Pencils have soul, but computers have copy and paste

A designer's primary job is to communicate the intended design to the director, actors, and production team.  The key word is communicate.  Meaning not only do the ideas need to be clear in the mind of the designer, but clear in some more tangible way.  As design is a visual form, this communication needs to be visual as well.  So, in your minds eye picture a 4x8 flat with yellow paint...and know that no one else has the same picture in their mind.  We use drawings, draftings, renderings, and models to communicate what is going on with the design.  However, how those things are made and look are unique to the designer's own style.

I prefer to do things with pencil.  William Moser, one of my design professors, instilled in me the notion that pencils have soul.  This is a pretty abstract concept.  Pencils create minor imperfections in the drawings which can be used to  the designer's advantage.  Smudging can create depth and texture, cross hatching can differentiate surface details.  Also, you can really begin to see what the designer is thinking about in a hand drawn sketch.  You can see moments when they make a decision, as well as when they change their minds.  I personally think better with a pencil in my hand than with a mouse in my hand.  The draw back to pencil work is time, specifically in drafting.  It takes time to copy an image from one plate to another plate.  Lettering and notes take more time, as the writing needs to be legible, clear notes that still have a unique style (my hand lettering is still not quite what I'd like it to be).  So, some software guy some many years ago thought...let's make a computer program to do this: the birth of CAD (computer aided design).  Which doesn't have the same character but is clear and fast (God bless copy and paste...).   I will probably do all the design aspects by hand and the technical aspects by computer for this show.  Sometimes, I find myself limited on time to do all the work by hand.  But like I said earlier, it's about communication.  You must do what is necessary to communicate the ideas.

Now what does all this mean, I'm in drafting/drawing mode for High Fidelity.  I have already gone through six or seven different ground plans (hand drawn and sketched), continuously refining my ideas.  My first few were far to literal for my liking and sense of style.  But, I find it interesting how my ideas kept evolving to abstraction and you can see a real progression and thought process when you look at the whole family of sketches.  This thought process is what I really love about design work! I also think graphite pencil is the right media (as opposed to ink, paint, marker, or color pencil) for High Fidelity as my design will be fairly gray scale monochromatic with a few pops of color.  My design is more about texture, which is what pencils do really, really well.  I can't wait to do some renderings (but I have to finish another project- lighting design for Vinegar Tom @ SLU) before I can get back to the doing a set of graphite renderings...

Well, back to the drawing board (to finish a light plot)!