Place & space for idea realisation

'I think the studio is the place where the images we see in our imagination can be realised by controlling everything, just as a painter does on a canvas with his brush.' Federico Fellini (1920-1993)

The idea of draughtsmanship

For hundreds of years, it was central to the practice of art, that to be an artist, it is essential to learn to draw the human figure. Now, in art schools, life drawing is regarded as unnecessary. And to be a designer?

Ideas communication

Communicating design ideas is much more than presentation skills (packaging). It's about ability to communicate ideas clearly and persuasively (content, structure, and argument), and adapting communication and media to suit the audience.

Tool for starters

Is the entry point to ideation arbitrary or context dependent? In reality, at that point, what ideation tool is being chosen?

Ideation fit

The reporting that Singapore Armed Forces's recruits doing Basic Military Training (BMT) will be armed with a handheld touchscreen device such as an iPad to sharpen their fighting skills raises the question: Should design schools equally equip new students with similar sets to increase their ideation skills?

Taking a line for a dance

Martha Graham's major contribution to the art of dance was her introduction of a technique and a body of work that, far from depending on classical ballet, was remarkably different from it and highly original in its own right.

But while a classically trained dancer can learn the Graham technique quickly, a Graham dancer cannot subsequently acquire a classical technique. Yet the Graham technique has extended the range of movement available for those originally restricted to classical ballet.

By analogy, could it be that the Graham technique is to classical technique what digital drawing is to classical (traditional) drawing?

When the idea becomes a thing

"People call me a conceptual artist, as if the idea was all, but actually what interests me is what happens when the idea becomes a thing. Ideas are by their nature generalisations, something that can be applied to lots of things. But making art is about making particulars, and that particular something can be the generator of a generalisation." Artist Michael Craig-Martin