In Defense Of The Sketch
July 27, 2006 | by Carson
There is no doubt that the digital revolution has enhanced every nook and cranny of the design world- and produced a whole new genre of design centered around the web. Projects that once required an army of creatives and artists are now produced by small creative teams (or single individuals). Information and resources lay at the fingertips of anyone with a Google search bar and a RSS reader. Amazing work is being produced at break-neck speed. It is a great time to be a designer.
The largest downfall to these amazing machines and tools is their tempting ability to increase efficiency by sacrificing conceptual time and truly original creative interaction with a project. It is all to easy to skimp on sketches and head straight to the Mac, letting the software drive a design- instead of letting the design drive the software.
Sketching is a physical interaction with visual and conceptual ideas. Paper provides a freeform playground that removes all of the restrictions that a computer puts in place. We are forced to think about design in terms of flowing ideas instead of filters and trends. Instead of managing menus and pallets, our pencil can wander and explore.
Never be too quick to forfeit the physical side of the creative process for speed and efficiency. The sketch is where truly great design begins.
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May 20th, 2008 | 4:17 pm
During a recent exercise in Typography I saw many of my classmates designing directly on the computer. Some of them scoffed at the fact that I was sitting in the corner scribbling away with my archaic pencil stub. How obsolete my design process was!
However, by completely immersing myself in the process, I gained an entirely new appreciation and understanding of a typeface, its letter forms, and its ligatures. It wasn’t until I sat down and drew the stroke and serif of each letter that I truly understood the underlying structure and how related to each other the characters really were.