Morning Sketches

I sometimes find myself trying to convince the designers I work with that they shouldn’t be intimidating by the command line, writing code, or things like npm and bower. Their formal training may have been in another visual art field but; like many designers, they find themselves wanting to level up in web/ multimedia skills.

My goal in those conversations is to break things down and show how learning just one thing can lead to all sorts of revelations. Anyone can do it! The first time I used FFMPEG or Imagemagick to do a batch process it was magical. I felt awesome and my work flow has improved immensely. But demoing something in command line can be pretty overwhelming to the skeptical designer. They leave thinking, even if it could save time, it’s just not worth it. “I don’t think/work/do stuff like that.” It bums me out because they’re self imposing that narrative onto themselves.

Of course some people are visual thinkers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use a line of code on the command line to help you create something amazingly visual.

Ironically, I have the same attitude when I look at some of those same designers’ illustrations. For the longest time I wasn’t able to make the connection that I have the exact same problem of telling myself I just can’t draw. Every time I try my hand seems to shake or I draw and erase one line over and over so many times I forget what I was trying to do in the first place.

I do believe that the initial barrier has something to do with raw talent. Some people pick up certain skills super fast and seem to have always done something effortlessly. I know that’s not me with drawing, but this is my attempt at slogging it out and really trying to get better at something I’ve let myself believe I would never be good at.

One sketch, every morning. Sometimes I trace something which feels a bit like cheating but I see that as kind of running “scales” on a musical instrument. Sometimes they’re just color schemes of abstract shapes or patterns. My goal is volume and progression, to get a library of content that I can start to examine and hone in on what’s working and what’s not.