Design Like Da Vinci

I presented "Design Like Da Vinci" at Open Camp 2010 before Jeremy Johnson. You can check out the presentation below. It is just 20 slides.

Design Like Da Vinci

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Da Vinci, As Designer

We all know the great works of art that Leonardo produced, such as The Last Supper and The Mona Lisa. As a designer, Leonardo produced thousands of sketches of various objects and ideas. Leonardo is credited with many military ideas, such as parachutes, tanks, helicopters, and more.

Leonardo used the analytical side of his mind to observe the natural order of things. He is known to have dissected cadavers to get a better understanding of the muscle tissue and bone structure. With this knowledge of human anatomy, Leonardo would alter his brush strokes to layer the paint on his works to mimic the underlying muscle and bone structure for his masterpieces.

Da Vinci, As Blogger?

Arguably one of the greatest legacies of Leonardo were the volumes of sketches that he left behind. Leonardo was using a rudimentary form of the Cornell method of note-taking for categorizing and tagging his sketches. Scholars have argued that Leonardo was preparing to publish the sketches. Sadly, Leonardo was known to procrastinate. The sketch books were never published in his life time.

When I talked at Open Camp, the room was filled with bloggers. My message to the bloggers was that micro-blogging is very easy today. We tend to look at getting traffic and numbers up. Bloggers want their content to go viral. Da Vinci produced more than 10,000 pages of detailed sketches of ideas and observations.

Da Vinci could have produced more, if he just had blogging software. In the end, I explained to the bloggers that Da Vinci did not care about numbers or an audience. He cared about his ideas. If he had an audience of one, namely his Patron, Da Vinci would have been relatively happy, as it meant that he could work.

Conclusions

Da Vinci created his sketch books as idea journals. Thomas Edison was known to have done the same thing. Do you keep a moleskin as an idea journal? Do you write down your ideas? Do you do mind mapping? If so, you are on your way to designing like Da Vinci.

Tell me what you think!