I was child of the Star Wars era and loved the films, characters, spaceships and worlds depicted in the films. The natural curiosity of a child led me to the Star Wars storey board illustrations by Joe Johnston. I did not know it at the time but I was learning how to understand space (literally and figuratively) in 3D.  I loved how the illustrations engaged with people and also told and sold ideas. Always wanted to do this with my ideas and buildings. The Joe Johnston sketches fueled my enthusiasm for design.

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As my career in practice has developed I have become more aware of the ability and power of loose freehand sketching to engage clients. From a business point of view it’s much quicker and cheaper to use hand sketching to engage with clients than expensive and lengthy CGI graphics. That's not to say I don't use computer graphics. But I have realised that hand sketching seems to entice clients much quicker than CGI. It is also much more fun and rewarding to hand sketch and develop a design idea.