Design and designing is a creative and analytic process which gets rolling either from a given or discovered intent or an unprecedented act or inspiration. In design what you decide in the beginning to be and what you do at the end is the same, is not a design mind, what you imagine in the beginning and what you as a participant let it manifest to be in the end is the design mind.
In the journey of design, the designer plays a dual
role of the creative and the rational analytic, the degree of swing between the
two depends on the personality of the designer though. Also may sometimes depend
on the client’s expectations and in selecting a designer for the intended
purpose.
When the designer gets started, she/he through a studied process or a way-about imbibed through experience, sets a goal purposefully or vaguely, depends on whether one is an ant or a grasshopper. (http://ravishankardesign.blogspot.com/2013/08/we-need-antsalong-with-grasshoppers.html). However, the common kit of tools used would be while conceptualizing or visualizing the design inwardly for one self or outwardly to the team or client, a creative brief, set of attributes of the end artifact to begin with followed by a concept note which has a theme supported by mood board or extracted from a mood board extending to a narrative. The theme is the underlying essence or a subliminal narrative of the intent depending on the context. It would be an imagined description with a creative freedom of using metaphors or analogies, the stimuli coming from the mood board or inspiration board as the designer may call by one’s contextual choice.
