The
sketch can be free, but the remit tight. John Wood investigates
drawing as a tool in designers' work.
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Stills
from Citroën Picasso TV ad campaign; courtesy
Leo Burnett
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Rhetoric
and image making
Why
do car designers, architects and interior designers spend
so much time and money on 'fly-through' graphic presentations?
Probably because this is a new form of sales rhetoric that
clients find hard to resist. In an accelerating professional
world that is driven by results and outcomes, total control
and meticulous planning are essential prerequisites to a successful
career. In the high-speed world of deadlines you might expect,
therefore, that performance and results would be the dominant
factors in everything. This is not always so. We also believe
in individual freedom, intuition, and a 'touchy-feely' lifestyle.
Good design must inspire understanding that can be imagined
in at least four dimensions. In this sense, design is a kind
of nonbinary decision-making that takes place in the complex
world of space, time, form, and meaning. Designers are in
a difficult position. On the one hand they must provide creative
innovation. Without it, the client might dispense with the
their services. On the other hand, they must deliver predictable
result by an agreed time and place in the future. This demonstrates
the human conflict between improvisation and planning that
is visible in the rhetoric of drawing.
The
rhetoric of the unready
In
a power-oriented world, the combination of freedom and self-expression
is a potent force that continues to attract us. We may remember
that John Locke's 18th century notions of the individual citizen
spawned the image of today's self-defined and wilful consumer.
What would such a drawing look like? We may see its expression
in Jackson Pollock's action-painting performances, because
they were a high-energy version of Klee's perambulatory line-making.
They also have a peculiarly male quality, similar to the sketches
that some famous designers do. When quick freehand drawing
is used in design, we may be reminded of the sinuous intensity
of Leonardo da Vinci, or the more muscular decisiveness of
Pablo Picasso. Semiotically, frenetic gestures may suggest
high energy and a decisively creative approach. This makes
a link between mastery and freedom. It is an important dimension
that continues to inform the rhetoric of design drawing. We
can find it in the casual 'back of an envelope' style that
we enjoy in freehand sketches by Issigonis, Starck, and virtually
all of the fashion designers. We can also find it in the playful
propositions of Ron Arad or the beguiling 'blobs' of Will
Alsop.
A current TV advertisement for Citroën cars shows their
Picasso model being sprayed by robotic workers on the production
line. While nobody is looking, one of the automata starts
to doodle freehand lines on a car. As though by magic, sinuous
black lines start to appear on the car's roof. The effect
is beguiling. It reminds us of the famous film of Picasso
in which he improvises onto a sheet of glass facing the camera.
In the advert we know, subliminally, that the robot is merely
following the choreography of vector-based algorithms. This
may remind us of the western systems of perspective that we
may find, say, in Dürer, and that seem to reduce choice and
freedom. However, the subtext of the advert is that although
the car is merely a pre-programmed product it is also playful
and creative. This epitomises the ideal mode of design drawing
that must appear to be simultaneously predictable and unpredictable,
powerful, yet playful.
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Ron
Arad: Tom Vac, 2000, sketches; courtesy
Ron Arad Studio
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Rational
Perfection + Genius = Desperation
Perhaps
this is because the average 21st-century consumer lives halfway
between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. We have a brain
that was devised in the eighteenth century, and a heart that
started beating somewhere near the start of the nineteenth
century. Although we are increasingly obsessed with programmable
gadgets and automata, we like to see ourselves as individual
geniuses with freedom to play. Herein lies the paradox that
creates a kind of cynical reason. To give ourselves time to
play, we must force ourselves to keep up with the machines
that sustain our busy lives. How can we cope with technology
when it not only seems to draw with more precision, but it
only needs a fraction of the time that we do? If the western
perspective, along with its attendant systems of lenses and
vanishing points had never been devised, freehand drawing
might have given us a very different idea of 'reality'. It
is hard to imagine what society was like before the age of
politicians, spin-doctors, microphones and cameras. Ours is
the age of self-presentation. We expect camera-ready fashion
models and other celebrities to show us how to hold certain
facial expressions in public. Surprisingly, this is seldom
discussed as the ethics of actions versus the ethics of static
appearance.
Dynamic,
action-based referencing
Imagine
that we all spoke in the Hopi North American Indian language.
Hopi is famous for having very few nouns. Everything works
in a continuum of flow. We can speculate that without nouns
there would be little value in inanimate objects, static images,
or relics that are dislocated from their context. Many of
our assumptions may only make sense from within a western
grammar that emphasises individual objects and their separateness.
Most of us in the industrialised world live more by the logic
of categories, rather than by the logic of flow. For us, the
word 'drawing' can mean either the action of mark-making itself
(verb), or the residue of that action (noun). This is what
makes it interesting. In a sense, drawing is the interface
between the static world of materiality and the dynamic world
of action. Seen in a verb-only context, objective drawing
is strange because it suggests that certain parameters are
absolute, and therefore fixed in time. Arguably, it therefore
tends to deny the actual presence of the artist. It is reminiscent
of classical science in using a reference system that is temporally
and/or spatially external to the situated action of drawing.
Arguably, Pythagoras and Euclid both had a strong negative
influence on the status of human judgement. Some have seen
this damage in the drawing of many artists from Piero della
Francesca to Marcel Duchamp. An extreme exponent of this approach
is Descartes, who was responsible for the X-Y grid system
of map-making that is de rigeur in modern military and other
high-technology systems. Arguably, his method leaves hardly
any room for reference to the situated observer, artist, or
to any actual, dynamic subjects that are traced onto the grid.
However, the 'objective' use of numbers is still attractive
to many designers, and can be seen as part of science's rhetorical
claim to certainty and precision.
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Will
Alsop: Peckam Library, concept painting,
1996; courtesy Alsop Architects
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Some
designers use mechanical or digital drawing aids to lay claim
to a timeless and e(x)ternal set of referents, but this may
also conceal a fear of self-exposure. However, there is also
an opposite system of drawing that is based on self-reference.
By the end of the 19th century, the mass media had made art
accessible to ordinary people. The early cinema enabled everyone
to watch artists engaged in the act of drawing, painting,
and making. For example, the mythology of the gifted genius
selling their sketches in bars had become established in the
public imagination. Drawing became a kind of spectator sport
and established a new genre for journalism. It had the effect
of making the situated experience of drawing both conspicuous
and appealing. It is hardly surprising that Klee's infamous
idea of 'taking a line for a walk' retained its fascination
throughout the twentieth century. To a large extent, we may
attribute its perennial popularity to a tireless pursuit for
power as unique individuals. There is no quicker summation
of what it is to be a 21st-century individual than Klee's
proposition. When we pick up the pencil and start the journey,
we instantly know how it feels to be a unique individual with
infinite prerogatives. The high-adrenaline version pioneered
by Pollock has become almost an axiom or proof that confirms
our freedom of (self-)expression and, therefore, our power.
When we take a line for a walk we are, almost literally, in
the driving seat. This fact has not been lost on the persuaders
of corporate culture. The illusion of making a choice when
we are good and ready is a powerful image. It is more
than this. It is a figure run and re-run endlessly via advertisements
that remind us of our limitless and transcendent wisdom when
choosing a particular product.
John
Wood is Programme Co-ordinator, MA Design Futures at Goldsmiths,
University of London.
Article
reproduced from CIRCA 101, Autumn
2002, pp. 36-39.
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