> I think the real skill involved is Visual Thinking. Good old fashioned pencil and paper flow state ideation. If there is one practice I wish I had spent more

> I think the real skill involved is Visual Thinking. Good old fashioned pencil and paper flow state ideation. If there is one practice I wish I had spent more time acquiring it would definitely be illustration / drafting ;) You hear a lot about design in corporate discourse these days. Visual art tools like mind mapping, whiteboard animation, and even storyboards are getting prime time in the context of business. This is partly legitimate. Sketching is one of the best ways to understand complex concepts and come up with new ideas. Both are valuable skills. But organizations also love to boast about how much design-oriented they are. Talking about "design thinking" or "mindful design" and so forth doesn't mean anything changed. Fads come and go. Today techniques like boards, graphs and sketches are making a comeback within companies. How much is hype versus how much is due to people unwilling to focus for a long time on something? Visual concepts tend to get the point across fast. It's great as long as it is not to the detriment of in-depth analysis. As an illustrator/designer, companies saw you as a disposable executant who made things pretty. That is, versus a writer who was more on the conceptual side of things and understood the overarching strategy. Not sure the designers gained any more respect in the process but that is another story. It will change again.