Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Sketcherly ways of designing

Sketching out ideas, or conceptual sketching, embodies both active and reflective activities of a rational, intuitive or sensing nature that reveal insights into the processes of design. This suggests that conceptual sketching is much more than mark making on paper, from verbal and non-verbal modes to two- and three- dimensional gestural ways of expressing ideas in physical or virtual space. Sketching by other means, then, broadens the notion of sketching well beyond the traditional pencil sketch. This I call sketcherly ways of designing.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Idein

Plato, Shakespeare and Goethe, to name but a few, assigned significant value to dreams. And Strindberg (1849-1912), the writer, playwright and painter, famously said: 'I dream - therefore I am'. But dreams suspend wilful reality. We cannot tell the full meaning of dreams until their reflections materialise before the objective sense. And so with ideas - they have to be externalised. Indeed, I ideate - therefore I am!