Where Do You Begin the Design Process?
- Becky Bonnell
- May 23, 2022
- 1 min read
Video Transcription
Hello, friends. Welcome to another week of these trainings. Usually live. Today, I am doing a recording. I had an engagement I had during the one o'clock time period but wanted to make sure that I got you this information. I am Becky Bonnell, owner of Lykke Haven Design which is a purpose-driven interior design company here in Grand Rapids and today, we're going to start with where do we even begin the design process.
Before we begin, I'm just going to quick take a sip of my tea. I did brew up some sip up some Richmond Fog tea. It is a cold day here in Michigan. Unseasonably cold for May but and if you guys have never had this tea, I always highly recommend it. It is the perfect tea for a cold day or a rainy day. Just a lot of cinnamon and different flavors within that tea. So, if you can, go out and try to figure out how you can get some Richmond Fog Tea. You won't be disappointed.
Today, we're going to start with where do I begin the design process. So far, we've gone through who Lykke Haven is, who I am, and we've gone through those values that we hold high at Lykke Haven which is intention, mission, and connection and how we bring those into our spaces but we're going to take a step back again today and talk about our process at Lykke Haven and how we start the design.
How we get it from, I want to do something in my home to design presentation. Where do we even start? We start with the things that we have already discussed in our first phase which is the Discovery phase. We start with the empathy exercises. We've gone over these. We really try to understand the user, what the needs are of the family, the moods, the feelings that they're having, and what they want to have and we pull together what are the intentions for the space and we help work through defining what space to focus on. Maybe you don't know what space you want to focus on and you’re saying, “We have this whole home. We don't know where to start.” So we work through that in the discovery phase and from that, we define. “Okay, this from these empathy exercises, here are the gaps in your home versus where you want them to be for your family. Here's what we recommend or where we start,” and we go through a define step. We're really defining what is the space and what do we want to intentionally do in the space.
From there, we move onto our second phase which is the explore phase. This is where all the fun happens! This is where we get to explore and design and end with the design presentation. We take those empathy exercises and we make the intention statement. We have gone over this as well in the previous training. We really write down in words a summary of how we want the space to feel, the moods we want to have, some of the activities that we want to have in this space to really be our guiding north star in the design process and then from here, we pull together a mood board. These are pictures that help the intention statement come to life. There are pictures that really bring about the mood and the feelings that we want to have, not necessarily design elements specifically we want in the room. Although there could be those, but really the moods that we want to have in the space.
Then, we start to dive further into the design process that we haven't discussed yet and that's what this week is going to be. How do I go from my intention statement and my mood board to a design presentation?
The first thing I do, I will be honest is I cannot pull together a design unless I am in my creative zone. So, the important thing is to get in that zone and it's different for everybody. I have this very deep belief that Lykke Haven is a company partnership with God. That is something I hold dear and true to my heart. So, I start every design honestly in prayer. This is where I start. I ask for God to come into the design, help me to understand the user, help me to really listen and hear them and help me create this design that is perfectly theirs. Help bring that inspiration to the forefront and pull this together. So, I start every design in prayer in order to help get me in the creative zone.
Then, I like to honestly activate all five of my senses when I am getting started or trying to get in that creative zone. So, for you know, hearing, I love to put on some music in the background. I can't have words. That's just kind of something that distracts me more so I do instrumental and it ranges depending on what kind of mood I'm in that day or maybe even the design. If they want something that is pulled from some type of culture, I'll usually put on that type of music to get really get into the feel of the design. Then for scent, I love to burn a candle right next to me on my desk. I have one that we made in East Town, they have a candle making place and so we chose our own scents and pulled that and I love lighting that candle to help me get in the creative zone. For taste, I love to brew a cup of tea just like I have today. It really helps me get all the creative juices going because of all the different flavors that tea can have pulled together; all the different profiles and the leaves that can come together to make a delicious drink. It really just helps me get in the creative zone. It might seem a little woo woo but this is what helps me and then I get my mindset as we already talked about. Then when it comes to touch, you want to make sure you have a comfortable chair that you can comfortably sit there for a while sometimes. So, you want to make sure you're comfortable. Sometimes, I'll grab a blanket and prop my legs up and just start going with the design, feeling into it. That Is the first step of the design process for me, is getting in the creative zone.
So, how do you get in your creative zone? Everyone is a little bit different. Sometimes it's the time of day or a specific place. Whatever it is, try to figure out “how do I feel the most creative?” and start there and get in that creative zone before you try to take your intention statement and mood board into a design because if you're not in your zone, you're going to just spin your wheels and not be able to pull that design together and you're going to get frustrated and it just doesn't work as well if you're not in your zone. So what is it for you? Figure it out, write it down, help to remind yourself of what worked to get you in the zone and it may change over time. Sometimes it does for me winter versus summer. Seasons change my energy levels. So, whatever it is, just keep note so that way you can remind yourself, “oh I'm spinning my wheels because I'm not in the zone.” Let's take a pause and get in the zone and from here, the first thing, we're going to really quick run through a very high level of the process.
We're going to take this week and go in more details into these steps but I just want to give you a quick high level of what's to come for the week. Once you have your intention statement and your mood board, the next step is to get further inspired. Inspiration can come from so many different places but I, as I said, start with a mood board. That's my North Star. That's my guiding map. Is there anything in there that could inspire the design further? So, for instance, I had a client that loved instrumentation. So, think compasses, just any kind of instrumentation. He was a pilot and there's lots of instrumentation. There's something beautiful about the antique instrumentation as well but just how it comes together, the mechanisms that are in that and so inspiration for this could be taking a compass apart and seeing the gears or watching a video on how different instrumentation works.
There are different things that you can do to get inspired. If it's a place for instance, the other client loved Portugal and traveling there. So, I couldn't really travel to Portugal, that would be a little extreme but what you can do is pull up videos, tour videos, different pictures of the place to really get in inspired by things that the client likes or that you like.
I love nature and some of the things we're trying to do in our home is pull in more elements from nature. So, we'll go hiking and there are so many beautiful things that you will miss unless you're paying attention. So, even how a mushroom is growing on a tree or the other day I was hiking on a walking path with my daughter. Honestly, how the seaweed looked in the water, just the colors that it had and the muted color was really inspiring. I'll just find different things from around just every day. So, the first step is to get inspired and we'll go through more of different places to really get inspired and what to do when inspiration strikes.
After that, you start diving into the color palette. The first place I start with this is the mood board. What colors came forth in that mood board. Canva has a really cool tool if you've ever used Canva, it will show you the colors of your picture or what colors are brought out by a grouping of pictures and you can start there with your color selection and color palette. There are other things to consider as well that I will deep dive into. For example, where are your windows facing? How much light is coming into your room? What do different colors mean? There's a lot to color selection and people get overwhelmed and I'm hoping I can just arm you with information and not overwhelm you too much, but to make good choices in your color palette selection. Then after that we start going into the floorplan or I like to call them flow plans, really bad mom joke probably…but the floorplan is moving furniture around, what furniture is needed, what zones are needed in the space, and making sure the space feels balanced. There's a lot to pulling together a floorplan and some of the things I like to do is pull together many different floor plans and compare them before making any selections. So, we'll go into that further.
Once you have your intention statement, mood board, your inspiration, color palette, your floorplan, you'll start to understand what elements, what selections need to be made for this design and that's the second part of the explore phase which I love to call the prototype phase because there's so much that we're really trying to work through still and test out and make selections before we go into the implementation stage. So, we're really testing a lot of things out. You'll get selections. You'll get samples. I even like to sometimes, I will tape out the floor or for our girls room, I taped out where the walls would be. We prototyped how going into the loft would feel with a loft bed we have at home and honestly, some bin covers and anything we had laying around the house, we prototyped how it feel to climb into that loft to make sure that the design would work for our family. So, there's different ways you can prototype the design. Get samples for your selections before really finalizing those selections for the design. The floorplan and the color palette and then the mood board are what guide those selections. You just willy nilly pick out selections because then you have all this stuff and it wasn't intentionally chosen and then there is no direction. There is no connection into the space. This is why we have in our business a set process and steps we go through to ensure that you have a design that is intentionally yours.
With the intention statement or first the empathy exercise honestly then defining it going through the intention statement and mood board, getting inspired, selecting the color palette, and then determining the floorplan before we even start the selection process. We'll go deeper into that this week into each of those things because there's even additional information.
I would love for you to join me throughout this week as we go into the design process and probably too much detail but it'll be fun and I love just sharing this information. This is where I start to nerd out on all the information stuff, the engineering brain, and how things can be selected and information that comes into those selection processes is what gets me excited. So, I'm excited to share that with you.
Your action step today is figuring out how do you get in your creative zone? What is it for you that helps get those creative pathways open to be able to even come up with a design and write it down. Try different things out. Some things may work, some things may not, maybe it's time of day like I said, maybe it's a certain space in your home. Figure out how do you get in your creative zone and write that down so that you remember. That you're not spinning your wheels and that you can actually design your Lykke Haven from a place of creativeness.
I hope you'll join me tomorrow. We're going to dive into where you find inspiration and I look forward to being with you live on Tuesday. Until then, if you found this video helpful, I would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment below, share it with a friend and if you have any questions throughout any of these, please feel free to feel free to message me. I would love to hear from you. I hope you have a wonderful Monday and I look forward to being with you live on Tuesday at one o'clock to talk about where do you find inspiration.
Have a great day guys.
Lykke Haven Design is a full service, purpose-driven interior design firm serving clients in West Michigan. We work with clients from Ada, to Grand Rapids, to Holland (and the occasional out of state). Our mission is to create Intentional Interiors curated with a Meaningful Mission that Cultivate Connection. We do this through a process driven by Human-Centered Design. We would love to discuss your next project and how we can help.
Please check out our services to learn more!
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