Practice, Practice, Practice

Digital Practice

Whether accidentally or by design,  I’ve managed to tumble into a paradigm of practice, based on mobility… That is to say that I survived the ‘dark years’ by going lean and acting as a consultant for several firms – sometimes as many as 3 at once.

I discovered a LOT about myself, as anyone would… but aside from the drastic swings in lifestyle and being forced to confront the things that truly mattered in my life (my architecture library, guitar collection, my camera and my tech) one thing about all of that stuck, and stuck solidly.

Design happens everywhere – and with the right tools, can get streamlined to a couple of gizmos and triumph of the will.

Anything that wasn’t purely necessary for existing or generating revenue got digitized. The mother of invention had forced the necessity to let go.

Staying Lean

Any designer who jumps on a plane for a client meeting can tell you that working on presentations on the plane, in coffee shops and hotel rooms happens often. That’s not news.

As a consultant flying all over the United States doing existing documentation for retail development – I was working while constantly on the move.

I know that I’m hardly the first to come to the conclusion that the design profession isn’t the same as it was 10, 5, or even 2 years ago – or that we’re undergoing a tech renaissance… it’s a popular topic of the stacks of magazines that flood my mailbox.

Now anecdotally … I’m of the generation that went thru architecture school under the guies of ‘the computer isn’t to be used in studio’. And (I think) one of the last classes to rely on tech pens, and ink on mylar presentations.

I still 3D modeled my perspectives on my home rig with AutoCAD R14 and printed my backgrounds to trace. Shhhh… don’t tell anyone.

Nowadays, my personal ‘office’ fits in a bag, and that’s true for a lot of people. The contents are:

• A beat-up MacBook pro with upgrades and replacement parts from a couple of vendors. (replacement battery, replacement fans, replacement network card, RAM, SSD)
• iPad Pro with that incredible pencil.
• iPhone.
• 4TB USB drive & Dropbox.
• Add/Subtract the Bosch laser tape for field verification and we’re good to go.

Our tools have evolved well beyond the T-square, couple of triangles and a lettering template. We as designers, whether it be product, process or spatial, have incredible weapons at our disposal – and the steep learning curve to develop them (whether we’re aware of it or not) has much of an influence on final product these days as building code does.

Don’t get me wrong. The romantic nostalgia of piles of trace, sketchbooks filled with observations and explorations still have every bit of allure as they’ve always had, and I still engage in sketching… but the leap for me from napkin sketch to exploring solutions on the screen happens much, much faster for me.

I still have the sketchbooks, drawers full of sharpies, and the ability to use them, but for me, design exploration has changed.

The frustrations that the little kid with a crayon had, while sitting at the dining room table, trying to let out the things in my head… well it lacked one critical component.

The ability to edit the idea without starting over. 

My catch-all for sketching out ideas, taking notes, and just about everything else has become my iPad Pro.

It’s not as romantic and visceral as feeling the bite of a good piece of paper against the nib of a Sharpie but the ability to sketch in layers and export to other platforms or email without the use of a scanner, is a major asset and well worth investing in.

I’ve had my current one for a few years now – and its become a constant companion for everything from watching Netflix while I compose this, to field notes, punch lists, containing most of my digital architectural library, BlueBeam, PlanGrid, and a host of sketching, research and design apps.

I’ll be posting more on this, and sharing tips/techniques.

More on the topic of staying nimble, and my particular approach to project development, coming in the next post…

John