Spring has sprung. And tomorrow we have a solar eclipse in Aries.
There’s a feeling in the air of breaking into the new.
You may be coming into fresh clarity around something that has been hazy for you. Or you may be feeling the dawning of a next chapter.
Whenever I’m bringing plans into focus, about to enter a new phase, or trying to wrap my mind around a large upcoming project, I like to capture my ideas visually and at a scope I can take in all at once.
When I’m thinking big, I like to work big.
In art…in business…in building…scale has power.
The first place I start when I want to capture an expansive vision is a large sketchpad of artist paper. The bigger the better. No lines. No grids. Just pure white space.
I like writing and drawing my ideas by hand because I find it engages the feeling and the spirit of making stuff.
I’ve always been inspired by the diagram Charles Eames created to visually showcase the core design principles of his office:
The center of this diagram represents the area where Eames believes the designer can work ‘with conviction and enthusiasm’.
Its handwritten quality feels meaningful to me. I sense the deeply personal conviction of Eames himself within the drawing.
I personally feel a greater sense of imaginative possibility when I work on ideas with analog tools.
“My analog desk is a place where nothing digital is allowed. It’s pens, paper, pencils…all the stuff you’d find in the craft supply aisle. This is where I get my ideas.
My digital desk looks like everybody else’s desk. That’s where I go to edit.
So much of my work is this dance between desks. Creating with the analog desk. Editing digitally.”
-Austin Kleon
My approach to capturing a vision starts by drawing spheres on the big piece of paper and writing a single idea or element within each sphere.
I then connect the spheres where that feels right. Some spheres live out on their own in open space until I sense how that smaller element is part of the larger holistic picture.
I treat the circle at the center of my vision like it’s the sun. The solar heart of the system. Then the elements and ideas surrounding that center sun are like constellations.
I let my universe of ideas be messy…unruly…all over the place. That’s why I work with such huge landscapes of paper. It allows for spaciousness.
There’s room for every thought— no premature editing necessary.
The beautiful thing about a constellation chart is it shows the anchoring idea or platform, as well as offshoots of that core idea.
It also illuminates the importance of each element in relation to the whole. More important pieces get bigger circles.
And it illustrates the non-linear aspects of creation… where we see the whole thing, all the parts, in concert with one another.
Later, the vision gets broken down into individual tasks and checklists, steps and timelines. The constellation chart shows everything all at once.
A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once. It’s an immediate image.
-Helen Frankenthaler
Many mystery schools view time this way— as an ocean of moments happening not in succession but rather, simultaneously and in concert with all other moments: past, present and future.
The constellation chart reflects this vision of all things being interconnected and part of the whole— simply by sharing space on the page.
Once I’m happy with my analog drawing (I usually make several evolutions), I move into the digital realm.
I kiss the day Figma came into my life. It’s the first digital tool I’ve found that resonates with ideating and creating on paper.
Here’s a screenshot of a Figma board I made, which eventually became the Queen Persephone workwear edit:
Note, this is not a paid promotion for Figma. I just truly love this platform!
What’s so much fun about Figma is that its canvas is endless. You can scale up into seeing the breadth of what you’re building, or scale down to view the granular pieces of the vision.
You can also use the digital pen to circle & write things by hand. It all creates a feeling of making not dissimilar from working in a blank sketchbook.
For me, it’s the perfect digital endpoint for the ideas I draft at my analog work station.
Ever since I encountered the inflatable art & architecture movement of the late 60s/ early 70s, it’s held a special corner in my imagination. I think because of the hugeness of the work, which reminds me of the scale of nature itself. Like paintings of the sublime.
And also, it shows humans in connection with something human-made yet much larger than ourselves. Notre Dame is like this.
What I especially love about inflatable art is that the grand scale of the work is immensely light. It is lifted by air.
When I see these grand inflatable visions artists have made real, it makes me want to climb on top of them. And, it makes me dream.
May this period of time for you be one of Dream Cloud Inflation.
May you pull the dream into a crystallized vision. Capture it on a big scale, whether by constellation chart or via some other technique that excites you…
And may your vision serve to inspire you as you begin to take fresh action and build momentum this spring.
May this be a time of thinking big and working big.
Cheers, Jane
Yes ! I am always inspired by your diagrams!