Reading for ideas

Designers are visual thinkers who typically generate, develop and communicate ideas with the help of analogue and digital tools, from freehand sketches and words to sketch modelling and computing. But ideas also come out of reading books (fiction, non-fiction, and poetry). And so reading texts, and illustrations that may go with texts, becomes a form of exploration, of ideas, places and people that opens up new opportunities for designers. Reading, then, not only help designers generate new ideas but also develop and communicate ideas as narratives.