My friend Christina Wodtke recently published a book called Pencil Me In. It’s aimed at encouraging “people who can’t draw” to draw more, especially in a business context. (You should get it even if you don’t think you fit that description — it’s really for everyone.) She kindly gave me a copy of the book autographed with the following directive:
Never stop drawing to think!
I love that. (Thanks, Christina!)
People assume the main reason to draw is so they can communicate something to someone. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” they’ve been told. So they draw — sometimes reluctantly.
Drawing to think is in one sense drawing to communicate. The difference is you’re communicating with an audience of one: you. You’re getting the abstractions out of your head and onto a medium where they can be made tangible, where you can examine them and iterate on them. A shitty first draft.
When you draw to think, your pencil and paper and hand and eyes and nervous system become one thing working in concert. You create a feedback loop: “This one goes too far. Let’s try this… Not far enough. I see what happened there. Wait. What if I did this to it? What would that do to the rest of the composition? Etc.”
Drawing to think has been central to my way of working for a long time. I’ve explored various ways of doing it, including using computers and iPads. These days I mostly draw on paper using black ink. When the time comes to share the ideas with others, I switch to the iPad to sketch something more polished.
Polished drawings are good when communicating with others, but rough ones are better for thinking. Thinking requires iteration: one more drawing… one more drawing… one more drawing. That calls for speed, and quick is rough, at least for me. That’s ok! This audience-of-one can see through the mess.
You may be familiar with Philippe Starck’s Juicy Salif citrus squeezer:
Image: Alessi
It’s a beautiful object (although I’ve heard it’s not a very functional citrus squeezer.) Juicy Salif looks organic, as though it emerged from the natural world somehow. It didn’t — it emerged from a feedback loop between Starck and a placemat in a pizzeria on the Amalfi coast. Here’s a photo of the placemat:
Image: Hive
Look at all those little sketches! This is a picture of Starck’s mind exploring the problem space for this artifact. It’s not a record of his thinking process — it’s where the thinking happened. An important distinction. (Check out Andy Clark’s book Supersizing the Mind for a deeper description of how these feedback loops work.)
Drawing to think is central to design. If you don’t do it already, I strongly encourage you to establish the practice. Christina’s book is a great place to start. That said, you don’t need much instruction — just get the feedback loop going in whatever way works best for you. It’ll help you think better.
Get updates via email
Sent every other week. I'll never share your address. Unsubscribe any time.