Mark Jones of city centre design agency Creative Liverpool asks what impact PhotoSketch may have on streamlining client work, or does it risk dumbing-down the creative process?

All designers especially the ‘old school’ whom are reading this will have their layout pads tucked underneath their keyboards and magic markers spread across the desk may think ‘What is this new tool?’

Developed by five Chinese students PhotoSketch is a clever online tool that allows you to create photomontages from simple stickmen-style sketches. The programme works with a simple tool palette on which you draw representations of an intended image, which are then tagged up by the user with keywords.

Using some clever technology as explained in the demo video below thousands of images are pulled in from Flickr, Google and Yahoo, from which 20-100 candidate images are produced. The most well-matched of these are processed within 15 minutes, resulting in an almost seamless composite picture.

If this tool works as described above and the client get there hands on it, I believe it won’t destroy our industry but will in turn only benefit the flow of our creativity and open doors to new thinking.

Remember the start of a great design job is the idea and then how to execute this in the correct medium, format and layout that’s why the client comes to us. Imagine the time you could save when putting together inspiration pieces for clients…”Here’s what I’m envisioning, how do you feel about it?”

It’s basically a simple way of getting your ideas out quickly. They may well be some copyright infringements if images are taken (use only for visuals, if for final job purchase image simple as that), but if fixed this could be a a great time saving tool.

They all said ‘that’s the end of my job’ when the Apple Mac was first launched in 1984 (predictions can happen but not fully) and 4 years later when Photoshop was introduced to the world and later in the nineties when the internet and then Google became rapidly available with a huge source of billions of images to process your ideas straight into photoshop without the magic marker. Surely like previously this type of tool can only benefit us.

Design once was truly a ‘craft’ when it took an immense skill not just to get the magical idea from your brain to a piece of paper without the aid of a mac, photoshop and the internet in front of you. When it took weeks to get an ad out, individually creating each letter with one mistake could set you back weeks.

With my commercial experience spanning 6 years I wasn’t there for the big changes in the eighties but hear many of the stories of ‘back in the day’ in the studios I have worked in. I wasn’t even there with the introduction of the internet in our industry but what I do remember is my first industry job.

After getting introduced to all of the studio and shown where my Mac sat and layout pads were found, I was quickly into one of my first ‘big jobs’ a national ad campaign for the ‘New Wembley Stadium.’ After digesting the brief i started scribbling my ideas down on paper, back and to from the mac searching for images that fit my ideas.

As I gathered a collection of images and typography I needed to get these in an illustrative format onto paper. One of the Art Directors i was working with then shouted out the ‘Grant Machine is in the back passage if you need it.’ I sharply replied, ‘Grant Machine, what the hell is that?’ He shrugged his head and look disgusted and replied ‘ Didn’t they teach you anything in Uni young boy?’

As not being one of the ‘old school’, I was amazed on the usefulness of this old raggedy machine. It was raw and instant but not digital. But I had a new tool to play with. Yes a Mac could do all of this and probably better but having a pencil and the aid of this machine in your hand your ideas could flow more creatively without the added noise from the computer screen (not the white version).

There was more craft to the job and felt I progressed my ideas much more rapidly improving my layout skills further than I ever had. This new road to take was 25 years out of date but was vital in my career progressing. I had discovered the combination of new and old works, if it benefits to the end result then it is good progress.

Just make sure you use both, if you use the new flashier digital tools maybe you lose the sense of creativity or if you use primary the layout pad and magic marker then you cannot take your ideas to the next level.

The journey of the layout pad to the finish print or final web design works but the odd tweak here or there back or forward surely can benefit our industry.

I still have not seen another Grant machine to this day, but maybe the introduction of tweaks like the PhotoSketch tool will substitute this. The organisation behind this are currently looking at adding video to the package. Digital concepting will change for the good.