Design Dice

‘…Design Dice are a tool to help the creative process – to aid design thinking, idea generation & problem-solving…’

Created by Andy Neal (Senior Lecturer, and former course co-ordinator at Falmouth University) they are the result of over 25 years of experience as a graphic designer & teacher, and have grown out of a deep belief in the value of encouraging creativity in others.

‘…The main idea is simple. The dice work when you need a change in direction, are feeling stuck, or want to take a lateral leap in your thinking. You roll one (or more) of the dice – which offers a key-word ‘prompt’, and invites a series of creative responses, encouraging breadth and depth to your thinking. Every word is ‘interpreted’ by you in the light of the project you are working on, so the meaning of each suggestion changes due to the context. Even though there are a ‘fixed’ number of words, there are arguably an infinite number of combinations…’

The resulting dice have been tested over the past three years with undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate designers from a range of creative disciplines (not just graphic design), and are now live on KickStarter (hopefully) ahead of going into production.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/303501430/design-dice

 

 

Werkwoche | International Design Week 2016

Dion Star, Ashley Rudolph & Andy Neal were invited to take part in this year’s Werkwoche 2016 delivering a 5 day intensive workshop [STÖRUNG] – Disruption / Design Process. Including three lectures relating to their individual research interests.

International Design Week Werkwoche was launched by the Faculty of Design of the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences in 2013. The idea was to highlight the role of design and its related fields and to create a platform for national and international exchange.

Now the Werkwoche 2016, has become a vibrant five-day-event with the focus on current and future design trends. 15 designers and lecturers from eight countries explore, discuss and showcase the importance of design as an innovative tool, it fosters exchange and raises awareness of the vital role design plays in our lives.

Workshop overview

We all have our own ‘design process’ – the way we go about doing what we do as designers. The [ S T Ö R U N G ] workshop was to be an intensive opportunity for students to consider the ‘what’ and ‘why’ behind their existing design process, and to look for ways of building on and developing new patterns of working. Students were asked to consider the things they already know and utilise, asking key questions such as; “Who am I? How do I work? What do we know about processes already?”, plus an interrogation of some key barriers we face to our creativity (“What gets in the way?”), and then move through less familiar (and sometimes uncomfortable) experiences that consider emotion, language and expression as tools for new thinking.