I continue to sketch ideas, either directly on my Moleskin notebook, or on the iPad, using Paper 53
Thumbnail sketching during a recent creative workshop with the ORACLE design team
We all know that, sadly, that handwritten postcard that your friend sent you from Galapagos with the “Wish you were here” scribbled on it, has virtually disappeared, the way of the Concorde, the vinyl record, and the typewriter.
Today you get an email with two videos of your friend roaming amid giant turtles in Galapalogos, , with a photo gallery that would impress a LIFE Magazine editor of another era.
We don't see much handwritten anything these days.
IN fact, only recently I realized that, while I could recognize my children's handwriting clearly (all those Love you, Dad notes that were so precious, that we would stick on the refrigerator door), I can't say the same for my grandkids. I have no clue as to how their calligraphic skills go. Instead, I get tons of text messages and sometimes emails from them. The personal message in an impersonal medium.
I also confess that I don't write as many personalized, handwritten notes as I used to, although, as a member of my generation (yes, I am an old Babyboomer), I still put handwritten notes in my diary, and I do use pencil and paper or at least electronic pencil and my iPad to sketch ideas.
Now a report comes out lamenting the fact that calligraphy has lost importance, and emphasizing that:
“Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.
“When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain.
When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write: the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex.
This is a message I will definitely pass to my children so that they will emphasize handwritten activities with my grandkids.
And I am happy that this semester, at Columbia University School of Journalism I required that students first tackle a design concept via hand drawn sketches.
Also, I must note, that last week while conducting a one day workshop with the creative team of ORACLE, the final concepts were all shown via handwritten sketches.
Glad to see that even in the high tech empire of ORACLE, with those 6 turquoise towers of all things digital, ideas were captured in the most classic way.
There is something magical about the interaction of the brain, the hand and paper.
My good friend J Ford Huffman, an editor and artist, agrees. He sent me a link to the article quoted here and wrote:
Our thumbnail sketching is validated!
Indeed, J Ford. Let's keep those thumbnail sketches coming.