Sketch booking for designers.

The pen is mightier than the pen tool

There is no doubt about it, your hand is much faster than the pen tool. Unlike conceptualizing in Adobe Illustrator, analog sketching allows you to generate more ideas about your design subject matter much more effectively. This is because your hand is free thus allowing you to loosely sketch concepts quickly and take notes as you go on any ideas that might come to mind; such as color palette, collateral, and typography. This fast and loose thinking gives relief to the mind, making mistakes and having not so great ideas is part of the creative process and without exhausting all possibilities by sketching analog first, you could be overlooking that really brilliant idea and selling yourself short of that great concept.

The designer brain dump

There is something totally satisfying about dumping all your ideas and thoughts onto paper and just stream of consciousness releasing all the ideas that are floating around in your head. When you are doing this sort of “free thinking” it clears your mind by externalizing thoughts and ideas on physical paper freeing up ram in that bio computer that sits inside your head. David Allen wrote in his super awesome book on productivity called Getting Things Done “your mind is for having ideas, not holding them”, and from my own personal experience when I am allowed to dump and exhaust all possibilities with pen and paper I am a lighter person, less anxious and more confident in the work that I am doing for the task at hand.

Making connections

There have been plenty of times after a long or short session of sketching and then taking a step back and looking at everything I have put down on paper I will begin to see new shapes and ideas appearing. I do not know what it is, but there is something your brain does when you take a step back and look at all the thumbnails you have doodled and then like magic a new idea comes to mind.

My sketching process

I’am always refining and developing my creative process and these are the steps to my sketching.

!. I do a little mind mapping/word mashing, or create a list of feelings and emotional tones.

2.After I have gotten some words going I start sketching really quickly whatever comes to my mind. It might be relevant to the subject matter, or it could be just abstract shapes and squiggles that feel correct. I wont know until the sketching dust settles.

1. After an hour or two I take a step back and look at what I have done so far. Perhaps I pick the best one and move along or perhaps I start mashing doodles together creating hybrid sketches I did not think about before.

2. I now take the best of these creations and see if I can refine them just a little bit more.

3. Now it’s time for the computer. I pick out the sketches that are working the best and digitize.