Selfish. That’s right. Sketching for an audience of none other than oneself I’ve noticed to be really elevating and empowering. Ideas are represented as messy chicken scratches along side each other which no one but the original designer understands. Ideas are not bounded with a border and are very close to being without any structure. In this way, ideas are also offloaded onto a piece of paper more rapidly as they are formed in the mind. At least I find, that not having to worry about the communicative value of these infant ideas results in more speedy exploration. For myself, sketching in this manner is also a way of embracing uncertainty which gives more opportunity for questions to rise. Looking back through some of my own work, I’ve noticed that often with these messy selfish sketches I sometimes record such emergent uncertainties. Each time a question pops up in my mind, I draw it as question mark inside of circle right on the page. These new considerations are later tackled in future revisions or more refined sketches such as visible here.

Visible through this example, perhaps the importance of communication in sketching is emphasized. At times, yes, it is important to share and communicate your ideas with others. That’s where structure and clarity comes in to aid. At other times however, it is also important to set proper conditions to allow communication to happen between just you and yourself. That’s where more free form and unstructured representations such as these might be more useful. I’d say that making room in a design process for sketches which can communicate in these two distinct ways, is equally important.

Credits: Jakub Linowski

Tags: annotation, linowski, sketch
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