Draw the un-chair

Here's a drawing exercise that will short-circuit your brain.

A drawing instructor at Pixar puts a chair in front of the class and says: don't draw the chair. Draw the spaces between the legs. The gaps. The air.

Students who couldn't draw a convincing chair suddenly produce accurate ones. Why?

Because "chair" is the problem. The moment your brain labels an object, it stops seeing and starts remembering. It draws its stored symbol of a chair (a four-legged cartoon) and ignores the actual thing in front of it. The spaces between the legs have no label. To draw them, you're forced to actually look.

Draw the un-chair

In 1994, designer Lindon Leader hid an arrow in the FedEx logo, in the empty space between the E and the x. It has won over 40 design awards. The most famous device in logo history is made of nothing.

"Music is the space between the notes." — Claude Debussy

This works far beyond drawing. Whatever you're stuck on, you're probably staring at the labelled thing and seeing your assumptions. So stop interrogating the problem and study everything around it. What's missing from the customer reviews? What does your competitor never talk about? What question is nobody asking?

The answer is often standing in the gap, unlabelled, waiting to be seen.

Look where the thing isn't.

— Dan

P.S. Go look at the FedEx logo right now. You'll never unsee it. Then ask: what's the negative space in your market?