Visual Thinking for Design

Chapter 8 Creative Meta-seeing

When Michelangelo planned the frescoes for the Sistine Chapel ceiling he did not do it in his head or on the plaster. Instead the initial phases of creative work were done through the medium of thousands of sketches. These ranged from the highly speculative initial sketches to the finished paper designs that his assistants pricked through with black charcoal dust to transfer them to the still wet fresco plaster. Studies of how artists and designers work suggest that although the germ of an idea may often comes in a reverie as a purely cognitive act, the major work of creative design is done through a kind of dialogue with some rapid production medium. Sketches have this function for the visual artist; rough clay ...