Design: Capture

cherry blossoms tidal basin

Musing...

“It's a moment that I'm after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment.”

“It's all in how you arrange the thing... the careful balance of the design is the motion.”  -- Andrew Wyeth

Wyeth’s painting, “Wind from the Sea”, hangs in the National Gallery of Art. We don't have permission to print the image here, which would only offer a hint of what this art really is when you stand in front of it. To visit this work of art is to smell the air off the sea that the painting captures. It’s alive. 

Charise’s Turn:

Eugene Gendlin of Focusing teaches us that you can have a “felt sense” or a “bodily knowing” of what a problem, issue, or situation is about. A word, phrase, or image that emerges from your felt sense captures this knowing in a way that thinking or analyzing can’t  [focusing.org for more information]. As I’ve been laboriously developing content for my website, I’ve been checking how the design of it – the writing, the layout, the choice of words, images – resonate with the deepest intention that I have for my work which isn’t yet articulated. 

What I do one day and then look at the next day has to speak, not just sit there on the page or on the computer screen. I’m taking my time, tinkering, setting it aside and visiting it at a later time, checking to see whether it’s right – the right feel of the whole project or of the totality of my vision.  It’s like the future talking back to me when I know it’s right, an “ah, that’s it” – what I’m doing fits with where the work is going to lead.

Get Fired Up:

Practice finding a felt sense for what you are designing – whether it’s a plan, a project, a business, a work of art, a craft, a new routine.  

At any step along the way, ask yourself, “What does this whole thing feel like?”,  then wait for a response to emerge from a deeper place than thought.  See what word or image captures your response -- and let your response reengage you with what you are doing. Keep it alive!