Drawing Workflow Basics – Part One
Part One – Clean up your workspace. Seriously.
It may sound kind of silly, but you really have to get yourself organized prior to putting your thoughts into tangible forms. Nine times out of ten, artists have the messiest, most disorganized areas as their base of operations. If you’re laid back like I am, you may say to yourself, “Its not that big of a deal!” – But let’s say you’re doing a paid commission or client work and your place is a disaster and the deadlines are approaching fast and you cant find that mockup you did or that 7th revision of the sketch that the client finally decided he/she wanted to revert back to and AAAARRRGH!
If you take 10 minutes to an hour on some down time to create an efficient workspace, you won’t be cursing yourself later. Trust me – I’m extremely scatterbrained – in fact, my desk is cluttered right now because I’ve let it go for too long. But I have a plan that I implemented a long time ago that allows me to get back to an optimal workflow zone in less than 10 minutes. This post is the first in a series of improving your own workflow techniques that will definitely make you more efficient and productive in the long run. If you’re a meticulous clean and neat freak, or already cleaned your desk, or had your mom/significant other/maid do it for you, skip over to Part 2 – Organizing Your Other Desktop
Here’s what you’ll need in order to start part one:
- larger boxes (for larger items – books, papers, etc)
- shoebox sized boxes (for loose items)
- small boxes (for loose items)
- trash can and garbage bags
- recycling bins – one for paper/cardboard, the other for glass/plastics
The first thing you’ll want to do is determine what items are garbage. Now by garbage, I mean stuff that you are not going to keep around for whatever “mixed-media” project or science experiment in the near future. But before you pitch it out, take note of what you have in hand. If its a box or wrapping made from cardboard/paper, break it down until its flat and throw it in your recycling bin. Same goes for glass and plastic stuff. If its something that cant be recycled and is rotting or gross looking, into the garbage bag it goes. Continue combing through the rubble on your desk until you’ve taken out all the useless items.
Now we move on to organizing the items that are important. Starting from the left side of your working area, take all items that are large sized, and put them in the large boxes, medium sized in medium boxes and small sized in small boxes. Get everything off the furniture as best as possible and into the boxes. Once everything is off the furniture, you can remove your dust and grime or stains and whatever. There’s no sense putting your neatly reorganized stuff back on your desk when your it has splatters, stains and three inches of dust and dirt on it.
Once your junk has been placed into boxes by size, now its time to get more in-depth and detailed. Go through your boxes by size and organize all your items into piles of “keep” and “pitch”. The pitch piles mean just that – pitch that stuff out. Remember, recycle what you can.
Now its time to assess where each item in each keep pile goes. This part I’ll leave up to you, but try to keep items of relevance together, even though their sizes may not be the same, you can keep your books in one section, drawing implements and supplies in one section, notes, proofs and important documents in another section, etc. Keep doing this until you have subdivided everything into proper piles. You can get even more detailed with the organizing by subdividing the subdivided piles (ie – creating a section for client dockets and paperwork, separate from your proofs, separate from your billing/invoices. etc). The sky is the limit.
Tear it down
to build it back up.
You’ve taken the junk off the desk, pitched out the garbage, recycled the reusable material, divided, subdivided and maybe even catalogued all the items that took up valuable real-estate on your workspace. Now its time to put it all back – but first you need a plan of attack. Determine the best areas to place your newly segregated and organized piles that will be the most efficient for you – don’t tuck away stuff that you know you will need in a short time from now, or use more often than another item which could probably move to a lesser accessible area.
Put your important stuff into the areas that you feel are the most easily accessible. Keep in mind you’ll need areas for books and resource material, client materials, supplies, and your odds and ends. Keep as much of these items away from the desk top. If you can manage this large portion of desk real-estate to stay in this same condition every day after you’ve logged your hours, you make yourself that much more efficient the next day since you dont have to take time out to clean up before you get started. Always remember to keep your desk top clean at the end of the day – it will help tremendously.
Also, get into the habit of putting things back after you’re done using them (just like when your mom would scold you for not putting your toys away when you’re done – I’m doing the same.) You may need it the following day, but if its on the desk top when your shift is over, take 5 and put it back. Its not that much more effort to pull it back down the following day.
Remember folks, keep it clean and organized and you’ll be able to find things faster, get back to work quicker and spend no time wondering and worrying where things went and why they’re not where they should be. This organizational tactic can be applied once a month to avoid clutter, and if you apply it with more frequency it will take less time to return to a state of organized bliss. You’ll be surprised how being organized will affect your work habits, and how much more efficient you’ll be. A simple workflow improvement technique, simply coming from picking up after yourself!
In my next article – Organizing Your Other Desktop, we’ll tackle the same technique, but on your computer.
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Tags: Workflow
January 15th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
[...] the first part of this series – Drawing Workplace Basics Part One: Cleaning Your Workspace, I explained how an organized physical workspace will do wonders for your productivity and [...]