I will often speak of what good scad graphic design students refer to as “the process” or “my process”. the design process is at the heart of the grad graphic design program. Although you are encouraged to do thumbs, roughs, and type studies at BJU, they are not formalized stages or grading stages for a project. At scad, each project is to be accompanied by a process folder. This folder is a guide to the project at hand, including research printouts, sketches, thumbnails, roughs, type studies, color studies, initial mechanicals, and the final project. Throughout each project, the professor will look through this process folder to see what work you have done for the project. This also means that you cannot skate through some of the stages of the design process, because someone will be evaluating your process as well as your final project. As an organizational freak, I like the whole folder system, but it seems that it may be too formalized to deal with creative beginnings to a project. Also, I like to use my hardbound sketchbook rather than loose-leaf paper to do my initial sketches and thumbnails. I guess it will have to grow on me. So there you have it–the “process”.