I have a design direction in my mind, what are my next steps to completing the design concept?

If you're good at what you do, and you've been practicing the "Train Your Eye" exercises in the videos I post, and read the blog post or better yet, completed the section in the Degree-less Design Course on the subjects of understanding the client & project needs...you should have an easy time coming up with a design direction in your head. (How's that for a run on sentence? Gosh, I love not being in school and having to care that that sentence is "wrong".)

Amazing, so you're visualizing something. Now what? Let's walk through the design ideation or design direction process in terms of flushing out your design (aka making sure it works & you don't need/want to tweak it)

Step one - open up a new direction board. (The DDCourse has a free template for this, and the Complete Workflow Guide has even more examples & rules - & is 50% off for those of you in the DDCourse) I use Google Docs and they recently updated so removing backgrounds of images is super easy.

Step two - start simple with color. Select a paint color, you can put it in as a paint drop or as the background of the board. This will be the base color of the room.

Step three - select the other four colors of the color scheme - these are best done in paint drop images or paint sample squares.

Step four - materials. Import images of the direction you are thinking of going in for the main materials in the room. Such as wood type for flooring or accent material, a type of tyle or marble or any other materials you think you already have an idea of using.

Step five - understanding the nature of the room & types of furniture & fixtures that will likely be needed in that space, choose a few to put some directional options in that reflect the general design style you're going with. These can be furniture, light fixtures, rugs or decor.

*Keep in mind you can have direction boards that simply show each item in an organized grid collage form, or one where items are displayed scaled to size and laid out in a way that closer reflects a room layout. (Aka the bed will look bigger on the board than the sconce & the rug will be edited under the bed etc.)

Step six - once you are happy with it, I always recommend a little blurb explaining the direction & choices. This can label the design style, or address how certain decision address requests or needs from the client.

That's the basics! The step after you receive approval for that direction from your client (or yourself if this is a personal project) is creating a spec list. A spec list means you assess the space & list every single decision for every corner & aspect of the space that you will need to address so that you can apply all your design direction to each aspect of the space! (And not leave anything out) I will hopefully do the next post about this...if I can remember that I said that :)

XO

Shira