“The inventive process” is an iterative process of jotting down ideas in the form of language or graphic drawings and of modifying them, reevaluating them, editing them, and so on, to transform or perfect an initial concept or solution. The result is that of an open-ended exploration towards an unpredictable, yet plausible, outcome; this outcome is informed by the iterative process of both creation and insight restructuring.
To acquire drawing skills is to be able to non-verbally communicate what would otherwise be impossible with the use of language. Drawing, it seems, is a powerful communication tool for sharing/exchanging ideas and can help one develop reasoned concepts and strategies. “One reads off the sketch more information than was invested in its making” (2003:78)
Idea-generation, the author suggests, is the process of reasoning through sketching, or put another way, it is the act of using representational skills to amount to a (or multiple) reasoned solution(s). Representational skills can be verbal/textual or graphic. This paper focuses on “sketching” as a self-generating process and a multidimensional information source. Goldschmidt describes the idea-generation process by comparing both children and designers in their way of drawing and interpreting information.
In “First Scribbles,” the author explains child behavior in sketching assignments as being inherently full of symbolic meaning. For children under the age of 3, drawing consists of a number of scribbled lines (non-representational) and angular curves (intentional and object-specific). When asked to describe their drawings, children will identify angular curves with shapes present in their immediate surrounding; the whole image, however, is without context. For older children, drawing is an object of repetition, what the author calls “preplanned representational drawings”, and which consists of standard object drawing (i.e. house, sun, etc.). When asked to represent new or unknown objects, as in children under the age of 3 the drawings are identified after the task. Hence, children will most likely draw objects that are recorded in their memory and will describe experimental shapes in terms of their immediate desires to… see mother, eat ice cream, play outside, and so forth. Goldschmidt argues that those faculties of “backtalk” (Schon, The Reflective Practitioner; that a sketch talks back or reveals or communicates feedback clues to its author) are used in design to generate new ideas and find new and meaningful directions to explore. (2003:74-78)
Sketching, in this view, then, would be a mixture of both preplanned and post-interpreted space. Goldschmidt identifies two instances in sketching that require consideration: problem space and background skills.
On the one hand, to be able to sketch a drawing that generates new perspectives and unpredictable solutions, first-and-foremost one needs to be a skilled sketcher. And to justify her point, the author admits there being different levels of fluency and different styles or types of sketching skills depending on what field in design one specializes in. Sketching, it seems, is not new. Artists begun study sketches shortly after the advent of the printing press, when paper suddenly came in abundance and were affordable and of good quality. A skilled sketcher is, essentially, one who is able to think, experiment, and innovate; and one’s knowledge will only allow one to sketch what one can, and will hence deviate the intended representation in predictable and sometimes compromising ways.
On the other hand, accidental spatial relationships in a sketch may be a reflection of a problem space which occurs primarily due to limited resources such as the scale at which one is sketching and the proportions that the supporting surface offers. The shape of the support, it is maintained, informs the shape of what is represented.
The author notes that: ‘study sketches were called “pensieri,” meaning “thoughts” in contemporary Italian. Sketches were then […] an aid to thinking and […] their making is thinking itself.’ (2003:80) To sketch, then, is to think. She distinguishes between combinatory and restructural moves in sketching. Unlike the former, restructural moves involve using one’s insight or imagination to create new patterns of meaning: ‘ “restructuring… occurs when expert sketchers are allowed to sketch” ‘ (2003:86); that is, when they are given the flexible space to interpret information, to deviate from the source, to use different layers of information, and to generate multiple directional designs and proposals. Additionally, the author emphasizes the ability to confidently vary from hard-lined drawing to fuzzy sketch works that may enact the process of self-generated concepts.
Finally, Goldschmidt concludes that sketching in design is a dialogical relationship between the designer and his sketch (backtalk); it is the tool whereby design seeks new perspectives of an initial idea and defines new concepts and solutions to a given problem.
Source:
Goldschmidt, Gabriela. “The Backtalk of Self-Generated Sketches.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Design Issues: Volume 19, Number 1 Winter 2003