Pencils Before Pixels

A Primer in Hand-Generated Sketching

Mark Baskinger

Carnegie Mellon University | mbasking@andrew.cmu.edu

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processes with hand drawing: pencils before pixels. This article will touch upon some of the methods used in the School of Design to present a primer for practicing interaction designers to become better visual thinkers and communicators by employing hand-generated techniques to enrich their creative design processes.

Drawings and sketches can be powerful and persuasive representations of ideas, events, sequences, systems, and objects. As part of a larger collaborative design process, hand drawing can serve as a key method for thinking, reasoning, and exploring opportunities, yet it inherently differs from wire frames and conceptual models. Innately, interaction designers employ a variety of methods for representing ideas and information, both internally in a cognitive sense, and externally in the devices we employ to record, share, and reflect. However, competency in sketching and drawing by hand seems to be diminishing across design disciplines, making it a more highly desired skill in contemporary design practice. In addition, there seems to be an apparent phenomenon of fear when it comes to drawing ideas. For many practicing designers, they have convinced themselves that they can’t draw and thus

position themselves on the periphery of concept generation. The fact is that we all can draw, and there is a misperception that one has to be the Michelangelo of design drawing to be able to communicate visually. As young children, we had no fear of drawing and putting our work out in the public domain, but as adults, we’ve grown extremely self-conscious of our abilities and inabilities and now fear being judged. Gaining competence in drawing is similar to becoming a marathon runner; it can’t happen overnight. But, like running, most of us can already somewhat do it—we just need to devote the time and energy toward building this skill to become truly versed in it. As a drawing instructor in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, my role is to shape students to become better visual communicators and therefore, better visual thinkers. We always start our creative

Envisioning, Recording,
Sharing, and Reflecting
As designers, we enjoy the
journey of discovery, in mak-
ing relationships between
intangible ideas/data and the
formal elements that make an
idea accessible. Initiating the
creative process with hand-
generated sketches to think
through abstract or intangible
ideas in various permutations
can provide a stronger basis
to refine these ideas with
digital images, words, pixels,
and vectors. By starting with
hand-generated “analog” media