Investigate

In this stage of the design cycle, you need to start re-searching about the topic you are going to do your project about. In this first stage, you make the design brief, where you show how you intend to solve the problems I have been presented with. With this you will be able to have a more detailed design specification. The design specifications, is where you give a detailed description of the conditions, dimensions, materials, process and methods that are important for the designer.

When you are in this stage you first need to look for the topic, being the thing you will be doing your project about, then you need to write about it, in the design brief, and from there your design specifications.

In our current project the Investigate part, was to search for lyrics, quotes, or poems that were meaningful to you. You needed 30 pages of investigation and from all of those poems, quotes, or lyrics, you needed to chose your top 3 of each. From there you needed to chose the one that was truly meaningful to you and do the design brief about it, where you needed to state why you had chosen that song, poem, or quote, after you kind of knew what you wanted to do, you needed to write your design specifications where you tell the designer what materials he needs to use and how he is going to use it. During this process we also chose the type of font that would answer the main questions.

I think that this step is the most useful one of the whole design cycle, because it is where you actually get to see the initial meaning of the whole project, it is where you know what you are going to do. Later you are going to design and plan, but this is where you see the raw idea, something where you can look back and see what the project about before you was made any small changes.