Design Process for Makers
A three-day workshop in how to get ideas and how to develop them, and maybe, just maybe find your own voice.
Woodworkers and furniture makers tend to focus on developing craft skills. Those skills are demanding and take years to build. But craft skills alone don't generate ideas, or help you express your identity and thinking through your work.
This workshop is not a design course in the formal sense. It offers a toolbag of approaches, ways of thinking, of drawing, of making models, of iterating and prototyping, that you can reach into depending on what a particular problem needs.
It is designed for woodworkers and furniture makers who want to develop their own designs, and for anyone working in any material who wants more reliable ways to move from idea to object.
What the workshop covers
The three days move between thinking and making, between drawing and building, between the idea and the thing.
"Where do you get your ideas?" This workshop will give you tools and methods for developing your own ideas and distinctive voice.
We will work with sketching as a thinking tool, not as a way of producing finished drawings. Sketch modelling, fast, rough and physical, as a way of testing ideas in three dimensions before committing to material and time. Sensory practice as a source of ideas: how to look, how to listen, how to pay attention to the material world in ways that feed creative work.
We will also look at tools for creative thinking more broadly: ways of generating ideas when you feel stuck, methods for developing and iterating on a promising direction, approaches to scale and proportion, and the role of prototyping in resolving a design.
The emphasis throughout is on process, not product. What matters is developing a set of methods you can take back to your own practice and use on your own terms.
Workshop details
Duration: 3 days
Location: Mount Egerton VIC 3352
Group size: Maximum 4 participants
Experience: Open to all levels. Suitable for makers working in any material.
Price: $990 per person (all materials supplied)
Dates: Dates announced to the EOI list first, register your interest below
Mount Egerton is located on Wadawurrung Country in Central Victoria, approximately 90 minutes from Melbourne and 30 minutes from Ballarat. The studio is easily reached from Melbourne's west and from Geelong, Daylesford and regional Victoria.
Who this workshop suits
This workshop is for makers of all kinds who want a more developed and reliable design process. That includes furniture makers and woodworkers who have strong making skills but find the design stage uncertain or frustrating, and makers working in any other material who want better tools for developing ideas.
It is also relevant to anyone who teaches making and wants to develop their own design thinking alongside their practice.
About the teaching
Ross Annels is a maker, artist and designer with over 25 years of practice across furniture, sculpture, installation and material research. Design is not a separate phase of his work. It is embedded in how he makes, how he thinks about material, and how he develops ideas from first impulse to finished form.
The workshop draws directly from that practice, not from a design school curriculum.
Express your interest
Dates for this workshop are announced to the interest list first. If you would like to be notified when bookings open, contact Ross directly.
Where this leads
Design Process for Makers sits alongside the full program at Moonlite Studios. Participants who complete this workshop often find it changes how they approach the making programs:
Hand Tools Fundamentals, a 5-day deep dive into furniture making fundamentals
Bent Form: Design and Studio Practice, a 2-day design-focused workshop using bending as a creative tool
Chair Design, a 5-day guided process of designing and prototyping a chair of your own
Moonlite Studios is a working furniture making and creative practice based in Mount Egerton, on Wadawurrung Country in Central Victoria. Courses and mentoring are offered year-round in small groups within a studio environment.
View all courses and workshops · Frequently Asked Questions · Mentoring with Ross · Contact