Drawing in the Design Process

Characterising Industrial and Educational Practice

Pamela Schenk

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781783206797
• eBook ISBN: 9781783206810
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

In the early days of the digital revolution in graphic design, many designers and teachers of design were convinced that the era of drawing on paper was over – that there would soon no longer be a place for craft-based drawing at any stage of the design process.

 

It soon became apparent, however, that technological progress had not obviated the inherent value of drawing, and that, in fact, it opened up new avenues for convergent and hybrid drawing practices. This book traces the evolution of design-based drawing through analysis of a series of research projects from the 1980s to recent years that have sought to characterize the changing practices of design within various industries. Built on more than three hundred interviews with designers, academics and design students, and an exhaustive analysis of thousands of drawings, it aims to generate discussion around historical and contemporary models of the design process.
 

Part I

Context and Conduct of the Long-Term Study

Chapter One

Context of the Long-Term Study – Theoretical Framework

Introduction to the long-term study

It was a professional interest in the teaching of drawing to design students, particularly to graphic design students, that initially led to the undertaking of this investigation. In the mid-1980s the drawing curriculum and drawing tuition for many design students was typically based on various long-established teaching methods centred largely on observational drawing and experimentation with drawing media and techniques. Informed by custom and practice within art and design faculties, drawing studies were generally referenced on fine art-based texts. However, the inappropriateness of this system for design students had become apparent for two particular reasons. Firstly, progress in drawing ability did not always seem to improve design ability or creative thinking. Secondly, students continued to express anxiety about their mastery of drawing, particularly when they returned to college from industrial placements. They claimed that they felt unable to draw quickly enough and were not able to express their ideas well, even that they felt limited in the design concepts that they were able to develop because they were constrained by limited competence in drawing. Students from across the spectrum of design ability would express such concerns about their capacity to use drawing effectively.

Therefore, an investigation was begun based on two linked projects; one, a study of educational practice, specifically the place of drawing on the graphic design curriculum and, the other, a study of industry-based practice, namely an investigation of the role of drawing in the graphic design process in the commercial environment. However, it soon became apparent that relatively little systematic investigation of the role of drawing in the practice of graphic design had been conducted, and that the graphic design process itself had not been subject to the same level of in-depth scrutiny as some other design disciplines. Since one of the main motivations for the initial research programme was to ensure that graphic design students would become competent in the uses of drawing required by industry, it was decided that a detailed investigation of industrial practice was first required, and that this in itself would make a significant contribution to knowledge. Therefore, the relative importance given to the two areas of investigation was reversed, with the investigation relating to industry taking precedence, while still maintaining an interest in the implications for specialist education. This dual focus and cross-referencing between industry and education remained a feature of the later phases of what became a long-term study conducted over a 30-year timespan.

As indicated above, when contemporary textbooks and manuals about graphic design were consulted at the outset of the research programme, they were found to be essentially instructional in regard to the use of drawing, and they provided little of the analysis and reflection contained in some of the texts relating to other design disciplines, for example architecture. While instruction may sometimes have been given on specific drawing techniques, e.g. for specification and artwork, little consideration was given to the role of drawing in creative thinking and communication. Skill sets that were specific to graphic design, such as typography and print production methods, received most attention, thereby implying that the acquisition of drawing ability was not considered to be as important. For example, Dalley (1980) gives explicit instruction on techniques for preparing artwork, but does not deal with the problems of visualizing ideas. While some authors focused attention on exploring basic design concepts, the rough, free, drawing that is invariably used was neither illustrated nor described (Mulvey 1969; Hofmann 1973). Generally, it was only among descriptions of drawing activities intended for the advertising profession that any account of visualizing skills could be found (Ballinger 1956; Baker 1959). Even there, with few exceptions, for example the depiction of the use of drawing for planning layouts (Donahue 1978), presentation, specification and production techniques tended to be the main uses of the drawing exemplified. Thus, although many of these publications gave a clear indication of the tasks that a graphic designer performed in the development of design solutions, they either paid cursory attention to the use of drawing, or they staged a rather inaccurate depiction of its use. Descriptions of the graphic designer’s role were defined by a linear model of the design process. However, in only a few sources were descriptions given of distinct types of drawing, and these distinct types were rarely considered in detail (Ballinger 1956; Baker 1959; Cabibi 1973: 99).

However, there was one exceptional book, published in 1960 and not widely available by the 1980s, that proved to be most influential in helping to define the present inquiry. In Over My Shoulder, Abram Games (1960: 8) wrote:

For many years I have made a practice of keeping all progressive sketches which go to the making of a final design. Occasionally they leave their portfolio for an airing at lectures, but mostly remain hidden from view like the bulk of an iceberg, while the final design, like the peak, is displayed for all to see.

It was an investigation into this kind of drawing activity, largely hidden from public view in the 1980s, that became the topic of the first research project in the long-term study, and it has remained the crux of the investigation since then.

Furthermore, by extending the research to sources relating to other disciplines, most notably architecture and industrial design, a theoretical basis for the early study was established and key influences were identified. It became evident early on that the nature of the design process would form one of the main areas of investigation, and various historical and contemporary models were therefore explored. The influence of the particular design specialization on the design process was also identified as being significant early in the study, and so references specifically relating to the graphic design process were sought out, although these were almost always more like instruction manuals than theoretical treatises. In addition, the role of drawing in creative thinking was also identified as being an important line of enquiry and the complexity of this role was apparent from the extensive literature relating to the nature of creative processes, visual languages, analogy and visual literacy, etc. Finally, the nature of drawing competence and how it supported design activity were also investigated. The development of this competence could then be explored in terms of formal specialist educational provision, and through an individual designer’s professional experience and personal effort. These three diverse and complex areas of reference formed the theoretical underpinning of not only the first phase but also later phases of the study and, as such, may be regarded as the long-term research themes. In summary, they comprise: the role of drawing in the design process, the function of drawing in creative thinking, and the nature and development of drawing competence.

When the first phase of the investigation began, the literature specifically relating to the role of drawing in the graphic design process was extremely limited, whereas there were numerous publications relating to drawing in artistic practice and in design practice in other disciplines, as well as a vast literature on various forms of drawing activity and the development of drawing competence. The years following the end of the first phase of the study saw a considerable increase in both design-related and drawing-related research for reasons such as the early development of digital drawing systems in the 1990s that necessitated careful scrutiny of traditional methods to improve effectiveness. Moreover, as designers began to work more extensively within the digital environment, the full potential of the new media was subject to systematic exploration and to comparison with traditional methods. In more recent years, a major revival of interest has occurred in both designerly and artistic drawing processes, due to the opportunities offered by new advances in both hardware (e.g. touch-screen technology) and software, coupled with, at times, a reaction against the ubiquitous use of digital systems.

An outline is provided below of various historical models of the design process (with particular reference to the drawing activity employed therein), the role of drawing in creative thinking and the nature of drawing competence, as generally perceived at the commencement of the long-term study, and then how such perceptions developed and changed during the 30-year course of the study. This provides the theoretical background for the research conducted, and also gives a basis for a discussion and evaluation of the results obtained, leading ultimately to the development of a taxonomy of drawing in design and new models of drawing in the design process and in curriculum development.

The design process

Jones (1979: 22) describes the evolution of design processes from the activities of ‘craftsmen responding to the trials and errors of practical necessity’ to ‘design by drawing’, a development that permitted a jump in scale of work produced and led to the division of labour where more than one operative could be involved in the manufacture of large complex items through instructions supplied in drawings. Lawson (1983: 17) describes the ‘professional specialized designer producing drawings from which others build’ as such a stable and familiar image that we now regard this process as the traditional form of design, and he then explains how a major weakness in this traditional system of design by drawing is that problems not visually apparent tend not to come to the designer’s attention. In the early 1960s, a systematic analysis of design processes, intended to bring about improvements in design methods, was undertaken. Cross [N] (1984: ix) summarizes the broad chronological development of this design methods movement as progressing from the ‘development of systematic procedures for the overall management of the design process, and of systematic techniques to be used within such a process’, to an attempt to understand the apparent complexity and ‘ill-structuredness of design problems’ through investigations of designer behaviour or, as Darke (1979: 37) succinctly describes it, by ‘asking designers to recall their own processes’. During the 1970s a number of scholars, for example Hillier, Musgrove and O’Sullivan (1972: 247), and Broadbent (1973), offered profound re-statements of the nature of design, and encouraged a freeing of design methodology from its adherence to the ideology of science. In an explanation of how his own thoughts about design methods changed, Jones (1977: 56) indicated his belief that generally ‘design is to do with uncertainty’.

As Kneller (1965) pointed out, it had been widely held that the creative process has four recognizable phases, generally known as preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. The early models devised to represent the design process initially contained three essential stages of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. These can be described more simply as ‘breaking the problem into pieces’, ‘putting the pieces together in a new way’ and ‘testing to discover the consequences of putting the new arrangement into practice’ (Jones 1980: 63), or, in the words of Lawson (1983: 27), ‘analysis is the ordering and structuring of the problem’, ‘synthesis is the generating of solutions’ and evaluation is the appraisal ‘of suggested solutions against the objectives identified in the analysis phases.’ As thinking about the design process developed, researchers recognizing its complexity realized that the development of a new model for the design process was required.

Kneller (1965) further added ‘first insight’, that is to say ‘the apprehension of an idea to be realised or a problem to be solved’, to the four stages of the creative processes he had identified, and Hillier, Musgrove and O’Sullivan (1972: 253) provided the paradigmatic shift of approach that supplied a model for the re-definition of design processes, replacing the analysis – synthesis model with one of conjecture – analysis. This model better recognized the designerly approach of ‘prestructuring problems either by a knowledge of solution types or by a knowledge of the latencies of the instrumental set in relation to solution types’. Here, ‘instrumental set’ refers to both the techniques and potential forms of design solutions available to the designer within his or her discipline. Lawson (1979: 212) and Darke (1979: 38) found that both in controlled experiments, and from research based on interviews with architects, there was a tendency for designers to structure design problems by exploring aspects of possible solutions, rather than by deferring creative interaction until analysis had been systematically completed. This linking of knowledge about their discipline with the experience that permits the foreshadowing of viable design solutions can be seen as the means by which design problems are initially made tractable, and are then approached through a process of proposing and then analysing possible solutions. Furthermore, as Hillier and co-workers pointed out, ‘a vast variety of design decisions cannot be taken […] before the solution in principle is known. […] Conjecture and problem specification thus proceed side-by-side rather than in sequence’ (Hillier, Musgrove and O’Sullivan 1972: 257). Darke has elaborated on this ‘conjecture – analysis’ model and suggests including the notion of a ‘primary generator’ to describe a particular stage in the design process that precedes a conjecture, namely a way into the problem or, in other words, a designer-imposed constraint that forms in response to particular aspects of the problem and prompts the specific conjecture for possible solutions. In describing a piece of research based on the protocol analysis of architects, Schon (1988: 183) asks how else ‘are we to account for the cumulative generality of design knowledge and for the designer’s capacity to generate new understandings in response to the uniqueness of a particular design situation?’ In a later study, Garner (1999: 41) refers to the development of this theoretical model as invoking a strategy that involves ‘solution conjecture’ as a means of further comprehending the nature of the problem, concluding that in innovation, in creativity and even in discovery, preparation plays an important role.

This phenomenon of pre-structuring design problems through a solution-led design process was observed during the first phase of the study when it was confirmed that many graphic designers relied on their own memory of previous design solutions in order to find a way into a design project. Again, it was found that some designers prepared for ideation by exploring a number of visual sources, and this importance of actively seeking inspiration from visual references has also been recognized by other researchers. Such an iterative relationship with source material, be it from memory or visual reference material, where the designer observes and ponders while new ideas emerge, is reminiscent of the systematic observations of architects’ working practice by Schon and Wiggins (1992: 142) who describe designing as a kind of conversation with the materials of a design solution. As Petre, Sharp and Johnson (2006: 189) found in their investigation of knitwear design, designers incorporate elements or ideas from sources by using various strategies, such as selection, adaptation or transformation, and they further demonstrate that there ‘is evidence that designers use and make reference to known solutions, that they draw on a repertoire developed through experience and exposure to other sources’.

In practice, it was found that a much more detailed model of the design process was actually required to more fully represent the role of drawing (Schenk 1991: 180), and Oxman (2006: 240) later summarized such developments thus:

Early design models attempted to symbolically represent design as a staged linear cyclical process. Gradually this process representation became more particularized taxonomically in order to identify and name the sub-stages and sub-tasks of the design process.

Goldschmidt and Tatsa (2005: 605) confirm that links among ideas, at a very small scale, are of great importance in the cognitive processes involved in searching for successful solutions to design problems. Linkography, a method of analysis of these links between critical ideas in the design process, was further developed by Goldschmidt (2014) in an attempt to clarify the design process by showing how designers think, generate ideas, put them to the test and combine them into something meaningful.

The progressive introduction of digital technology over the three decades since the beginning of the long-term study has led to increased complexity and variation in design processes, but similarities may be recognized in more recent theoretical models of the design process. This is particularly the case with regard to the operational models that have emerged, and their identification of sequential steps or procedures. For example, linear, staged development has been identified in digital design by Newman and Landay (2000: 264) in their study of practices in web design, and they have identified four main phases in the design process of a website, namely ‘discovery, design exploration, design refinement and production’. According to Staples (2001: 8), the design process is a sequence of steps taken to give form to material, although design processes are ‘wide ranging, allied with particular professional practices, cognitive predispositions, and resource considerations’. Albeit broadly similar, the order and nature of these steps or procedures have been defined by researchers and practitioners in various ways. For Oxman (2006: 240), design as a process may be characterized by three stages, namely Reception (perception), Reflection (interpretation) and Reaction (transformation), whereas Noble and Bestley (2005: 33) identify four stages in a designer’s work, i.e. Definition, Divergence, Transformation and Convergence, the latter being a term adopted for final amendment and design decisions. Amy (2011) on his website ‘Promo-design’ provides five stages: Research (strategy or feasibility), Design concepts, Detailed design development, Implementation and Supervision of production. Aspelund (2006: xiv) gives seven stages, namely Inspiration, Identification, Conceptualisation, Exploration/Refinement, Definition/Modelling, Communication and Production.

Evidently, specific disciplines and individual designers place different emphasis on particular stages and interpret them rather differently. For example, Amy’s definition ‘Research (strategy or feasibility)’ gives the early stages of design an analytical emphasis, whereas Aspelund’s use of the term ‘Inspiratio’, although remaining descriptive of a preparatory exercise, is indicative of seeking sources for a more individualistic or personal interpretation. It is clear that sources of inspiration play a particularly important role in the fashion design process, both in defining the broad context for new collections and in informing the creation of individual designs (Eckert and Stacey 2000: 523). Again, the procedures involved in the development and synthesis of design solutions, for example, are treated differently by designers in different disciplines. For Kolko (2010: 19), who worked with product designers, synthesis is an ‘abductive’ sense-making process. In contrast, to Collette (2010: 13), a tapestry designer, it is a more intuitive, tacit form of development ‘where synthesis takes place between the drawn line and the woven structure’. This experiential form of description of the shifts in emphasis in the design process is typical of designers who are themselves engaged in the process of making. For example, when describing the link between ideation and synthesis, Jackson (2008: 14) describes her practice when ‘often gestures or marks are made quickly and spontaneously at the cartoon stage, then slowed down to a glacial speed while being made part of the tapestry surface’.

However, in contrast to linear representations, it has come to be generally accepted that the design process is broadly iterative in nature. For Zimmerman (2003: 176), iterative design is a design method based on a ‘cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analysing, and refining a work in progress’. Nevertheless, based on their findings from an activity theory-focused case study of graphic designers, Tan and Melles (2010: 473) indicate that two different types of activity occurre...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I – Context and Conduct of the Long-Term Study
• Part II – Phases of the Long-Term Study
• Part III – Characterization and Generalization
• References
• Appendices
• Index
• Back Cover