Sketch and Design. Function and Expression

Abstract

To define graphically what the sketch is, as opposed to the ordinary basic concept we have of drawing proper, involves delving into the actual structuring of the object or idea represented and its relative relationship with the 'unstable' order of its graphic environment.

We will speculate, therefore, with the observation that opting for the sketch or the drawing proper for the visual materialisation of an idea -in the context of its graphic reality- would be clearly subjective, given that the final image resulting from the creative process does not always relate the intention or the pure concept of the graphic project with the impression originated in the receiver. However, the field of Design itself delimits with greater precision the iconographic and plastic range that the sketch must possess in the generation of the descriptive image corresponding to the designed object -here the sketch acts in pursuit of a specific need, and it is this that determines its graphic definition-. In this case, considering the sketch as a representative agent in the creative phase of design, the receiver and the designer are seen as the same person, that is to say, every sketch made for this purpose responds to a particularly functional operation destined exclusively to the graphic modulation of the idea in the private context of the designer's own creative process.