interaction
Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction
A Brief Rant
Stop Drawing Dead Fish
The Future of Programming
How I Build
Intelligent arrows
Website Response Times
Now I get it
Like, just a post complaining that screens should be better
An Article by Matt WebbIt’s been 19 years since Pixar released Monsters, Inc. with all that CGI hair. Where are my hairy icons? Ones that get all long and knotted as the notifications number goes up.
Why can’t I feel my phone? I found that paper from 2010 (when I was complaining about keyboards) about using precision electrostatics to make artificial textures on touchscreens.
I should be able to run my thumb over my phone while it’s in my pocket and feel bumps for apps that want my attention. Touching an active element should feel rough. A scrollbar should *slip. Imagine the accessibility gains. But honestly I don’t even care if it’s useful: 1.5 billion smartphone screens are manufactured every year. For that number, I expect bells. I expect whistles.
Why Sketch?
What you have observed closely
Drawing requires that you pay attention to every detail—even the seemingly unimportant ones. In creating an image (no matter how skillfully), the lines and tones on the paper provide ongoing feedback as to what you have observed closely and what you have not.
A single image
Scientific illustrations can achieve certain things that photographs cannot. A good illustration can portray difficult-to-photograph or rarely witnessed events. It can incorporate everything that’s important into one single image or show a special view of a subject.
It would be next to impossible to observe, in nature, a dozen different aquatic species in their natural habitat, posing perfectly together and all in focus at one time—but such a scene can easily come to life in an illustration.
Parallel refinement
My studies of live animals usually begin with a series of quick drawings, all on a single page. When the subject changes position—which it pretty much always does—I abandon the first sketch and start a new one. Continuing on in this way, the page fills with mostly unfinished squiggles until the animal eventually resumes one of its earlier poses. If that happens, I add as much detail or refinement to one of the easier sketches as I can. While this is all going on, I also jot down written notes that help explain what I observed and what seemed significant.
Color reproduction
In-person, live observation of color is a practice for which I feel there is no adequate substitute. Photographs are often imprecise in reproducing color.
The negative spaces
Focus on the negative spaces surrounding the object to give yourself a fresh perspective on the form.
Hues subdued
Colors in nature are, in general, more subdued than what comes directly from the pencil or the tube of paint. Greens, especially, tend to be a lot browner than we expect.
Unfinished
Leave the drawing unfinished. Record as much information as you need, but don’t draw any forms, details, or colors that are merely repetitive. The back and front of a representative flower on a plant, for example, or half of a bilaterally symmetrical animal may be all that’s necessary.
A red sea fan
Ink and watercolor drawing of a red sea fan.
Sketches
Sketches and written notes.