Thursday, August 2, 2018

21st Century Sketching






The role of drawing skills in 21st century design is contentious. Are pencil sketching skills still important? We love the look and the theater, but do we need these abilities?

One long term study I conducted with students sought to find the relationship between work environment and creative expression. (1) The survey instrument inquired about work environments that promote creative design and the preferred rendering medium for developing a design concept…

About 70 percent of designers preferred pencil and paper over CAD for ideation. This value has remained in the same order of magnitude over the last eleven years even under the swell of technological innovations in file sharing, projection, and digital interfaces. The ancient rendering method of hand drawing has remained surprising resilient.

Twenty-one percent of students specifically stated silence in their environment was conducive to creative design work. This is a large proportion in light of students’ typical musical immersion. The preference for silence has been virtually unchanged in the last eleven years. Moreover, this assertion of the importance of silence is contrary to the rapidly increasing musical exposure during this same time period….

Smartphones and their propensity to isolate do not seem to have worked against creative design environments. However, the internet has motivated students to pursue image searches as the first step in the design process. This design approach provides instantaneous visual exemplars that can’t be forgotten and therefore could reduce radical departures from past designs and provide a broader global material culture through shared images and social media. Perhaps removing access to smartphones (or other internet devices) can inhibit this rush to view search engine-based popular designs. This digital valley of darkness can subsequently provide relief from external visual influences upon the creative process.

(1) Ask, Thomas. “Creative Environments in the Age of the Smartphone.” Spring 2015 Mid-Atlantic ASEE Conference, April 10-11, 2015 Villanova University, 2015.

This is an excerpt from my new book, "Intense Design: Product Design Lessons From Cold War Era Skunk Works" 



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