KELLEY BOZARTH, PAMELA STEINER • CHICAGO

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The goal, rudimentary and basic as it might seem, is to reintroduce sketching, doodling, and drawing-by-hand into our everyday practice here at Perkins+Will.

BACKGROUND

Sketching and drawing aren’t anything new to our field of design, and yet there’s been a growing resurgence in reintroducing work by hand into architecture and design. In our technology-driven and competitive recession era, finding time to practice “the craft” in the most primary form isn’t easy, But the number of individuals striving for the revival of the pencil + paper continues to grow.

Books like Timothy O’Donnell’s “Sketchbook : Conceptual Drawings from the World’s Most Influential Designers,” and Will Jones’, “Architects’ Sketchbooks,” give insight to the notion that some of today’s masterpieces still come from those raw moments of pure thought and creativity. However, aside from choice representations from the occasional “star-chitect,” those unstructured moments of thought and exploration continue to be shoved aside by speed-of-light software.

Giving credit and weight to the romance of throw-back design, countless articles, books, videos and sketchUmentaries continue to prove both the value within creative industries and a visual language as a resource. Many universities today have begun to eliminate classic figure drawing from their curriculums, relying completely on digital drawing. Of schools holding to a foundation learning of physically creating work, their graduates enter the workforce to find that the exploration & sketching phases of projects have been lost.

Drawing is more than a tool - it’s a skill - a way of seeing and expressing. An integral part of the design process, drawing communicates our stories, ideas, and intentions. Adrian Shaughnessy says it perfectly when he describes our relationship with computer-aided-design. He says, “Our focus has narrowed - we avoid anything that can’t be done on the computer. The screen dictates our relationship to our work - it dictates how our work looks.” Our work is losing the human touch, emotion, and spontaneity that comes with the free-flowing relationship we used to have with our sketchbooks.

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PHASE IINVESTIGATION + RESEARCH

What better way to address a problem than to understand the cause? Refusing to let the “Doodle Revolution” stop with a trend, how do we infuse it into our routine and blend it as a precursor to refined and sophisticated software? How do we create a comfortable environment for people who sketch and those who don’t (yet)?

SURVEY OUR COLLEAGUES AND PEERS

Our first step is to interview - with a very brief and painless survey - our peers and coworkers. Who sketches? When? Who doesn’t? Why? Knowing more about the roadblocks between our creative processes and those moments of pure inspiration, maybe we can find ways to overcome them.

VISUAL SURVEY

How can you gather information about what we do visually during the workday without seeing it? We’d like to distribute 20 sketchbooks, to all types of designers at P+E. Principals, senior designers, project designers, interns, and to those who have shown an interest in hand-drawing, as well as to a random spattering peers, then collect the results.

RESEARCH

We’d like to take some time to continue our study of sketching and visual language as it applies to architects and designers. “Strategic doodling” has already gained quite a bit of merit and praise, across multiple industries and the effort has already begun : what’s working? What isn’t? What other firms have recognized this issue, and what are they doing about it? What’s been the story of their success?

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PHASE II EXHIBITION + DIALOGUE

Both formally and casually, recognizing our efforts in the world of visualization can only help. Internally, we’d love to organize a form of practice. Just like any other skill, sketching and drawing feel foreign without regular activity, but “just like riding a bicycle,” it doesn’t take much to bring it back, and become secondhand.

EXHIBIT

Showing-off the skills and achievements of our senior designers as well as more junior level staff would help set the stage for process work to hold its weight and value here. Combining these efforts across a few other offices would help advance our attempts at working seamlessly together, learning the strengths present outside of our home base.

DIALOGUE

We’d like to informally open this dialogue to peers and coworkers. Looking at events like the Ride to Market Fundraiser for Climate Cycle, and the 5for1 Joplin Poster Competition + Fundraiser, we realize that branding an event and providing energetic, group activities helps get attention and build interest. We’d like to propose an event - be it a “drink and draw” format or field trips that focus primarily on honing sketch skills vs. drawing buildings, spaces or graphics.

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PHASE IIIINNOVATION INCUBATION

Gathering research and continuing studies will form the foundation of our main goal : innovating resources to help us bridge the gap between digital and analog. While we’re assuming these deliverables will take-shape throughout our exploration, we’ve pinpointed two nodes of focus we’d like to develop:

PROTOTYPING A SKETCHBOOK

Currently everyone here at Perkins+Will has access to three types of notepads / sketchbooks / journals:

1. Gridded notebooks Tear-away pages 8.5” x 11”2. Lined chip-board journals Minimal page-count Spiral-bound; left side 5.25” x 7.125”3. Blank heavyweight sketchbooks Spiral-bound; left side By request only 6” x 9”

Stepping back from the budget constraints and market demands faced by many designers today, we’d like to prototype a new tool that incorporates all possible demands : the need for 8.5” x 11” size sheets easy to file, blank paper space to draw freely, a grid for scaled sketches, and lines for traditional note-taking.

SKETCH-GUIDES

As the final component to our innovation, we’d like the pursue two resources to hand drawing - a video guide highlighting the process work of a few key projects, and a physical hand-out highlighting examples in a few key areas:

• Examples of visual note-taking• How-to’s of architectural renderings• Tricks to merging digital and physical work• Best practices and examples from peers

and colleagues

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• Build on initial and on-going research• Develop survey questions• Work with Perkins+Will IT to develop Ideaspace

survey• Identify colleagues & peers to participate in visual

survey

• Issue all surveys• Research on-going• Collect survey data from Ideaspace survey• Check-in with visual survey participants

• Synthesis research into deliverables

• Collect data from visual survey• Finalization & distribution of prototype/deliverables

prior to event

• Culminating participatory event with opportunity to brainstorm ideas for continuation of idea.

$2.95 / eaQuantity TBD

$3.95 / eaQuantity TBD

TBD

BUDGET

TIME

40 hours paid time(See schedule for break-down)

All costs are anticipated / estimated at this time. Potential for increase or decrease subject to availability of funds.

80 hrs total(2 people)

SCHEDULE

NOVEMBER DESCRIPTION COST

DECEMBER

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

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RELEVANCE TO PERKINS+WILL

Perkins+Will commits to “use technology and tools to improve communication, collaboration, and workflow.” While fully aware of the technological advances that’ve given us the ability to design in an ever more efficient manner - this idea weighs heavily on the idea that we have room to grow in terms of visual communication.

By improving the way we communicate with ourselves, with one another, as well as with clients, we’re opening the door to increased collaboration and efficiency. Scott Belsky, CEO of Behance, was quoted as saying, “Our creativity and our ideas are not just an opportunity, but a responsibility.” Perkins+Will, Perkins+Will, known for taking the responsibilities of design very seriously, is the perfect setting to house a trend that does nothing but promote the creativity and talent that drove all of us into this creative business in the first place.

It was drawing and doodling as students that made us fall in love with design, and State of Sketch, at it’s core, attempts to reunite us with that slower, more deliberate and tactile form of creative thinking.

WHO ARE WE?

We are two level II Branded Environments designers who love trendspotting, research, and drawing. Neither of us is a published illustrator, nor do we have degrees in fine art. We do, however, have the unique perspective of young designers who’ve been out of school long enough to see what “the real world” is really like, but not long enough to forget some of the tricks of the trade.

We are dedicated to design the way it should be done, and committed to bringing a piece of ourselves into this fast-paced environment of the world’s leading designers.

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