If we use the professional palette as a metaphor for the collection of tools and colours we use to interpret the world, then we can see it as more than just a toolkit. It’s the means by which we capture what we see and render what we imagine.
I see sketching — whether in pencil, code, words, paint or notes — as both a away of seeing the world and also showing the world what we see. Just as in child development, the ability to listen, imagine and speak all develop together, I see sketching as doing the same thing. The sketch is is both a way to listen and to speak. The more time you spend sketching, the more you see, the more you can imagine and the more you can make in the world.
Sketching is a kind of model making. A way to distill the essence of what you notice to internalise it, and a way to distill what you imagine in order to send it back out into the world.
Learning to make conceptual models — sketches, sequences of code, prose, paintings or music — becomes a way to breathe the world in, the imagination is respiration, and we breathe it out again.
The tools we master — our paints, our pencils, our programming languages, our music theory — are the interface between our inner and outer worlds. The more familiar we become with these tools, the more they become an extension of ourselves. The more fluently the world flows into us as designers and can flow out again modified by the unique perspective that we each hold.