I find that hand drawn is less formal, but more approachable, in its humanistic immediacy. Conceptual sketches amplify the viewers participation with the ideas in the sketch. The audience will likely employ their own imagination and fill in the missing details and arrive at a realistic image in their minds eye. That image is colored with the attributes each viewer has assigned to the gaps in the sketch — the viewer fills in the blanks from within their perspective. If I can then ask for a verbal description of how they have infilled the conceptual I will again have the opportunity to listen visually and assign a yet more refined series of mental images to their spoken description. An aural-to-optical and back-again loop. My sketch is a visual shorthand that triggers completion activities in the imagination of the viewer. The viewers involvement can actually serve to fill in detail and attribute. That participation advances the abstraction onward toward design development.
hal kantner
