Extended drawing within embryonic design:
Drawing (in all it's forms), undisputed still at the core of the designing process, is gradually transforming itself into a hybrid activity. Where designers used to explore and communicate embryonic design through handmade sketches, the thinking process, nowadays, seems to be driven through an intuitive combining different graphical tools and techniques. This evolution constitutes a change in attitude towards graphical exploration and thinking within emerging design. Through the proliferation of digital drawing and editing tools, the emergence of online search engines and the availability of digital photography seems to have changed the status and value attributed to handmade drawings.
Extended Drawing* researches strategies to approach hybrid and layered forms of drawing within embryonic design in order to inquire possible changes in attitude towards the assessment of these expressions within the designing process. Through a combination of research within design practice and applied thought processes through drawing the project intends to explicit an updated approach towards graphical thinking and exploration within design and it’s teaching. The project is based upon two closely related trajectories set up to inspire each other's elaboration: the building of an MWM-workshop paralleled by the construction of a conceptual framework. Both trajectories search for possibilities to approach drawing as a hybrid act and how hybridising the craft is able to influence designerly decision making.
Keywords: hybrid drawing, design sketching, designerly thinking, craft knowledge and improvisation
*The concept of Extended drawing is inspired by Extended Techniques within musical practices. Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres. More than often this leads to new playing techniques or the practice leads to style properties of a musical genre. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_techniques)
**MWM=Messing With Media: MWM is a research group dedicated to design-based 'generative media'..
