In the blog post that I made on Friday, quite a few people requested the architectural typeface that I created. One person, J. Strimiki made a great observation, which makes sense:
“The font invites participation.”
When I was in architecture school at the University of Arizona, we learned a graphical style of “loose” drawing during the iterative design phase of a project that gave the impression that the design was not final. It consisted of techniques that are meant to stimulate creativity and encourage iteration. Mike Lin gives a great workshop on this. Well, here are the obvious questions to our MindManager users out there:
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Can a map style, not only a typeface, encourage participation?
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Do you have map styles that you use when you want to have a dialog around a map?
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If so, what are the components of that style?
When I was in architecture school (1988-1993) there was also an ongoing debate of whether Computer Aided Design (CAD) made first draft designs look too much like final products. Many people who learned architecture with pencils and paper, like myself, saw that as the case. There were even very successful software applications that gave hard-edge CAD drawings and renderings a hand-drawn look. We can easily see the parallels here to today’s office software with PowerPoint, Visio, OneNote, and MindManager. PowerPoint and Visio show very polished result better suited for presentations and lectures. On the other hand, OneNote and MindManager can support the loose sketching needed for an iterative, participative design process, that implies “work in progress“. Among these applications, only MindManager works well as a presentation and participative design tool. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.