Writing By Hand Better for Memory & Learning; Brain Activity: Scientific American 🖊

[Qutzupalotl]

9. I'd like to share something related in the arts

but about output rather than input.

I'm a graphic designer of print and static ads. I use a computer all day. In a crunch, the tendency is to put all the elements on the page and fiddle until it looks good. That's fine for most straightforward jobs. But when I get stuck or uninspired creatively, I get out paper and pencil. Almost as soon as I sketch out a rectangle and the biggest element, everything else seems to fall into place, and I can almost see the end result. Suddenly I know what to do to solve the problem. It's kind of exhilarating.

I think part of the reason for this is that hand-drawing forces me to simplify and look at overall shapes rather than fixating on content or colors. But another part is the immediacy of the mind/hand connection, something that seems to be lacking when using a keyboard. Ideas occur to me when sketching that would not occur staring at a screen. “What if I reversed this? What if I filled here?”

In art school they drilled into us that “quantity produces quality.” I remember once in Typography class, being asked to show 25 draft sketches of the same two words to use in our 5 selected comps. That forced us to explore unconventional approaches. Following that process proved to each student that drawing by hand works, even if it's rough. The ideas each of us came up with were striking and unique, even within the stricture of the same two words.

Which is a long way of saying, if you get stuck, use your hands!