Visualisation is the Topic of Research

The role of visualisation in design processes is the topic of research in two Ph.D. projects at, respectively, Designskolen Kolding and The Danish Design School. The two Ph.D. projects examine how we should understand designers’ drawing skills and the role of these skills.

 
By Anne Katrine Gøtzsche Gelting

The concept of design is currently being expanded and stretched in all directions, and the educational programmes are developing. There is an emphasis on articulating design competencies through language and words. In this context it is interesting to note that designers’ traditional, tacit knowledge about drawing and visualisation is currently the topic of research. Perhaps there is a link between the research and the ongoing “refocusing” on design competencies. Ph.D. scholar, MA (research degree) Malene Leerberg believes there is a link. 

MA (research degree), Ph.D. scholar Malene Leerberg says that the ambiguity of drawings lets them leave room for interpretation and thus stimulate dialogue. Photo: Jens Christian Hansen

Researching Tacit Knowledge

One of the key questions that design research should address must be what constitutes the “core competencies”, the unique quality of the tools and methods of the design profession. When the concept of design is expanded to include anything and anybody, what then differentiates design education from other fields of education? “Why should we educate students in special design schools with special competencies?” asks Malene Leerberg. Initially, her project aimed mainly at improving education with regard to the visual elements of design processes and methods. Now she is becoming increasingly aware how visualisation constitutes a core design competence, not least in relation to the interdisciplinary collaboration with anthropologists, psychologists, business graduates and engineers, for example. To her, it has become a key message in the project that visualisation is a unique way of thinking and communicating that no other educational institutions teach. That makes it an essential area for design schools to focus on. 

Morning Drawing

Traditionally, drawing has been a tool of the trade for architects and designers, used for developing as well as conveying ideas. In that light it is actually quite remarkable that Designskolen Kolding has introduced half-hour-long sessions of so-called morning drawing. Is that not a skill that the students already master? Apparently not quite, if one asks lecturers and teachers of visual communication in the design programmes. But why is drawing such an essential discipline for design students? “Drawings can visualise things with much more sophistication and subtlety than words are capable of,” says Malene Leerberg. 

Drawing as a Design Tool

Before Malene Leerberg embarked on her Ph.D. project she had a clear research idea or thesis. She believed that a designer’s sketches or drawings are an external representation of internal, cognitive processes. Meeting the school’s students and teachers and observing what actually goes on in design and visualisation processes altered her perspective. She observed that there is a gap between the ideas that the designer puts down on paper and the resulting drawings. Something happens in that gap that makes the drawing speak back to the designer and deliver ideas and inspiration. Thus, according to Malene Leerberg, drawings are more than simply a passive visual representation of the designer’s thoughts. Drawings are actively involved in shaping the design process as a visual and concrete means of capturing and conveying the designer’s ideas. In the transition from abstract thought to concrete, visual presentation the idea is transformed and speaks back to the designer. Thus, drawings are not merely a representation of the designer’s thoughts: They add something new, she says.

Another element that she highlights in relation to visualisations and drawings is that drawings leave room for interpretation. To Malene Leerberg a key difference between writing and drawing – between words and images – is that a drawing is not limited to being read in only one way, which is linear. Drawings can be read in many different ways.

That is exactly what makes them so interesting and such useful means of communication, says Malene Leerberg. She compares drawings with the phenomenon of “figure-ground” images, where, depending on one’s point of view or attitude, one may see one of two different drawings. The ambiguous nature of drawings or images and the fact that they are open to interpretation helps stimulate the dialogue, she says.

Artist, Ph.D. scholar Anette Højlund hopes to use her project to help bring about a new perspective for drawing as a medium.

Drawing Sharpens the Senses

Drawing can be considered a visualisation tool for architects and designers, but there are also other dimensions in the drawing that make it interesting in relation to design education. Artist Anette Højlund has identified a number of key questions:

“What makes someone draw?” and “What is the phenomenon of drawing”. She attempts to dissolve the traditional distinction between drawing as a visualisation tool in design and the drawing as a means of artistic expression. She believes that a person who is drawing can be seen as a form of sensuous and wordless interpreter or “medium”. Through the drawing person, the world flows in and is recorded, perceived and sensed and expressed in the drawing. This means that the drawing goes beyond an issue about artistic expression. As Anette Højlund puts it, “Any line you draw is a perception of the world”. Therefore, learning to draw in fact also means to learn to perceive the world in a sensuous and “wordless” way and to convey these sensory impressions through brain, eyes, hands and body. That is one of the reasons that the drawing as a medium and a means of expression still occupies such a strong position, says Anette Højlund. Therefore, drawing is an essential discipline, not only for graphic designers and artists but also for designers and architects. By drawing, the student enhances his or her ability to sense and perceive the world. Anette Højlund has set up a number of “fix-points” for her project, which she intends to examine and describe: “drawing in a digitised age”, “drawing as a representation of space”, “drawing as observation”, and a fundamental question: “What is drawing today?” In this way Anette Højlund hopes to help expand the perspective for drawing as a medium and make it a core discipline for all designers across specialties.

Three examples of the use of drawings to “think” the world and thus represent it in a new and unexpected way. In this sense, the drawing serves as a pre-verbal statement of a mental image of a particular form before it becomes final and fixed. Illustration: Anette Højlund

Malene Leerbjerg Has an MA (research degree) in art history from Aarhus University. After graduation she has worked with designers and architects in various projects. In February 2007 Malene Leerberg began her Ph.D. studies at Designskolen Kolding. Ph.D. project title: Fra sansning til design: perception, kognition og visualisationens rolle i design (From sensation to design: the role of perception, cognition and visualisation in design). Malene Leerberg draws on a theoretical framework in three parts. The first field consists of theories and texts on design methods and processes: Christopher Alexander’s Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964), John Christopher Jones’ Design Methods (1970), Bruce Archer and Donald Schön’s The Reflective Practioner (1983) and Bryan Lawson’s How Designers Think (1980). The second field of theory is about sensation, specifically the visual sensation of surface, form and room. Here, some of Malene Leerberg’s sources are Alois Riegl’s Stilfragen (1893), Martin Jay’s Downcast Eye (1994), Lars Marcussen’s Rummets arkitektur – arkitekturens rum (The architecture of the room – the room of architecture) (2002), Anna Friedberg’s The Virtual Window (2006), Rudolf Arnheim’s Art and Visual Perception (1954) and Visual Thinking (1969), Ernst Gombrich’s Art and Illusion (1960) and The Sense of Order (1979). The third field is about seeing design as a model. Here Malene Leerberg’s project description mentions, among others Yve-Alain Bois’ essay Painting as Model (1984) and Peter Rowe’s Design Thinking (1987). She also intends to include the philosophers Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s concept of abstract machines from A Thousand Plateaus (1980). Anette Højlund Artist, trained at The Jutland Art Academy. Has worked as a practising artist while curating a number of exhibitions. She has also taught drawing and painting for many years. Anette Højlund began her Ph.D. studies at The Danish Design School in Copenhagen in February 2007. Ph.D. project title: Hvordan tænker tegning verden? – en undersøgelse af den kunstneriske tegning som analyse og visualisering (How does drawing think the world? – a study of artistic drawing as analysis and visualisation). Anette Højlund draws on texts about art and drawing, including Emma Dexter’s Vitamin D, New perspectives in Drawing (2005), Ernst van Alphen’s Art in Mind – How Contemporary Images Shape Thought (2005), Hubert Damisch’ Théorie du Nuage: Pour une nouvelle histoire de l’art (1972) and L’origine de la perspective (1987), and Robert Nelson’s The End of Drawing in Tegningens Semiotik (The Semiotics of Drawing) (2000). She is also interested in relational aesthetics, a concept that was introduced by Nicolas Bourriaud in Esthetique Relationelle (1998).