To sketch or not to sketch?

That is the question for us in an AI world

Published in

UX Collective

6 min readFeb 18, 2023

I remember sitting anxiously at the table. A design legend was about to appear after their previous meeting back in 2012. His office was well designed, with warm wood furniture and a picturesque canvas of Japanese cedar leaves peering behind a full-length window. Part of the reason why the office could not calm me was because of the reputation of the designer.

Designed by Toshiyuki Kita, the Wink Chair is a permanent collection of the Musuem of Modern Art (MOMA) (Source: Toshiyukikita.com)

Toshiyuki Kita is an established Japanese designer. Known for his ability to blend western and Asian cultures in his designs, Kita has numerous designs to his name, including three in the archives of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). He also acted as an international advisor to a few government bodies. The reason for me being in his office was partly due to his commitment to Singapore’s Design Council, and we were about to review a furniture design I created for a design competition.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Mr. Kita appeared and greeted me warmly. He had just come out of a discussion with a few Italian manufacturers about an exhibition at the upcoming Milan Design Week. We proceeded to talk about my furniture, which was a circular public bench with organic curves. Despite English not being his native language, we were able to understand each other without needing a translator.

As I spoke, I remembered Mr. Kita’s intense concentration. Other than the occasional question, he would intently listen while remaining mostly silent. As I finished explaining my concept, I wondered how much of what I said was naive or trivial to him.

That thought soon dissipated as he picked up a piece of paper and a heavy black fountain pen that he carries in his pocket. He went on to sketch out his reactions with a few strokes without faltering.

Immediately, two elements started appearing in his sketch. His first suggestion was to make the curves more natural. His firm, curvy stroke had a resemblance to that of a sinusoidal wave, which was confirmed by the use of lambda (λ). Secondly, he focused on a small part of the section and drew a rounded fillet. The reason he gave was that the fillet created a subtle softness that invited users to approach the bench. Within an hour, my initial tension was lifted. I was simply amazed by his astute knowledge of form and design sensitivity.

a scanned copy of hand-drawn sketches of the furniture being reviewed. (source: Darren Yeo)

What’s in a sketch that makes the outcome so mysteriously powerful? As kids, we spend hours doodling away our ideas of the world. As we grow older, arithmetic and science take over. The criticisms from our surroundings become more intense, and our sketching ability deteriorates. However, those who persist are able to develop their doodles into beautiful visual representations. Thankfully, those rebels are designers from different fields, but they are armed with a pedagogy of sketching and visualizing ideas. The evidence is found in the notebooks of design pioneers such as Toshiyuki Kita.

Let’s look at another pioneer: Frank Gehry. One of the most progressive architects of his time, Frank Gehry is well known for his sketches. Not to say that he detested digital outputs. In fact, he was one of the early adopters of computer-aided design. Today, they are better known as CAD files and BIM models.

Early digital drawing of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry (source: Architectural Digest)

The following statements provide insight as to why his sketches are so famous:

“Gehry’s sketches behave like lines of force, like musical scores that suggest rhythms and indicate a direction to follow. They are used to acquaint everyone with a very clear cultural journey in the mind of the person producing it, but at the same time, they identify something very different” — Monica Bruzzone in her book “Frank Gehry. Architetture, testimonianze

That difference was a new design narrative that shook the community into stardom. Needless to say, one of Gehry’s most established buildings is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Some economists even describe the museum’s annual €400 million gains as the “Bilbao Effect." No wonder it is being touted as one of the most important architectures of its time.

And yet, how did it begin? With a scribble.

“I think of them as scribbles,” says Gehry. “I don’t think they mean anything to anybody except to me. At the end of the project, we wheel out these little drawings, and they’re uncannily like the finished building.”

As it turns out, the essence of the sketch was eventually built (source: architect elevator)

Some designers may call Gehry’s sketches a series of good fortunes. After all, how many of us can turn a sketch into something novel? As soon as a designer says that, we are destined to fall into a trap. One doesn’t have to look far to see how many other designers, architects, artists, and innovators benefitted from sketching ideas on paper.

So what makes sketching valuable? Perhaps it is the ability to juxtapose two extremely random ideas. Or to help others visualize what they have yet to discover. The problem, however, is our adoption of artificial intelligence as 21st-century designers. Tools like Dall-E or Midjourney create endless images with a few sentences, known as "prompts." Yet, such tools are dangerous as they attempt to either steer away from our original imagination, or jump straight to a higher-fidelity artifact. We may be losing the ability to pick up a pen and paper and doodle freely. We are sticking to what works for our convenience and safety.

Prompting midjourney to come out with Gehry inspired sketches. Have we lost the original sketch curve?

It may sound blatantly obvious that sketching is part of a designer’s approach. It is much harder to apply such ideas in a highly digital environment. Our preference is to skip past the pen and paper exercise, and proceed straight into wireframing and visual design. Some of the excuses we give ourselves are the following:

Time-pressures or speed to execute
Laziness or reluctance to transfer new ideas into components.
Fear of physical drawing, comfort in digital tools that offer precision
Pride; thinking that you have the only answer
Lacking creative energy to produce original work.

And yet, the power of paper and pen is to allow active co-creation with fellow designers, fluid evolution of ideas and capturing the original thinking from the visual mind of the designer

What if sketching is our unique value proposition that sets us apart from the machine? What if we could communicate through sketching without written prompts? When it comes to forming new patterns from abstraction, visual thinking and words are poles apart. Indeed, UX Collective writer Dora Cee discussed two important values derived from sketching: the emergence of new thoughts and ideas, as well as the reinterpretation of existing thoughts to transform and evolve new ones. Hence, our ability to visualize our thoughts accurately could be more important than our ability to think in words.

Early planning phases of the Wink Chair, sketched by Toshiyuki Kita (source: designboom.com)

It is therefore essential that every designer go back to the foundation of sketching. Pick up a pen and paper. Dedicate time to visually articulating your ideas. Link them back to the design challenge. Resist the urge to jump into visual UI design immediately. Refer to heavyweights like Kita, Gehry, and many others as a source of inspiration.

This may be one of the most important core muscles worth strengthening.