whether they work for both parties. Conversations range widely, because design combines styles, personal expression, technology, cognition, aesthetics, functionality, and the satisfaction of human needs.

Each of us is a designer. Each of us makes countless design decisions every day — what to wear, how to do our hair, which ear to pierce and where to put the tattoo, how to arrange the dishes in the dishwasher, where to hang the picture on the wall, how to load the trunk of the car. Each design decision affects us. The ultimate result of a good design process is a well-mixed blend, a combined expression of clients and designers. To be good at being a client requires being good at communicating how you feel in a house or a landscape. To be good at being a designer requires good listening and asking skills and having the good luck to see our way to good solutions. When the process works well, it’s hard to look back and say what parts and which ideas came from whom. At the heart of the design process is trust — trust that a good solution will emerge from the collaboration, if given sufficient time and space.

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