sure about exactly what they mean don’t sweat it, we’ve got your back. There was a time when we didn’t know what they meant or their significance either. We’ve learned our lessons though. 
Consider this an open invitation to visit our 
Design
It’s probably the area that people struggle with the most. We really struggled with trying to explain how we do it, but we do it all of the time. If you want to jump straight to The 10 Step Program, by all means please do. If you stay, find your metrosexual-self below.
Defining design is like trying to define what love is. So far, nobody’s done it well, so here goes:
The term design is a pretty broad topic and applies to 
subjects of every description: architecture, engineering, clothing, paint choices, your hair, and the placement of objects relative to other objects. It defines how something appears visually or how it operates. To us, design is what brings the cool ideas to the project. We want to see some sizzle when we’re done.
Design at Dirty Shirt
Within the Dirty Shirt portal we use the word design to describe what we want the end result of our efforts to look like. We’re do-it-yourselfers. We’re usually changing something to make it better than it was. We’re always working to improve, fix or maintain some tangible item or space that we own. We design things to make them work for us and to make them look good. For Dirty Shirt contributors, we most often perform design-work on the interiors and exteriors of our homes.
Seeing Visions
For us, design-work defines our goal. Designing creates a shared vision to get everyone on the same page. Although we’re not professional designers, we do this type of work all of the time. We have enough design experience and interest in the subject to realize its importance to what we do. There are plenty of subject matter experts as it pertains to design. We would encourage everyone to look at the issue more closely and read about what the experts have to say. We’re not subject matter experts on design; we just know that we do it and that it’s important.
There is good design-work and there is bad design-work. 
Good or bad may be subjective but you’ll know it when you see it. When you find yourself using a poorly designed product or wrestling with a poorly designed space, you can't help but wonder what they were thinking when they designed this thing. If your new shoes look hot but give you blisters, we’d call that a design paradox and it’s time to step away from the mirror and reflect on ones choices, in both design and shoes.
We don’t want a paradox in our design. We want to see peaceful coexistence brought about by thoughtful discussion and equalization among participants. A design-democracy if you will. Right. Just like at work.
Generally, the more proficient you are at designing something the better the outcome will be; both in terms its usefulness and its overall cool factor. Practice definitely helps and translating a vision in your head to a finished product is definitely a skill that can be developed over time.
Grill Yourself
The basic questions we always seem to ask ourselves when we start designing are:
What’s wrong with the way it is now? Why isn’t it working anymore?
Either something we’ve designed or something somebody else has designed isn’t getting the job done for us. If it’s somebody else’s design we’ll talk extra trash about it and beat on it until it screams.
Maybe our appliances don’t fit in the kitchen cabinets, a new blender for example. Either sell the house or fix it. Those are the two choices. We all know the blender isn’t going anywhere; it stays. We’ll need to cut a hole in the cabinet that is about the size of blender.
A wall is the wrong color. The wall paint is the right color for about seven days after you’ve just painted it. For the remaining fifty one weeks it is the wrong color. Exactly what color would get us a few more weeks of chi per year?
How could we make it work better? What are the alternatives?
We start describing how great it would be if we could move a shelf. We talk about how great it would be if we could move a staircase. If a ladder would work better instead of the staircase we talk about that. We leave the details of ladder purchases out for now; we just want possibilities on the table.
What might these changes cost?
We start ball-parking dollar figures. We try to determine if we’re talking about $100s or $1000s and what funds are available for making the changes. We want 
to know if starting a project now or waiting until later would be better. We’re testing the water to determine if our design ideas are feasible from a cost perspective. Some future raise casually mentioned by your boss, tax returns, or a Christmas bonus are not on the table. It’s about what money is in the bank. When the money is in the bank we can pull the trigger.
Designing with Italian marble is a nice idea but totally impractical for most Dirty Shirt projects. If you can’t live without Italian marble your project will die. It’s time to check your design. We need a general idea of how cost may impact the design. Does the budget require that we work in phases or does it allow for a big-push approach? Think this through carefully Turbo, we like big-push enthusiasm but an exceptional attitude don’t pay the bills. Phases are almost always the best way to go.
What kind of effort are we talking about?
We start entertaining the high-level steps we would need to take in order to accomplish the design in mind. No details, just high level.
How would we accomplish the design results?
Schedules are discussed; we talk about the number of days the project might take relative to our other responsibilities. Your repeated mixed-martial-arts injuries will impact what you can do and how often you can do it. You can’t swing a hammer if you can’t see a nail through the swelling.
We try to envision what day-to-day life will be like if we remove the counters and the cabinets from the kitchen or how we could remove one bathroom from service in a two bathroom home. The project will always take four times as long as you think. We talk about how we are going to live if we start tearing things apart. If you climb out of bed and step onto bare concrete is everyone okay with that? While the floor tile is drying, is eating carry-out in the bedroom a problem or a picnic? Get buy-in from your adult housemates - kids don’t get a vote. Would your parents have let you vote?
What if we took the end design idea and broke it into phases or do we want to do a big-push and just get it done? Again, be careful with the storm-the-beach approach. How many times will you have to stop and make a trip to the hardware store? That stuff takes time and your project is on a break when you do it.
What is our biggest concern regarding this design change?
Everyone has their own idea of what the big concern might be. The final visual appearance may be one. Not having a working dishwasher is always big. Cutting something out or moving plumbing may be another on the technical side of things.
We identify The Big Three – the top three concerns that have the most potential to jeopardize the end result or substantially lengthen the schedule. Cost concerns are always at the top of the list. Any of these concerns could potentially alter the design depending on their significance.
Idea Collectors
After the reasons for making a change have been identified, we need ideas before we can start the project. We’ll have our own ideas but we need a way to check and improve on those initial thoughts. Our inspiration comes from a number of sources. This is how we acquire our best ideas:
Seriously?
Magazines - Yep, magazines. It’s designing via glue stick and scissors. They’re inexpensive, readily available, current, easily handled and stored. Cooking magazines feature kitchens. Catalogs feature completed rooms – there are examples everywhere. Subject-specific magazines are full of ideas cover to cover. Clipped pictures find their way to folders for reference and are accumulated by simply saving what you’re drawn to. Just cut something out and save it for later. Some of us (those with high-design tendencies) find the process to be therapeutic.
What Are Friends For?
Bum from Your Friends and Relatives – At least one of 
them will have it going on. Covertly copy their ideas without being so obvious that they ask: “Did you copy me?” You cannot use any ideas that your mom suggests. She is barred from participating. Your dad might give technical tips on cross-cut sawing, only. He knows nothing about design but he does know a lot about sawing. If he says that screws and nails are a sign of poor craftsmanship and that you should use only true joinery techniques; change the subject.
Ideas that we’d like to emulate (emulate is a euphemism for copy) usually find their way to a project board (foam-core, a wall in the garage, etc.) or a three-ring binder and are used for reference when we start talking about a project and begin working out the details. It’s very seldom that we copy something outright and incorporate it into our design; friends and relatives being the exception.
Captain Obvious
The Web – If you were to Google a blank space you'd probably get a result. Try it. Google nothing and see what you get. If you Google the right words you'll get project pictures that often include plans to build just about anything and are pennies on the dollar compared to purchasing an entire book of patio coverings and decks. Once you’ve found your desires, um, project-desires, purchase only those plans. You just want one, so only buy one. If you have to have a whole book, go to Half Price Books and purchase a used one.
My Grampa Mentioned This To Me Once
Graph Paper – Low tech, we know; pre-drawn lines and plenty of it on a single pad and cheap. We like that. One square on a piece of graph paper represents one square foot in the real world. We use it for creating mock-up drawings of a house, a room, a workbench, a patio - just about anything that has straight lines. Even items with straight lines and curves find their way onto graph paper. It’s open-ended. When something is designed to scale from the start, unforeseen problems are bound to show up. You then have a spatial- awareness that you may not be able to acquire in any other way. Creating scale furniture out of graph paper and moving the pieces around on a graphed room helps.
We've Got a Nice Little Saturday Planned
Pre Shop – Review what’s on the retail floor and get a sense of the big picture. The color families and styles that you see there are going to be the easiest to acquire for the foreseeable future – and also the most expensive. Buyers and manufacturers have already talked these issues through and that’s how a piece of furniture, in dark or light stain, arrives on the showroom floor. The actual choices and styles they selected may have you completely wondering but that’s how it is. Manufacturers talk to manufacturers and retail buyers talk to other buyers. Similarly bright colors choices begin to emerge across all retail stores when last year they were muted earth tones. You’d swear everyone was talking to one another but you’re not sure how they did it. The buyers all party together when they travel to trade shows and let the corporate secrets spill.
Click - Free Idea
Photograph – Some retailers will allow you to photograph items and some won’t. If they won’t, wait for the sales person to leave and do it anyway. It’s not their furniture, it’s not their store and nobody at home listens to them either. They’re just being difficult and they wanted to feel in control of something. Loss Prevention is watching you through their security system so be quick about it. If you’re asked to leave the store; learn from your mistakes and buy a smaller camera-phone and quit asking for permission. Be a doer not an asker. Bring the pictures home and think about them for awhile.
Measuring Is Over Rated
Tape Measure – Measure the design components that you find during the pre-shop and take some notes. If it doesn’t fit in the space you’re designing, it’s off the list of possibilities no matter how perfect it may be. Keep looking.
Now What?
How the project will appear visually should be taking shape and you should have a pretty good idea of what the end result will look like. Some of the questions about how you will actually accomplish the project should also be coming together. You’ve pre-shopped for design elements, the materials you’ll need and finalized most of the decisions. You’ve ripped off pictures, you’ve accumulated examples, you’ve discussed them and you may have created a small mock-up of the space and made design alterations there. The schedule has been discussed and the budget has been addressed. Everyone has voted and they’re all ‘in’ except your brother-in-law but like the kid vote – he don’t count.
Your project is ready for the build phase and it’s time to get started. Before you do, be sure to check out The 10 Steps that we’ve found apply to all of our projects. They’re basic self-imposed rules and observations we try to follow to ensure project success and that the team is ready to build it.
You Forgot Something
Where’s the rest of the information on Design? What about colors and feng-shui? How do I incorporate animal heads and antlers into my decorating?
With regard to antlers we’ll pretend that you didn’t say that. For the other topics, we’ll get there, we’ll get there. We’ve still got to work on describing how we actually build things and a few pictures would be nice too.
For now, we gots to go with what we gots…