“He loves computers but worries that they narrow creativity, which thrives on ambiguity, fuzziness, and the borders between ideas. Computers, he explains, are all about clarity and defined boundaries.”

That’s an excerpt from a BusinessWeek article about Milton Glaser: Why We ♥ Milton Glaser, a graphic design legend.

I used to tell my designers: “Designers think with their pencils.” We don’t plan a design. We design by trying out different approaches and possibilities with pencils and papers. Lots of thumbnail sketches. Exploration is the keyword.

That process works very well for me because I’ve been drawing since the day I was able to hold a pen. While my brother played with his toy car, I drew and brought to live my imaginary car in drawings.

Although not many people love drawing as much as I do, people who were born before the 80’s can manifest their ideas with pen/pencil on paper faster than using computers. They went through education with pen and papers as their main media. That’s why we still call writing assignments as “papers” although more papers are submitted electronically nowadays, thus no real paper involved.

My question is: if I can manifest my idea using computer as easy as I do with pencil on paper, will computer still define my ideas and limit my creativity?

I wonder if there’s a reverse connection between the complexity of technology used to creativity. In other words, is it true that the simpler the technology is, the more room for creativity it provides?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 at 7:44 am and is filed under design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.