The Humble Pencil, The Mighty Computer

Creative people tend to romanticize their tools. We place them on pedestals as the conduits for our ideas and the enablers of our craft. Contrastingly, though, I think all creatives believe that a good tool does not make a good designer, and a good designer does not need top-of-the-line special tools. In fact, I’d say all one usually needs is a pencil and a sheet of paper. With that, one can wield the power of visual communication like a sword, a lullaby, or maybe even a stick of dynamite.

Pencils are special things to me. They are humble in materials: just a bit of wood and graphite, but when together, they represent the potential of a productive process. If you were to ask a friend to imagine a scene where someone is coming up with ideas, they would probably see a person at a desk with a waste basket beside it filled with a pile of crumpled paper. It is curious that waste is the main denotation of productivity. The bin would overflow with the ideas that weren’t good enough. Somewhere in that scene, maybe just a bit out of frame, there is a pencil scribbling wildly on paper. The more inspired one is, the faster that pencil moves. The harder one works, the shorter that pencil becomes. There are metrics in a pencil.

The pencil is general, yet specific. Ideas can be hashed out with ease to gauge their potential. The marks can be vague enough so one doesn’t judge the execution, but instead judges the potential of the idea. This is why I can’t come up with ideas on computers. Computers are too specific; they have too many degrees of separation between my mind and the canvas. With a pencil, it starts from my brain, moves down my arm, straight out my hand to the paper. Atoms transfer from the tip of the pencil to the surface of the paper. I can see the sheet fill up. With the computer, I have to turn on the computer, grab the mouse, launch the software, select the tool I wish to use, think about how to use that tool, and then worry about the mark that it makes. The beauty of a pencil is you don’t need to think about how to use it. It’s instinctive. A five-year-old knows how to use a pencil just as well as a sixty-year-old. The pencil is the great equalizer.

Computers have an infinite canvas, so I can’t feel like I’ve filled one sheet to start on another. Imagine reading a book with no chapters: every word just runs into the next without a rest. That’s how it sometimes feels to be working creatively on a computer: an endless journey with no edges, no sunsets, nothing to denote the end of one thing and the beginning of another. There’s no pile of paper to look at and to say “Look at all this ground we’ve covered.” Every mark has the finish of a final mark on the screen, and ideas in progress do not look how they should.

Process work on the computer looks like a messy version of something late in the process. With a pencil, process work, if drawn right, looks like a tight version of something early in the process. There needs to be vagueness in execution and clarity in concept and strategy at the beginning of a job, and I find that when I start on the computer, the opposite usually occurs. I have a tightness to the execution, and a vagueness in my concept, and that is a truly undesirable, frustrating place to be. It means one might be giving form and structure to something that might not be worth it. They are laboring on making something beautiful, when they’re not even sure if it’s the right thing to be doing.

When I start a new project, I think my initial tries at the idea should look like the final result through squinted eyes. I can do this with relative ease with a pencil and paper. On a computer, it’s a bad facsimile of what I want. It’s my idea reflected through a funhouse mirror. What I want gets distorted because the computer gets too specific too quick: I start focusing on if things line up instead of if I’m even saying the right things.

That’s not to say that there are no benefits to using the computer. Computers are wonderful for automating difficult or complex tasks. They do a great job of removing human error, cleaning up execution, and providing a tightness to the final product. But, they don’t help in the beginning when a designer is flailing around, searching for an idea they can be confident about. In the beginning, quantity matters, because quantity usually edits down to quality. Quick execution and cheapness matters: I find myself censoring myself less with a pencil and paper than on a computer, because I can do a drawing quickly. Mistakes are cheap with a pencil and cost a lot of time on the computer.

There are real benefits to working in physical space. We can approach our work in new contexts. We can draw something, then cut it out, and move it around. We can touch what we produce, and we can judge our progress on a project by the height of our pile of drawings. I think an important part of the creative process is play, and for me, it is easier to play in physical space than digital space. I think tactility is an important part of playing and planning. It’s why we love Post-It Notes. Getting things down on paper opens innumerable options: cutting, tearing, folding, gluing, collaging, drawing on top of what you’ve already drawn, and, at worst, just crumpling up the paper and starting again.

And maybe that’s why I prefer the pencil. It forgives me for my mistakes: there’s an eraser there, after all. It accepts me for who I am: I can use it however I wish, and I don’t have to learn any special means to operate it like you might on a computer. There are no “rules.” And the pencil will always be cheap and available to anyone. I like what that represents: everyone has what they need to make something incredible.

This was written for Hand of the Graphic Designer, an exhibition sponsored by the Fondo Ambiente Italiano in Milan, Italy

Frank Chimero Designing & writing

Hi, I’m Frank Chimero, a designer from New York. Currently, I’m on sabbatical walking NYC, investigating new creative tooling, and researching Brian Eno’s collaborations with machines.

Email me    More info

Portrait of Frank Chimero

The Shape of Design A short book for new designers about the design mindset

Buy from Amazon Buy from Indie Read online Download

Writing Selected essays
and lectures

An anvil tied to a balloon
Everything Easy is Hard Again Is it twenty years of experience in tech or five years, repeated four times? 2018
A grid of wood cubes
The Web’s Grain Design by thinking inside the box model 2015
Time lapse image of a galloping horse
What Screens Want Design as choreography instead of composition 2013
A rose growing out of a pile of dirt
Only Openings Some problems must be tended instead of solved. 2014
Two torn pieces of paper matched together
Designing in the Borderlands Designer as translator, integrator, and merchant of ideas 2014

Blog 2009–?

About CV and bio

Hi, I’m Frank Chimero, a designer and writer from New York.

Previously, I was Creative Director and Head of Brand at the payments platform Modern Treasury. Before that, I co-founded and led design at Abstract, a design workflow and knowledge base startup that was later aquired by Adobe.

I also spent fifteen years running a solo design studio and consultancy, designing across product and brand for technology and media companies. Clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Nike, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and many early stage startups. I helped design a few things during that time you’ve probably used, from NPR’s online audio player to Wikipedia’s article pages.

In 2012, I wrote, designed, illustrated, and published The Shape of Design, a little book for new designers about the design mindset and making things for other people. Since the book’s launch, it has become a staple text in design education and found an enthusiastic audience beyond the design community.

I have a big love for museums, beat-up pocket-edition paperbacks, ambient music, antique JRPGs, and Phil Collins. (Nobody’s perfect.)

Experience

  • Sabbatical
  • Creative Director and Head of Brand Modern Treasury
  • Creative Director Fictive Kin
  • Self-employed Studio Frank
  • Co-Founder and Head of Design Abstract (acq. Adobe)
  • Self-employed Studio Frank

Select interviews

Select press

Awards

  • ADC Young Guns 8 Art Directors Club
  • New Visual Artist Print Magazine

Speaking

  • AIGA National Conference
    US
  • AIGA Regional Events
    US
  • An Interesting Day
    NO
  • Awwwards Conference
    DE
  • Build Conference
    UK
  • Creative Works
    US
  • Cusp Conference
    US
  • dConstruct
    UK
  • Design Speaks
    US
  • Design Thinkers
    CA
  • Do Lectures
    UK
  • Etsy
    US
  • Harvard University
    US
  • How Design Live
    US
  • Interlink Conference
    CA
  • Kerning Conference
    IT
  • Mailchimp
    US
  • Mirror Conference
    PT
  • New Adventures
    UK
  • Portable Series
    AU
  • School of Visual Arts
    US
  • Shopify
    CA
  • South by Southwest
    US
  • Substans
    NO
  • Webstock
    NZ
  • XOXO Festival
    US