Design tool - Polar Adjectives

Many years ago I took a Color Workshop from Wilcke Smith. She'd just returned from a from a seminar with some top designers, including Jack Larsen. She passed along a really useful system of clarifying the design process using Polar Adjectives.

For me, the problem is often that my beginning idea is really a general feeling that begins to draw me toward a vague concept - a fuzzy vison. The design above is titled "Xanadu", designed after the workshop. It's a rendition of a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Then, there is also had been the commission where I need to magically read their mind & find what sort of vision they currently have of what they think they want. Their descriptions are unvisual, scattered, contradictory, etc. Arghhh!

Polar Adjectives allow me to get quickly from vague and general to specific and tune in on a specific idea (without wandering about in space for a month!), moving from general feeling to a pretty concise vision, to a beginning design.

The tool Wilcke shared was to make the longest list of Polar Adjectives,(opposites) we could... at least 45 sets. Then to apply it to a general concept - example: magic, outer space, celebration, river, lullaby. All of us have a gazillion possibilites for each of these. Concepts are big.

The make your list. Example:

hot - cold warm - cool fast - slow moving - still horizontal - vertical diagonal - straight curvy -linear

shiney - matte fuzzy -smooth circular -rectangular organic - geometric loose - tight free - controlled masculine - feminine

transparent - opaque earthy - airy dry - wet active - passive Include "feels like", descriptive words - many that are visual, but general.

Now, choose a general concept, for instance, "magic". Using you first inclination, apply every single set of polar adjectives and choose one. Everyone will
make a different choices in their version of magic. You will, along the way, get specific about which facet of "magic" you want to explore this time.

As you keep adding to your adjective list and making choices, you will quickly narrow and get a clear concept of how to the design should look. Often it will tell you what kinds of lines, areas, textures, colors and embellishments are most suitable this time.

It's a fairly easy matter to chat with a customer and establish 1 or more concepts that would apply. Hand a list of "polar adjectives" to them, and have a much better understanding of what they want.

Comments

[Nicky Perryman]

I love this idea. I can see how it would really easily generate a wealth of ideas. I am going to experiment with it and see what happens. Thanks for sharing it.