Ideation fitness

In the world of ideation, designers are increasingly employing digital strategies to generate, develop and communicate new ideas. And the designers who seem to achieve the most are those who bring the analogue and digital modes closer together, from casual sketching to computing. In doing so, designers not only want to show what they are capable of doing but also to communicate their level of ideation fitness. To increase their fitness level, they invest in both analogue and digital tool skills that enable them to response to the most challenging design tasks, often at short notice delivering to tight time frames and whether the deadlines are set by project briefs, design competitions or potential clients' enquiries. In fact, ideation workshops, or similar creative activities done on a fairly regular basis becomes ideation fitness excercises whereby designers improve their ideation skills in similar ways to people doing workouts to stay physically and mentally fit. Doodling, on paper or tablet or sketch modelling, then, are to ideation what squats or push-ups are to fitness.