Awhile ago, I started a series of posts about what I thought a new designer should consider acquiring and/or developing in their toolkit. Here's the list so far:
1. Camera
2. Self-awareness
Clearly, I've been a bit delayed but the idea of the toolkit hasn't left me so let's continue.

Next on the list? I'd propose this: Learn how to draw.

While this may seem obvious, I am regularly reminded of how many designers or design students actually don't practice this (and some even have a fear of it). My suggestion to overcoming this? Carry some tools with you so that you can pursue it daily. I don't say this as one who has achieved it (the above image is a drawing I did of a Sharpie pen with my less dominant hand in 2005) but rather as one who has learned that in order to visualize information for people I need to be able to show rather than tell them what I am thinking. Ideas and outcomes don't start on the computer so honing this ability to display concepts will only serve to help you with your work. I was reminded of this today when I listened to this excerpt from a Saul Bass documentary.

Because I needed to be challenged in this area, I took up the Sketchbook Project as a means to remind myself that like learning a new language or any other creative skill, you typically don't just wake up with it. You have to nurture and develop it in order to look back and see some measure of breakthrough. Have you ever heard of Morning Pages? They are a great example of how regular process can help break through some of the clutter. I'd propose the same concept for designers and suggest that the pages are about visuals over text.

And sometimes, it comes down to making sure you are prepared at any given moment. Here are some items that I don't leave home without:

Pens:
Sharpie
Muji (thank you Michael Surtees)
Pilot

Notebooks:
Moleskine
Field Notes
Spaces For Ideas

And if you need more evidence, watch to this great video where Milton Glaser talks about the importance of drawing.

It's amazing to me. I'm a designer and yet I find myself in a sketching rut these days. My graduate research even focused on the ideas of visualization as a communication tool. So when I saw this project, I figured I'd found a creative way to face it head on. If you're groove-challenged of late, consider joining me!

Drawing: A Fundamental Instrument to Understand Reality

After using drawing as part of my design process in Rwanda, I have taken a great interest in its role as a means for communication in low-literacy communities (and how this might affect the way mobile systems are designed and implemented). Beyond that, I am also keen on how it can help us access other cognitive levels in the complexities of daily experience.

This short video (via BoingBoing) about Milton Glaser highlights how drawing can play a role in looking at things more carefully and encourage a consciousness about what we see. He also suggests that it need not be "accurate" in order to have benefit. To me, this becomes extremely interesting when we are seeking to understand complex issues in our world.



If "drawing is thinking" then we have a broader capacity for understanding these complexities as we move beyond a typical read of them. Statistics and texts offer one dimension of this information. And while this is valid, it is often postured as the most reliable way of understanding complexity (especially when said complexity incorporates unknown cross-cultural or demographic details). Visualizing this information seems to allow for a broader read and allows for new possibilities to interpret what we see. When we are dealing with complex issues, like those I witnessed in Rwanda, I believe that we need other ways of seeing if we are to find ways of addressing new solutions.

Could drawing help us show this information in a more accessible way? Could this activity make something like the MDGs more understandable to those who are being evaluated by their success or failure? I don't presume to have all the answers but I can see that there is room to expand:

The impact of communication can be jeopardized by not having accurate information about the needs of the counterparts and by the reliability of available tools. Experience in monitoring and evaluating the impact of communication initiatives is comparatively weak, leading to the re-use of formats and campaigns regardless of their effectiveness in improving conditions of marginalized groups. Paola Pagliani, The MDGs as a Communication Tool for Development

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