taking a breather for an effective solution

During one of my recent classes for graphic design, my lecturer talked about how design is supposed to be informative in the simplest sense, and yet be most aesthetically pleasing.

It was then when I consciously registered how similar it is to what I’ve learnt about writing from my previous Media and Communications course!

Effective design is like effective writing; the aim is to be concise and yet elegantly striking. If it’s better, it should be able to stir up or summon emotions.

And these few days, as I am focusing on my assignments, I realized how suffocating it is, to have many variations of the same design, and never being able to decide on a best one.

It can become engrossedly overwhelming. I start thinking ‘is this the best angle?

‘Is this design accessible to my target audience?’

‘Is my design suited for what the target audience would like to see?’

Then I hit the point ‘ARGHH I don’t know what I’m drawing anymore!’

Rough variations of a cover I'm doing now. I can't stop settling for one!

And then my housemate (who was a graphic design major) told me that I should calm down, and return to the piece of work after a while.

And it hits me again, that this is exactly like writing!

Back in the day when I did journalism pieces. the general advice and idea was this: when you are writing an article and it feels like you may have too many words, or when you have articulated too many points, and you don’t know how to cut down for the word limit…this is when you should take a break from your article for a few days.

When you return later (give it 2 or 3 days), you would be more objective in evaluating your piece anew, and all the answers to those beckoning questions would become more clearer.

I just need to do that with my designs for now.