Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Design Notebooks

Today, Matt Jadud spoke about Design Notebooks. He shared with us some highlights from his design notebooks from the last several years and explained the different ways he uses them. We learned about different ways to organize our thoughts, but the primary point was that everyone thinks and learns in different ways and the key is to customize your notebook for yourself. Order vs. chaos, sketches vs. outlines, use of color and style are all techniques that work better for some people than others.

As everyone taking Vital Ideation is carrying a design notebook for the course, Matt's talk will prove to be very helpful! The video camera we were going to use to record the talk broke, but an audio recording of this talk will be posted.

1 comment:

Mel said...

I've learned that the type of notebook I'm carrying and the utensil I'm writing with have a direct impact on the things I think while I'm scribbling in it. Grid pages make me lay out my thoughts in more lined-up boxes; I've grown to dislike lined pages since they compel me to write to fit "nice" formatting.

Pencil < ballpoint < pen, for my handwriting style. I write small and fast and sketchy, and the less friction between my writing-nib and my writing-surface, the more free I feel. Having said that, a lousy leaky ballpoint that needs scribbling to draw out the ink several times per page is a great tool for making yourself think more deliberately. Nice for writing poems.

My tiny pocket notebook (much abused) that's the current incarnation of my braindumps actually gets less usage than the far more bulky ones I used to carry; I forget it's there. I'm looking forward to finishing the last few pages so I can get a big blank book and a gel pen that won't leak through the paper.