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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