Of all the sessions I attended at SXSW Interactive Festival this year, there was no other session that made me feel quite like the one presented by Von Glitschka, “Drawing Conclusions: Why Designers Should Draw.” Experiencing feelings of guilt and shrinking in my chair are good descriptors. I’m a software Designer, you see. Von made it his mission to convince his audience that drawing improves design and enables a designer to create smarter. He succeeded. He also convicted me when he threw out terms like, “creatively lazy”, “computer as a crutch,” and “you’ve become a ‘tooler’”. He directly said, “You can’t call yourself a designer if you can’t draw.” You know how sometimes when you sit in church and, out of your own guilt, you think the preacher is talking directly to you and about you? Well, that’s how I felt at Von’s session that hour.
I would argue, though, that drawing is not just for designers. Everyone should draw because everyone needs to be creative in some way. Are you trying to find a creative solution to what market segment your sales department needs to focus on next, or do you need a, “think-outside-the-box” solution to target your nonprofit donors? Before you jump to conclusions, draw what that could look like! Von put it so well when he said that drawing is a universal communicator. It’s part of human instinct. As a child (think back to your kindergarten years), when you were given a box of crayons, you drew. It doesn’t matter where you live, what culture you grew up in, or what language you speak; drawing bridges the gap when words fall short.
Looking instead of creating. If you work in an environment that is not deadline-driven, I envy you. Most of us don’t always have the time to use the best methods to produce our best work. Often times, though, we use that as an excuse to skip the creative process and march too quickly down the path of least creative resistance, as Von puts it. He states that this path puts us closer (dangerously closer) to having a bigger industry problem like copyright infringement. When you avoid drawing because you know it will take more time to pull it off well, you move out of creating and move into looking for solutions. Remember that we are to be great, not shallow, thinkers. It’s no wonder why over the last 20 years the creative process has declined while copyright infringement has inclined. Von reported that, over the last five years, his work has been infringed upon over 200 times (maybe more he says), and around 20 of those situations required him to get a copyright lawyer. He states that every single one happened because designers went looking for a solution rather than creating it themselves.
But I can’t draw like Picasso. It doesn’t matter if you can’t produce life-like portrait pencil drawings or Japanese cartoon drawings. Von likened “drawing” to terms like, “doodling” or “sketching.” Drawing does not have to be complex; it can be as simple as drawing stick figures. If you’re someone like me who does not make it a routine habit to draw, then it can be frightening when challenged to come up with a visual solution at work. We have to kill this fear because it kills our creativity. I equate this fear as kryptonite to creativity. We need to think back to our kindergarten years (how easy and fun it was) the next time we’re faced with the temptation to think we need to live up to Picasso.
Grace Francisco
Design Analyst
Abila blog 