6 Introduction Why we draw Good interior design does not begin with a drawing but with an idea, an ill-defined image that exists for a moment in the imagination and continues to flit, evasively, across the mind's eye. Designing is, in effect, the pursuit of that image: a succession of attempts to define it more precisely, to give it form, to examine it and assess its worth, to make progressively more objective decisions that finalize ideas and to communicate those ideas to clients in the form of drawings and to builders in the form of instructions. Drawing, at first speculatively and then precisely to scale, is the means to test most rigorously how a near- abstract concept can be viably translated into reality. It may be feasible to visualize and scrutinize these concepts without drawing them, but it would be perverse to deny that the most immediate and effective way to design is to make drawings ­ and drawings may take many forms. They do not have to be, perhaps should no longer be, handmade pen or pencil lines on conventional papers. They should be made in the way with which each individual designer is most comfortable. They should change to suit the particular requirements of each project. They are a means to the end of expressing ideas. Content should be more crucial than technique or style, which will take care of themselves. As a designer becomes more experienced, making a drawing, the right kind of drawing, becomes automatic, instinctive, an immediate expression of thought. It need not be carefully refined but it does seem that when one is