Hi This is Takeshi, artist CEO of su-re.co
The other day Cynthia blogged about su-re.co corporate culture, which says that "we don't hide our mistakes", so I'm going to write an addendum to that. Not all mistakes are OK to make. Some mistakes are OK to make, and others shouldn't happen depending on stages. In general, the best approach is to make mistakes early and lightly. Let's illustrate this using the process of drawing. Creating a sketch drawing without an eraser is the method of producing light mistakes early on.
The process of drawing is to start writing rough and lightly. This picture is the first stage of drawing a rough shape of the bird lightly. I drew the stylised figures at a level that makes them look thin or almost invisible. The body and head are oval, the beak is triangular, and the tail is rectangular. If you look closely, you can see that there are many thin, thin lines drawn. I made a lot of small mistakes and gradually made a rough sketch. If you look at the tail, you can see that I have redrawn it longer than the first drawing. After I completed the big structure, I moved on to the next step.
Here, the next shape is drawn in greater detail and intensity. In the last stage, the details are drawn in fine pencil. I did not use an eraser at all during the whole process. If I used an eraser to erase what I thought was a mistake, I wouldn't be able to draw a correct line and fix it. If I had to say 'analysis' in one word, it would be 'comparison'. If you don't know what to compare, you can't analyse. If you don't know what to study, you can't make something better because you don't know where to improve it.
The important thing here is to know what mistakes to make and when to make them. At the very beginning of the process, I concentrate on the big picture. It is a bad mistake to draw darker lines of detail at this stage. If you try to work out the details before you have a complete picture, it may not be useful. This judgement is correct not only in drawing but in the actual project as well.
Similarly, it is a mistake to redraw the whole picture in the final process. By this time, the big picture is fixed, and we cannot redraw it. If you're going to redraw the big picture at the final stage, it's better to stop drawing this picture and start over from scratch. This process is the same for the actual project.
In the first stage of a real project, you can keep trying and revising your biggest ideas. But do it lightly and quickly. If the big idea doesn't work, you should try a new one as soon as possible. It is wrong to think about the details of the project at this stage. If you make up the details, they will almost certainly not be used because you are making up details in the wrong place at the beginning stage. For example, if you create a package for a product that you haven't thought about concept and market. Again, in the first stage, the whole picture should be corrected by mistake. Working on details is itself a bad mistake.
The final stage is a careful working on the details. At this stage, there is little room for error, but if you do make a mistake, it is only in the details. Rewriting the whole project design at this stage would be a death-march mistake. It is better to destroy the current project and start a new one over.
Incidentally, if you want to learn to draw, I recommend this course. The course demo has a way of drawing realistically without using an eraser, and I draw this bird following his method.
Art and science is very similar both need a system and creativity!!
It's lovely to see the parallel of the world of research and the world of art!
Insightful! nice metaphor! Thanks