Drawing should be a fundamental part of all design

In response to your illustration feature (DW 12 September) many design disciplines are drawing-based.

Product design, interior design and architecture each have a sketch language that is integral to its process. However, drawing has never really been a fundamental part of interactive media design. And many media-based projects suffer as a result.

Because of the absence of a universally understood sketch language, new media projects lack the decision-making transparency that is a natural part of other design processes. The overwhelming tendency to jump from idea to screen unnecessarily shifts attention away from functionality and focuses almost exclusively on finished form.

I’ve long felt that the lack of a drawing ethos in digital media undermines the potential of many of these projects.

Introducing drawing in the process, especially at the earliest stages when designing interface functionality, allows for faster, more confident decision-making.

Drawing provides visibility of ideas without setting them in the concrete of pixels and HTML.

You can’t design what you can’t define. If you want to know if an idea has any merit at all, draw it.

Steve Potts

Head of creative

Rubus

London W1

steve.potts@rubus.com

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