Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

As a designer and writer, two of my favorite tools are the blank sheet of paper and the pencil.

I love a blank sheet of paper. I love to have a pencil in my hand when I’m looking at a blank sheet of paper. This is freedom. There are no guidelines, no rules, nothing in the way. I can do whatever I can imagine.

I start projects with a blank sheet of paper – literally with a blank sheet of paper. This is true for projects at work, projects at home, and papers and books that I am considering writing. I draw mind maps, well something that vaguely resembles a mind map. Shown below is the mind map I drew before writing a recent paper. There are a some lines connecting ideas, some sentences, some of this and some of that. It contains whatever I was considering at the time – no rules, no guidelines, just whatever I imagined.

And then there is the pencil. I can erase what I write with a pencil. I can also smudge it a bit, scratch through it, and do just about whatever I want to do.

I think these tools – the blank sheet of paper and the pencil – are under-appreciated. We have only had these tools a few centuries, and that isn’t long relative to the course of human history.

Let’s hear it for the blank sheet of paper and a pencil.