Thoughts about the development of the digital technique for the image design
Review | Revisión
María Peláez Piédrola
Máster Desarrollos sociales de la cultura artística, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras,
Málaga, Universidad de Málaga, mariappiedrola@gmail.com
ORCID: 0000-0002-3050-1813
Received: 19 March 2021 | Accepted: 24 May 2021 | Published: 29 June 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25267/P56-IDJ.2021.i1.1
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The introduction of software as an artistic technique for the creation of illustrations redefines the processes and traditional bases of formal analysis in the image, as well as altering the mode of consumption within the online sphere. The central point of this research resides in the nature and use of digital tools applied to illustration and design when they generate a typology of illustration called in terms of its entirely digital or mixed technique.
Introduction of digital tools
The mixed technique has traditionally been defined in plastic arts as the sum of two or more techniques of different natures applied in the same medium and combining the qualities of each one. In addition to the classic combinations of techniques, now we add the digitized medium where part of the process or its total uses the mechanics of the computer or the tablet for what we need to understand these traditional bases (Male, 2007: 11) prior to making them evolve. For this reason, the existence of a trained critical work is necessary, which concludes in knowing how illustrations are developed in digital technique and what possibilities of making them exist with present-day technology.
We aim to identify what type of changes have occurred, what digital illustration can offer as a cultural element and how it is today conditioned by digital tools and formats. It concludes with the retrospective of the publishing world that shows this transformation and guides us on the future path.
It seeks to reflect on in what ways the digital field and its trait as divulgation media could condition the final illustration, and the new reading formats that this medium offers. The 2.0 ambient is understood as a publication format the same way that the paper edition does, it also implies limitations and possibilities that directly affect how the reader receives the publications, which interpretation sometimes escaping from the intention or control from the author.
The digital technique for illustration is positioned as something relevant nowadays and as one more step in the evolution of the creation of images. Therefore, it is of interest to understand its emergence and application, this being the final objective of the text. It is intended to serve as an introduction to the study of the digital medium in illustration for non-illustrators.
Evidence of evolution.
Previous research on illustration has been reviewed (Larragueta Arribas, 2019; Kress and van Leeuven, 2006; Hidalgo Rodríguez, 1999; Nodelman, 1988), together with the analysis of recent data collected by the Federation of Guilds in terms of edition and observation of editorial collections in the digital field. This will be accompanied by a development of the possible methodologies to develop this type of illustration.
The evolution and renewal of the publishing and museum sector towards the incorporation of technological tools is evidenced by the increase of digital exhibitions, some collected by Google Cultural or showed by the 57,000 digitized works of the Google Art Project. In literature, the April 2018 report from the Reading and Book Observatory in Spain showed a growth of 13.5% in digital publishing over the total, reaching 23,656 ISB registered, compared to 2,518 in 2008 following the same report.
Although the first software were not developed with an artistic conception, they quickly became a support tool that provided various qualities to the work, so that during the following years they were increasingly associated with the world of the image. Its permanence is manifested as definitive and beyond being a means to facilitate or expedite a job, its use and practice have the capacity to constitute their own visual language (Male, 2007: 61).
The development of its historical context involves distinguishing its union with other branches not linked to the artistic but more focused on improving the user experience with the first computers. For this reason, one of the original goals was based on devising a peripheral that would facilitate the communication between user and device. The final product of this desire are the current graphics tablets, peripherals that allow an absolute connection between the artist's hands and the image that is created on the screen. The technical improvements that are produced in this tool have made it one more technique, with its own potential to generate a language, formats and images much more complicated to obtain from another medium.
It is shown in the chronological development during the middle of the 20th century when we witness to the rise of plastic experimentation era. Parallelly these emergent technologies were optimized so it is not surprising that they were finally taken as one more option at the time in which they were accessible to the domestic environment and their use was democratized. As described in The complete guide to digital illustration (2003: 38) "Some tools are not born with the purpose of being used for drawing or design and require adaptation work by the user", giving value to the creative capacity of the artist and the constant reinvention that is requires in the act of creating.
Origin of the antecedents. The first drawing hardware and software.
The first antecedent to contemporary tools is found in the development of the so-called SketchPad, which consisted on a graphical interface designed by Ivan Sutherland in 1963. Professor Sutherland designed this interface as the central object of his doctoral thesis prepared for the MIT (Frenkel, 1989: 711). The SketchPad interface is A man-machine graphical communication system, collected in the Cambridge University technical report in 2003 based on the original 1963 dissertation by Sutherland. This interface allows lines and arcs to be drawn in the software using an external stylus, and these elements are also editable during work. It is seen as a design very similar to the current model, being that at this stage it was still based on generating polygons and editable geometric elements through contact points and not on a true transmission of a fluid line.
This hardware is a precursor and source of inspiration when in the following year, in 1964, the team made up of Douglas Engerlbart and Bill English make the first prototype of an optical mouse. The mouse model was presenteThe first software worked using bitmap graphics, which allows the incorporation of color as a unit of information within the pixel. In the note Digital Paint Systems: an anecdotal and historical overview (Smith Ray, A. 2001) it is possible to consult the chronology of the programs that were designed during the seventies, as well as the unique characteristics and elements that this artist and pioneer of computer graphics pointed out as the most relevant in digital design, citing below those from which the digital image has been used:d by Douglas Engelbart during SRI conferences (SRI international: 1968) and was first marketed through Apple in 1981 as an user-accessible model for the home environment.
Technological development works in favor of tools that can be used by multiple disciplines, and in this case added to the very ability to reinvent the artistic medium, which it causes in a short time the creation of a market niche among the artists themselves. If the tools were going to provoke a technical improvement and new visual proposals, in addition to streamlining the work, it was therefore interesting to start designing them more specifically for this function.
The first software worked using bitmap graphics, which allows the incorporation of color as a unit of information within the pixel. In the note Digital Paint Systems: an anecdotal and historical overview (Smith Ray, A. 2001) it is possible to consult the chronology of the programs that were designed during the seventies, as well as the unique characteristics and elements that this artist and pioneer of computer graphics pointed out as the most relevant in digital design, citing below those from which the digital image has been used:
- The ability to edit graphics at the level of: resize, quickly change color, superimpose some elements with others or duplicate elements to create small animations (SuperPaint, 1972, developed by Richard Shoup).
- The improve from 8 to 24 bits (implying the consequent increase in colors that the program can use) and the creation of the HSV palette (hue, saturation, value) used to the current date (Paint3, 1975-79, developed by Alvy Ray Smith)
- The implementation of the anti-aliasing to eliminate visual noise that may generate a stroke defect. In the development of the Paint system used by Lucasfilm they dedicated a special attention to this element.
- The color map allows the association of a set of color values to a pixel, in such a way that it is easier to repeat the exact color again
- The frame buffer is equivalent to the current graphics card and is responsible for storing and transforming data related to image and video. It allowed great advances for the development of Paint programs, enabling the use of new tools within the system.
Smith R. begins his text by introducing regarding digital drawing systems this way:
“A digital paint program essentially does no more than simulate painting of a brush on a canvas. A digital paint system does much more, using the ‘simulation of painting’ as a familiar metaphor to seduce artists into the new, perhaps forbidding, digital domain” (Smith, R.A. 2001).
In 1983 Apple II can introduce the KoalaPad, revolutionary for being the first domestic tablet that is made freely available to the user. Curiously, the same year the Wacom company was founded, which in subsequent years will become the main competitor in terms of drawing-oriented peripherals, converging to the present time in the Apple iPad and Wacom Cintiq divisions, the two most popularized tools and currently demanded by illustration professionals. The tools developed up to this point allow a new field of experimentation where both as interface language as well as visual medium are developed in which to produce illustration, having to reinvent its bases forcibly to adopt these changes.
Zeegen and Roberts, authors of 50 years of illustration (2014) propose a division by decades to distinguish different stages in the birth and adoption of the digital technique by the illustrator. The media began to be explored by the field of graphic design during the eighties that took advantage of the new facility to generate images with the limited tools offered by the digital medium. For the case of artistic drawing, the coldness of the digital line was still far from the spontaneity that was obtained on paper. However, from the nineties, the authors called a digital dawn, consisting on a change by which digitized illustration began to become popular and that we can observe and analyze today without abandoning traditional tools. On the contrary, the incorporation of digital work allows to modify and elevate the works carried out in traditional technique incorporating nuances not obtainable in any other way, and there is a new wave of experimentation with these means on the part of illustrators who seek improvement and difference in their work (Zeegen and Roberts, 2014).
Keys in the operation of the digitized image.
To generate a digital image from an electronic device it is crucial to considerate the capacity of said device to store and transmit information. Therefore, one of the central points in technological evolution has been focused on improving and increasing this capacity. A distinction is made between input peripherals -through which the transmission of the stroke is carried out- and output peripherals -through which the information that we are generating is displayed-.
The mouse is considered as the main input peripheral, also applied for the basic use of the computer and for drawing within drawing applications, but it has fallen into disuse due to the appearance of tools that allow both greater comfort and better control over what that is drawn. Even so, it is still a suitable option in the case of vector drawing, based on the modification of points anchored on lines, and it is currently applied in the field of graphic design.
We find a range of pencils or stylus, developed in order to improve control over the image on the screen, which normally requires a transmission surface connected to the device except in the case of mobile phones and tablets with a touch screen. In this case, a distinction is made between active stylus and capacitive stylus. The optical or active stylus uses electronic mechanisms to transmit data on position and gestural force, which allows information to be transferred to the output device and apply different levels of pressure sensitivity. The capacitive stylus on the other hand does not have this capacity and its scope is reduced to navigation and to reproduce the manual touch. Therefore, it is more convenient for the illustrator to look for the one that allows the better communication of gestures when drawing.
The most advanced current technology is manifested in the pencil developed by Apple in 2015 with progressive updates, which also incorporates sensitivity to inclination. This also allows the thickness and intensity of the line to be varied, being more similar to a traditional pencil and being difficult in many occasions its distinction once the final illustration has been submitted. With screened tablets it is possible to simulate the traditional line more closely compared to blind tablets, since the gesture is made directly on the image and allows a better control. Wacom's Cintiq model has become the standard for tablets, while the Apple-developed iPad is the main competitor today. It offers the advantage of portability, which has allowed artists like Rob Sketcherman to use it for urban sketch creating digital notebooks. On a technical level, its high-end features and applications available for illustration have enabled the creation of illustrated album projects made exclusively with this tool.
In a final illustration it can be easy to notice which tool has been used, especially noting the appearance of the final stroke of the line and whether its stability remains continuous. Although these two aspects are editable, they are usually an indicator of the amateur illustrator who still does not control these modifications when an image with irregular strokes is generated. Similarly, certain textures are not obtainable from capacitive pencils.
Therefore, it is of interest to develop what internal hardware qualities make it possible to work at a professional level with this type of medium. For this topic, the screen resolution results to be the greatest determining factor for the illustration that is generated. Digital canvases work under measurements indicated in centimeters, pixels or inches, and it is possible to apply standardized measurements by default (ISO format, own format...). In this way you work directly with the final printing format. The standard size for quality printing is around 300 dpi (dots per inch), however, for digital or web reproduction 200 dpi may be sufficient. These combinations of measurements can be identified in an image in relation to the noise it sustains.
The most modern software offer tools that as image analysts are of interest: it is possible to know the time of use of the canvas by the artist and to know exactly how long it has taken to generate the image, as well as to record and share the process in real time. These types of recordings become popular and are shared by the artists themselves, creating around them a feedback community on social networks, and sometimes in the form of patronage, offering this content as a value proposition.
The total of programs, settings and resources that are used to digitally illustrate constitute what can be called a work space in its digitized version. Like any other traditional tool, specific drawing programs are acquired by purchase, however, there are free versions or programs that are released freely for download or applications that allow you to work online without prior installation on the device.
The default interface in drawing programs is organized according to a standard, which makes it easy to switch from one to another software without the need to learn everything again. Many actions can be performed intuitively once a base has been previously internalized. The visual organization also references the physical environment and seeks to imitate traditional tools, which facilitates the creation of a code and quickly identify the functions that also usually appear in the same order. On the other hand, it will also offer exclusive digital tools, which will also be identified with similar icons in each program.
Villagrán (2016: 175) reference from Gasch to the graphic archive, this being the set of specialized documents that can be consulted as a query or reference. In the digital age, it is possible to store and order large amounts of textual and graphic information on the device itself to access it from a multiplicity of media (Gasch. 1991: 165).
Another quality of the software specialized in illustration is to store by themselves another type of information to be repeated. This is the case of color palettes that, like traditional palettes, can be preserved by the program and make it easy to take them up again in new illustrations. A series of basic tools are common to most programs and knowing them allows us to analyze what resources can be found exclusively in the digital medium. Tools are widely available to make strokes, work with color fills, draw geometric shapes and lines, select colors or specific areas, apply zoom or incorporate text. As previously observed, many of the classic tools and basic movements were established since the beginning of developing these digital drawing systems.
Depending on the chosen software, the tools may vary in name, be available or not appear. In digital illustration it is interesting to observe the brush tool, which due to its ability to be modified and personalized is the main object of the artist's creativity. The software offers default brushes as standard, which typically include a round tip, soft edge tip, flat tip, and textured tips, as well as shaped tips that attempt to mimic organic elements. A common division that is currently used is to organize brushes according to the effect they reproduce or the possible function: sketch brushes, inking brushes, painting brushes, aerosols, organic ... This variety offers a great versatility to the illustration, being possible to use strokes that they are very difficult to distinguish from the traditional image.
On the other hand, the options for modifying brushes to generate new ones have offered the illustrator a basic distinction tool, making it possible to create a more personalized stroke close to one's own style that cannot be imitated if the exact commands to reproduce it are not known. It is interesting to know this operation of the digital brush to get to distinguish it in final illustrations, so that it is possible to intuit the decisions that the artist makes regarding it. The elementary brush consists of a basic shape (which represents the tip) and this, when repeated continuously, generates the stroke. The organization of these commands is based on the edition of specific properties that can be the degree of variation in size during the drawing, the level of grain or texture or the ability to mix, among others.
Knowing and combining these variables, identifying how they act respect to each other, is the key to generate an useful brush for the work you want to develop. Keeping some qualities to a minimum and establishing automatic adjustments it is possible to generate strokes very close to the vectorized aspect in a manual way, as well as adjusting opacity, mixing and texture percentages we are able to obtain finishes very similar to traditional painting. In the same way, it is crucial to know the behavior of the digital canvas. Although it is possible to work all the actions on the same canvas, the main quality offered by the software is the handling of layers. Layers were a late addition to the bitmap format (Caplin, 2003: 41) and are data spaces superimposed on each other in the image, which allows specific areas to be worked without affecting the rest. They work through transparency, which is cut out by adding stroke and color information using the drawing tools. The degree of the opacity that is generated is adjustable, as well as the mode of its interaction with the rest of the layers.
It is impossible to distinguish in the final image the work done through layers since the whole has to be merged into a single image during rendering. However, in procedural recordings it is possible to distinguish their presence as long as we observe interactions that only partially affect the work or during the process of adjusting the opacity which could reveal some of these layers.
Working with layers provides a creative advantage for the digital media by being able to handle elements on the canvas as separate entities without affecting their display as a whole. They also make it possible to take full advantage of the qualities of the fusion filters to generate unique effects and textures in the illustrations, an element that also offers a very particular finish to this type of work (Caplin. 2003: 50). The ways of merging, that is, of making layers interact with others, are based on altering their properties as light. These modes generate unusual light sources or textures that also lead to identifying their presence, as well as unusual color combinations. The basic modes can be organized depending on whether they are based on darkening or lightening the whole, or if they work by contrast or by color alterations, and are based on applying that effect on the color of a layer called fusion color affecting the lower that contain a base color, as developed in the digital guide proposed by Adobe.
The basic advantage of the layers is to affect the total image in a uniform way, in such a way that it allows to obtain ambiences and to tone the whole more easily. How can this be applied in practical work? By working directly from the base colors, it is possible to create harmonic palettes shading from fusion colors that will generate a value that is already in tune with the rest of the image, allowing this new color to already have a degree of other, warmer or cooler. In the final illustration, therefore, it is understood that the colors that we see usually are not really the colors that were initially applied, but the result of combining the values of the two others.
On the other hand, filters appear for the image that generate different effects, the most common being blurring, noising or textures of canvas and paper, as well as effects of haze or sparkles. (Caplin, 2003: 180). However, many of them are prefered to be simulated by drawing tracing, applying the personal style of each artist in the illustration, enhancing in the same way the characteristic visual language that is pursued for the work. The question is no longer that this type of application of flat color, reduced shapes or basic lines are reproducible with less or more ease from a traditional invoice, but rather that this type of illustration would not have arisen if it did not exist in the first place. the technological development that in its beginnings did not offer more tools than these.
From this initial point, the finish sought for the technique has been hybridized and stages or fashions are distinguished where either an attempt is made to approximate the warmth of a manual invoice or, on the contrary, it tries to make the most of the digital treatment. For this task, external hardware or peripherals, as well as various display configurations, are critical to how the final illustration can be worked on. Each product has its own particularities, both internally and externally, so it will be explained first of all what type of peripherals is currently available, what consensus exists regarding the most suitable characteristics for professional illustration and how it is used. evidence this in the final work.
So what does digital imaging offer? Projects and possibilities of use
It will be taken into account that fundamentally the images generated for illustrations and designs at this time will be linked to the possibilities of the technology of that moment, and this criterion should become a cornerstone in its critical assessment (Holmes, 2003: 6-7). On the other hand, the digital media also causes the creation of alternative reading formats and other means to access to the illustrated narratives. As a result, artists also have better means of dissemination and it is easier to share their work along the internet.
As a result of the improves in drawing and digital design, the proliferation and revaluation of the illustration as an artistic medium occurs in addition to the editorial interest that also provokes an impetus in developing projects where it is sought to offer a value of difference. Nowadays it is allowed to develop a work in an alternative format or applying novel techniques or combinations of both. This allows not only the narrative and visual richness within the sector, but also advances the discipline towards new goals and provides alternative means for the development of stories. The publishers themselves also show an interest in these special products.
The online medium does not have the limitations of physical illustration in its album format, so the work can be developed to reach a much higher number of pages where appropriate and allows the application of novel reading sequences beyond the traditional ones thanks to the expansion of the screen, as well as enabling interactivity and linking alternative or complementary content.
Nowbrow Press has focused since 2008 on the variety of narrative concepts and alternative printing methods for its editorial production, seeking to redefine quality standards. Bárbara Fiore Editora proposes the edition of works far from classical trends to offer images within the pictorial, but adapting the form and themes to the contemporary world. The cartoonist Chris Ware already known for using original and alternative editions for his works on paper proposes in 2016 the Touch Sensitive project, where he ignores the traditional sequentiality of the cartoon to present a story accessible only using an application in IOS. The image starts from the total white and only by sliding the finger on the screen can the reader make the following narrative sequence appear until the space is completely filled. In the same way, by touching different areas of the image, you can activate actions and interact with the elements, causing dialogues and other details to appear inside and generating micronarratives.
The Google Arts & Culture project offers a tool for viewing artworks whose differential characteristic is the possibility of zooming the image to the micro level, allowing to observe the smallest details of the painting, from textures to elements of such small size that they are hardly noticeable in the real scale. It has a meticulous process of digitizing and adapting the image that, if applied to the illustrated album's terrain, would open up diverse possibilities for narrating, allowing alternative reading hierarchies, generation of micro-scenes and interactivity.
It would be about taking advantage of this zoom capacity to offer a non-consumable narration in another way, for example, exploiting the possibility of approaching space in an immersive way or looking for hidden elements in the first reading layer.
In the hybrid formats, there are comics in motion, a traditional sequential reading through vignettes with the addition of small animations, sound effects and spoken narrations. They can include visual novels, which also allow interactivity with the reader to select the course of the story, as well as different endings from the choice imitating the classics Choose your adventure that became popular during the eighties. Here it is under discussion whether the possibility of incorporating audiovisual elements would not result in considering this type of product as a totally different format from the traditional comic strip and narrative or whether it is a by-product subject to it.
The OQO publishing house proposes an initiative to digitize the album through an application that allows to read it as an ebook with additions orally narrated and transitions only possible in a digital format. It is a process of digitizing existing projects on paper and is presented as the necessary leap in language for the 21st century. However, they only take advantage of the possibilities of interaction, in the same way that it would be done on paper, and the visual elements are also the result of a traditional paint job. It is common to understand the digital book as a transfer from the traditional to a portable and interactive medium and they may not maintain the qualities of the traditional album in relation to the reading rhythm -in this case conditioned to the speed of reproduction that does not allow to appreciate the illustration-, running the risk of turning into a film into pictures or even not properly digitizing the images. In the case of applications similar to this example, applying the scan from a traditional watercolor without vectorizing the image does not communicate well with the zoom function and the final image is pixelated without a proper integration with the rest of the scene.
Therefore, the key regarding technological improvements in digital reproduction of traditional works would be to analyze how to take advantage of the possibility of carrying out these projects by applying digital technique in its entirety or in combination, allowing the best virtues of both to be enhanced. Despite this, the publishing sector still tends to not taking advantage of the total possibilities offered by the interaction and perhaps also due to the public's ignorance of what is new, so the process is normally based on digitizing works that already existed on paper while it is more complicated to transfer a mostly digital format to a printed edition.
An example of this hybridization of both media can be found in Caperucita App (2012), a project by Amanuta publishing house devised and illustrated by Paloma Valdivia. This work transfers the printed edition to the digital field. In this case, aggressive movement resources are not used, but the pausation of the reading is respected, using only smooth transitions by incorporating elements of choice and allowing the texts to interact with the rest of the composition. Small animations appear in background elements that do not detract from the limelight, but rather contribute to setting the main scene, the composition of which invites you to stay on the page for a while without encouraging a rapid change of scene. All this is accompanied by an enveloping instrumental music and sometimes by recorded sounds of nature.
The application incorporates the narration of the texts, however, in this case it is necessary that the reader has previously constructed the scene by ordering the verses, so it does not obstruct the process of reading, analysis, and observation of the illustration.
The project of the transmedia publishing house LuaBooks (2013) also promotes the development of this interactivity as a complement to the reading experience. In this case they develop its own application that by using the mobile device as an auxiliary tool allows exploring the pages of the book to locate sounds, activities and images in augmented reality, as well as to incorporate the mobile as an element of the page by making it coincide with part of the illustration to be integrated into the whole.
On the other hand, digital galleries also show an increase in number, especially when the digital portfolio becomes popular, which also allows the illustrator to transmit his personal brand more directly to both the client and the general public. Perhaps it is the medium that pays more attention to the proper reproduction of the image, given that its quality lies in the success of that portfolio, and the possibility of customization allows the entire user experience while visiting it to highlight the qualities of the work according to the wishes of the illustrator who is also not subject to any editorial convention other than his own brand.
These formats are in full development and expansion, and it is essential to be trained in the possibilities that they offer to receive and review appropriately about these products which require a reinvention of how images and artistic products have been seen so far in the literary world. Sticking strictly to technical requirements, digital illustration requires a parallel work compared to the traditional techniques. On the one hand, it is about carrying out the mental process of adapting routines on paper towards the digital media. On the other hand, you need to understand the software used to know what it allows to carry out. Finally, the need for a teaching work appears.
Within the published material in Spain focused on teaching drawing and illustration there are volumes from the recent years that already incorporate the digital technique as one more common technique. Félix Scheinberger dedicates a space in his manual to talk about computers and generative design, as well as focusing on two of the most widely used software: Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. In the text, the 2000s are mentioned as a decade of growing interest in computer-generated work, also due to the globalized moment that requires rapid access to any part of the world. This innovation attracts attention within a situation of overproduction of images. The transition to the digital image is costly due in large part to its disadvantages: initial investment in material, time investment in learning how to use it, and slow learning due to abrupt language change.
The debate about whether it is only a tool or whether it has its own capacity to generate a new technique also slows down its total inclusion to the artistic disciplines in the beginning. It can be considered a generative medium, however, in the production of suitable images for the illustrated album, creative invention is essential. The authors have been curious about the possibilities of this medium and in a parallel way, software has been developed to promise to facilitate the most tedious tasks in the tangible world.
Little by little, these programs, their tools and its modes of creation have been widely assimilated during the last decade, and more and more illustrators have incorporated these digital resources into their work so that nowadays picture books can be found made entirely digitally; projects that do not try to hide or camouflage its composition process, but rather widely reveal the application of digital techniques and try to exploit the resources it offers. The possibility of including contrasts and intense and bright tones between colors is used as a compositional resource to visually order the images, as well as the shapes, the cuts in them and the negative spaces.
Conclusions
Among the factors that favor the increase in the production of digital illustrations we found the possibility of the online medium to share and receive images, also driven by the technology that allows them to be produced directly from the device. Production is democratized and accessible to the domestic environment, which requires critical work in terms of authorship and quality.
The online environment is positioned as an appropriate field to apply and develop digital tools seeking to generate alternative formats and new styles, also causing a direct response from the user from which it is possible to obtain statistics. It is a scoring system that can be used by cultural organizations when designing content. The digital context and the democratized network favor multichannel interaction and feedback from the public that, through algorithms, ends up playing a relevant role in dissemination and editorial decisions regarding content.
It is necessary a work of design and content adaptation, at the same time as a need to understand how the online medium works and how the interaction with the user is, in addition to the different devices with their own qualities. Promoting the creation of exclusive formats that cannot be transferred from this medium generates a differential value in the product. Therefore, applying digital tools is presented as a necessity to boost the online market, but it also set the challenge of knowing how to carry out a process of respectful adaptation of traditional content, at the same time that new formats are generated. The online medium itself, on the other hand, makes the task difficult, as the algorithm is out of the user's control, making it difficult to predict the results of the strategies and projects that are carried out.
For the specific field of industrial design, it allows to streamline the creative process and the development of drawings and sketches in the phases prior to technical work in 2D and 3D. The process of updating the specific software for this area can be fed by the progress made for digital drawing, taking what allows improving both the process and the final rendering. The need for design work creates a work space for the creative within branches closely related to the visual, such as the design of jewelry, interiors and furniture, glass and ceramics or the toy, fashion or footwear industries. Promoting computer-aided design allows the union between industry and art to continue to exist.
Taking into account the presence of the mentioned variables, it is possible to finally conclude with the establishment of the digital drawing system as one more stage in the evolution of graphic language. The future challenge of narrowing down its study to build a renewed critique that takes into account not only the product but also the qualities of its environment is presented. Therefore, in the same way, we enter a stage of curation of content and digital archive, where the presence of this critical work and the complete understanding of the image in its conception, format and digital presence will be crucial.
Referencies
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Fuente de financiación. Este trabajo no ha recibido financiación alguna