The Digital Sketch Workshop: a Core Course in Design with Computation

This paper summarizes DIGITAL SKETCH, a workshop that took place over the course of two weeks in September 1998 at Designskolen Kolding, Denmark. DIGITAL SKETCH was an attempt to create a foundation course in design for the digital medium for students with strong visual design skills, but little to no computer experience. Teaching design on computers is commonly thought of as detailing the current version of the latest commercial software. As long as this is the case, design on computers will (quite rightfully) continue to get little respect from those designers using more traditional design methods. How can we find the “corei of this medium when faced with the constant onslaught of operating system upgrades and version 11.2 of software Y83? For DIGITAL SKETCH, we tried to demystify the process of controlling the computer. In this workshop we examined the meanings of the term “sketchi as it applies to the design process on the computer. Our hope was that by revealing some of the unique characteristics of the digital medium, we might develop new design processes in tune with this medium